Buying an excavator soon would love your insight.

[skyking1]

tape measure the thumb pins on the machines you are shopping. That will tell you what will fit and what you will have to widen out for deeper trenches.
Keep in mind a 12" bucket removes a miserably small amount of dirt per pass. It might well minimize the disturbance, but there is an associated cost to it.
In sticky materials, it is very difficult to keep clean. Do you think you will be fine grading or cleaning the ditch in any way?
Try to turn around in a 12" trench.
I have an 18" and 24", and for ditches that require a precision grade, the 18" is about minimum.

 

[Just-Joshin-ya]

Running a mower requires strong GPM and PSI at the aux. to be productive. Also enough machine to stabilize the mower at full articulation. I have a Rock Hound mower on mine, it is a bigger unit and 6 ton machine, it is a good mower. Typically the hyd. specs improve considerably as you step up in size and of course they can lift more. I would select the mower you want, then you know what GPM and PSI you need, as well as the weight of the attachment and find an excavator that meets those needs. I think your probably in the right weight class in a 45ish size.

I won’t need a big mower, just want to be able to do my creek banks and part of my hillside mostly because I despise yellow jackets, one more reason I want a cab! Two summers ago I hit 7 nests on a rented open cab dozer... one within the first 15min of operation! It’s a good thing I can react calmly under horrible circumstances lol so many bees, looked like yellow water flowing out of the ground!

 

[Just-Joshin-ya]

tape measure the thumb pins on the machines you are shopping. That will tell you what will fit and what you will have to widen out for deeper trenches.
Keep in mind a 12" bucket removes a miserably small amount of dirt per pass. It might well minimize the disturbance, but there is an associated cost to it.
In sticky materials, it is very difficult to keep clean. Do you think you will be fine grading or cleaning the ditch in any way?
Try to turn around in a 12" trench.
I have an 18" and 24", and for ditches that require a precision grade, the 18" is about minimum.

My 36” trenches will have to be level, the line from the house will be about a 2% grade, so there could be some shovel work but I’d rather make the excavator do most of it so that would still be a + for a bit bigger bucket.

 

[skyking1]

The excavator does ALL of it, but things roll back in. You knock rocks in while setting the pipe, etc. With a 12" dug trench, it gets really annoying
The little trenches are great for poly and cable runs that just don't care so much.

 

[KSSS]

Exactly, that combined with wet material, getting the bucket to clean out is a problem. You spend more of your time shaking the bucket, than digging.

 

[catman13]

go with 16 in bucket ,
i was putting field drain pipe about 4 ft deep with 18 in bucket thru damp top soil and clay i could not keep bucket clean , some of it dug with the bucket packed full of dirt it not stay clean

 

[TrentNz]

Look at a kx057 kubota - very powerful and smooth machines.

yanmar are very unbalanced too

 

[suladas]

Forgot to thank you for your military service. I was in the USAF for one enlistment.

Anyway I wanted to comment about your attachments and configuration. I was torn between an angle blade or just the straight blade. I do quite a bit of grading with the blade and sometimes I wish I could angle my straight blade but from what I've read the angle blade doesn't have the 'push' capability of the straight blade. I have no idea if this would be a limitation or not.

You absolutely do want the thumb - for me it's incredibly useful to move rocks, stumps, trees, etc. My E42 with the extra 500 pound butt weight can lift 4500 pounds three or four feet off the ground and out five or six feet or so.

I have the ripper which is probably my least used implement because I don't be a lot of trenching. If you will be doing mostly digging you will find it useful. I did use the ripper to bury coax cable a few inches underground, I ripped going in reverse. The 'trench' was quite sloppy but it was fine for my need.

My 12" tooth bucket is my go-to bucket most of the time when I'm trenching/general digging/and picking up heavy loads. It weighs less than the larger buckets

The 24" tooth bucket is a good size for large excavations which I rarely do so it sits most of the time.

My last attachment is a 40" grading (no teeth) bucket, it gets a lot of use around the ranch since I'm making swales to control runoff.

I don't think you mentioned a pin grabber, Bobcat calls it X-Change or something like that. Incredibly useful option, I've thanked myself a thousand times for selecting that option when I spec'd out my E42.

Have you weighted what it's lifted? Find it really hard to believe a 4 ton machine can lift 4500lbs. My 6 ton with bucket on can lift 3200lbs at the very most.

 

[Welder Dave]

4500lbs. does seem high for a 4 ton machine. Former neighbor had all he could handle with a 3000lb. wrecking ball on a 3/4yd. 16 ton machine, mind you that was swinging the stick in and out with the bucket still on.

 

[OTG AuGres]

I had a 2017 E42 cab with extendible arm and angle blade. Also added the extra counterweight. Very capable and reliable machine, but have to admit the extra counterweight got in the way a few times in the woods. I’m doing primarily woods work...clearing, stump pulling etc. I recently upgraded to an E50 cab, standard arm, fixed blade. I wanted increased digging and lifting capacity and like the zero tail swing. Decided as time goes on the angle blade and extendible arm were potential maintenance items I didn’t want to deal with. Both were convenient but certainly not deal breakers. I’ve got less than 20 hours on the e50, but so far, so good. It is a more formidable machine...feels much bigger.

Dealer support was a big deal for me. In my area, I could have went Bobcat, Deere, or Cat. I liked Bobcat best of those three. Our Kubota dealer seems so-so. Only handles the excavators, not any other Kubota construction equipment. The other players aren’t well represented in my area. My Bobcat dealer and salesman have treated me first class

 

[Just-Joshin-ya]

Have you weighted what it's lifted? Find it really hard to believe a 4 ton machine can lift 4500lbs. My 6 ton with bucket on can lift 3200lbs at the very most.

