-
Thank you for visiting HeavyEquipmentForums.com! Our objective is to provide industry professionals a place to gather to exchange questions, answers and ideas. We welcome you to register using the "Register" icon at the top of the page. We'd appreciate any help you can offer in spreading the word of our new site. The more members that join, the bigger resource for all to enjoy. Thank you!
Cat vs. Kobelco
- Thread starter Trashman
- Start date
I love how fast Kobelco excavators are.
Skeans1
Well-Known Member
We have both a 320 and a 94 mark 3 200 kobelco they are the same year with the kobelco having more hours it has cost us a lot less to keep up and running vs the cat. The hydraulics are stronger on the kobelcos we have as well as faster for shovel logging.
Thank you all for the responses. My shop supervisor, the operator and I intend to go look at the Kobelco as soon as it arrives at the retailer. We are going to use this machine to demo substandard houses. Currently we do about 40-50 a year with a rental machine. With this machine we hope to do 75-100.
Trashman
Trashman
After looking real hard at the Kobelco we opted for the Cat. The Kobelco was just plain worn out. from the undercarriage all the way to the broken glass in the cab. It was just going to require more money than we wanted to spend to get it into decent shape. I thank you all for your recommendations.
Trashman.
Trashman.
Mother Deuce
Senior Member
LOL! I purchased 2 SK200's new in for the company. Moved them both out into the field and gave it a couple days. I went out to one of the jobs. One of our better hands was on the machine. He asks me if I had ran this machine. I said no "just in the dealer yard. He was amazed at how fast it was. It turned out that for instance at the time it had the fastest swing speed in the industry for that class. When I went to work there, the company relied on one manufacturer. Which was fine. The local dealer was enchanted with us and by and large we were with them. However something changed in the parts supply stream. We couldn't get parts all of a sudden. I walked out to the shop one day and 4 backhoes were in there waiting for the same needle bearing to arrive. (axle through case)
I decided that all of a sudden the basket, in which the company had historically put all the eggs in developed a large hole! Started buying excavators by 2's and auctioning the prior machines. As mentioned above, I agree that Cat has a superior parts chain and they are not that mentioned above company I had the poor experience with. We purchased 8 in 2 years they included Link Belt, MDI Yutani, Kobelco and Hitachi.
We viewed these machines as 20,000 hour units and they didn't let us down. The Linkbelts had a throttle advance motor issue and rather then pay 600 dollars multiple times to replace them. We switched them to old school cable control, problem solved. Having purchased them new and getting that first "goodness" out of them and maintaining them properly, I would have to state they were all good units at that juncture.
I never again let us be held hostage by a parts stream or dealer failing that would stop multiple units simultaneously and impair our ability to prosecute our customers projects in a timely fashion.
Regardless of what's been said above, IMHO...…….you wont be sorry.
We have plenty of Cat equipment as well as John Deere, and they hold up fine. The Cat dealer thinks their parts and service are gold and John Deere cant keep a tech, but other than that they are good dealers. Kobelco is something that is not sold in large numbers West of I-35.
PipelinerPaul
New Member
Agreed. My opinions are solely based on new 'apples to apples' comparisons. Once you step into used equipment, it's hard to hold these comparisons as each machine lives a very different life.Regardless of what's been said above, IMHO...…….you wont be sorry.