The new E42 weighs close to 11k rated at 4700lb lift with the long arm that’s at 120” out and ground level according to the specs?

 

[KSSS]

That is what the spec sheet says. Even over the blade, that is pretty impressive. Weighted down like that it is essentially a 5 ton machine, but still impressive.

 

[suladas]

Yea that's really impressive. I know my 6 ton unless the boom is most of the way up, it won't even pick up 3000lbs, not a chance it would pickup 4700lbs 120" out and not from tipping just doesn't have the power. If you had something perfect in the bucket you could lift easier as I find the biggest limitation is running out of height with the stick tucked in, but still no way would it do that weight. Funny I looked at the specs for my machine and at 6.6' out is says it will pickup 5700lbs, at 120" out ground level it's 3400lbs which I would say is exactly right. So clearly the ratings are way out of wack.

 

[Just-Joshin-ya]

Looking at some fo Yanmar’s lifting specs there are certain heights that the capacity drops drastically then goes back up as you get higher. I could see that as an interesting lesson to learn, you pick up 1500lbs at full extension and 9ft off the ground then at 8ft your tipping load drops to 1100lbs better hurry down lol.

 

[skyking1]

Most of the chart weirdness is due to geometry and hydraulic limitations, not tipping forces. Just like your arm, there are awkward places where you just don't get as much power.

 

[Just-Joshin-ya]

Most of the chart weirdness is due to geometry and hydraulic limitations, not tipping forces. Just like your arm, there are awkward places where you just don't get as much power.

That’s what I was looking at too, the length of the arm, the length of the boom, counterweight, width of the tracks, so much math has to go into these things! I’m glad I’m just diggin holes!

 

[McQueen]

I have the Yanmar VIO55a I didn't like the zero tail swing at first coming out of a Cat 320 the cab seemed cramped and it like your setting up to high. I have gotten use to the cab and its not to bad. If your used to a full size machine I guess all the mini's are going to take some getting use to. The zero tail swing has came in quite handy several times. As far as the aux hydraulics on the Yanmar for running a brush cutter you will not like them. The factory turns down the pressure from around 3k psi to maybe 1800psi to keep from bending the thumb cylinder. You can change it but it requires removing the floor pan and manually turning up the pressure. Not something you want to do every time you hook up to the mower. I have talked to Yanmar about this several times. They said they were coming out with dedicated circuit for the aux hydraulics on the new machines. Not sure if the 2020 have this yet or not. This is my biggest complaint on my Yanmar. Other than that I love it. I have a RUT brush cutter and I use it. It's just not going to operate as intended. I really like the angle blade. Comes in handy. I run a 18" 24" 36" digging buckets and a 48" tilting grading bucket. I have a ripper I use for stumping. Not sure about the difference between the 50 and the 55 but I believe the 55 just has a turbo. It's quite a load with a few extra buckets on the trailer.
I use a 10 Ton trailer and pull with a single axle dump truck.

 

[OTG AuGres]

Re aux hydraulics, I’ve been very happy with Bobcat, both in flow and pressure. I run a 30” Eterra flail mower that works very well with the Bobcat hydraulics. No sure how other brands are set up, but on my e42 the first hyd circuit controls the thumb and boom swing with a selectable toggle switch on the LH console and the operation switch on LH joystick. The second hyd circuit ran the extendible arm thru aux connections. To run my mower I had to manually pin the arm retracted, unhook the arm hydraulics and attach the mower. Three different flow rates were available via the control screen. Momentary and continuous flow switches were on RH joystick. My mower has saddle grapple teeth that line up with my thumb so obviously want both circuits to be active.

My e50 and I assume all R4 excavators has an arm mounted diverter valve to route flow to either the thumb or aux hyd connections. With my mower setup, I wanted both the mower and thumb active so I ordered an additional hyd circuit. So I have thumb and boom control on LH joystick with a selection switch to go back and forth right on the joystick. Nice improvement from the e42. I have momentary and continuous control for the second hydraulic circuit on the RH joystick and there is extensive setup for flow in the touch screen. You can now fine tune hydraulic parameters and save them per attachment via the touch screen. Just pick the attachment you’re using from the menu and all the settings are already there. Very nice. The diverter valve is still on the machine so if I ever have an attachment that needs 2 hyd circuits, I’m all set.

 

[McQueen]

That is where having the bells and whistles come in handy.
Being able to adjust hyd setting from a touch screen.
I looked at Cat Takeuchi and Bobcat but they were close to 10k more for the same size machine.
But if I had known about the aux set up, before I had purchased the Yanmar and bought 11k worth of attachments.
I would have spent the extra 10k and went with something else.
I'm not trying to hate on Yanmar. I still like my VIO55 for everything else, except for running the brush cutter.

 

[Just-Joshin-ya]

That is where having the bells and whistles come in handy.
Being able to adjust hyd setting from a touch screen.
I looked at Cat Takeuchi and Bobcat but they were close to 10k more for the same size machine.
But if I had known about the aux set up, before I had purchased the Yanmar and bought 11k worth of attachments.
I would have spent the extra 10k and went with something else.
I'm not trying to hate on Yanmar. I still like my VIO55 for everything else, except for running the brush cutter.

This info helps a lot, I did see where Yanmar is offering a 2nd Aux Hydraulics but I’d assume you would still have to adjust everything the same as you described.