CL,great 3800 info,thanks.Was the little Madill 800 ever inteneded or designed to become a roabuilder,bucket and thumb machine,They appear to have come so close to dig ready,what was up with this model? even the boom was bannana shape
That sound like such an easy question........Answer: Yes, then no, then yes, then bankruptcy. How's that?
The 2800, 2850, and 3800 models were so poular with the loggers because they were built like hell and the booms/frames couldn't be destroyed. You could buy a new 3800 and just keep re-lifeing it every 10 to 12 thousand hours with a reman engine, pump, and rebuilt cylinders. No cracking or metal fatigue issues like you get with the import machines.
There are lots and lots of Madill 30800's running today with well over 30,000 hours on the frames. Many lived as shovels for the 1st 12,000 hrs and then got a Waratah due to the un-godly flow that is unmatched on any other machine that size. a 3800C Madill (300 ton class machine) produces more flow than the imported 45 ton machines (Cat 345, Hitachi ZX450, Komatsu PC400, etc) so as far as flow nothing can touch it.
Madill was building (by hand mind you - no assembly line or robots) aroud 155 machines a year at the 2001/2002 peak, and loggers were starting to buy smaller and smaller loaders. The 200/250 class was becoming the market mainstay so Madill decided they needed to get in on that action. The 800 (a 200 size machine) and the 1800 (250 sized) were designed and built to offer in that market. Trouble is they were hand-built and crazy expensive compared to say a 200 Hitachi or 320 Cat. Hell for stout, but too expensive.
Madill had continued with the Ross/Thunderbird tradition of buying Hyundai 290 platforms to carry the stroke-type delimbers (and they worked really well by the way)> I'm no Hyundai fan, but in that job its the delimber doing all the work- not the carrier, so the Hyundai worked great as a platform -- Cummins power, Kawasaki hydraulics, etc. All that machine is is the engine/pump/valve life-support system for the stroker. There's no frame-stress or travel-power requirement so the cheap little Hyundai's fit that bill well.
As the 800 and 1800 were being built, and effort to cut the price down to an affordable level for the guys used to paying Cat and Deere/Hitachi prices. Since the 290 Hyundai's were coming over anyway, the 800 and 1800 were designed to accept the Hyundai 'Robex 290' boom foot/pin assemble so any 800 or 1800 could accept one of these 290 excavator fronts if desired. Madill built a logging boom for each machine with a main-pin size the same as the 290 Hyundai excavator boom. MIND YOU- these were Madill's 200 and 250 size machines so that boom was much larger than the machine really should have been able to handle. All the 800 or 1800 Madills you see with the backhoe boom are wering that 290 Hyundai front on them. It's good as a Waratah/LogMax harvester carrier and will last in that application for a long long time.
Trouble with the 800 / 1800 machines is as usual they had way to much horsepower and swing torque and if you put a grapple/quick-change on that Hyundai front you'll tear the boom in half swinging logs uphill. The uphill swing power of the Madill will crack/buckle the Hyundai 290 front.
Just for kicks, ONE Madill 1800 Roadbuilder was built and equipped with the 290 boom, 42" digging bucket, and pro-link thumb. The test unit was given to Ted LeRoy Trucking with instructions: BE CAREFUL and go slow and lets see what happens here. Short stick, nothing fancy here and it only lasted a month. Cracked, broke, and on and on so Madill gave up on that idea after that. They weren't trying to get in the backhoe business anyway so no big deal. You could go buy a Cat 320 or 325 Forest Machine with backhoe front for a ton less money- so our advice was always 'go buy a Cat 325' when the backhoe question came up.
I was involved with Madill in those years and watched the 800/1800 desingned and then finally built. We had a bunch of the first few units working on the North Oregon Coast as test units- we gave them to the usual suspects to try: Fallon, Olstedt, Hopkes, Lundberg, etc in the Astoria/Tillamook area. Some were sold and naturally I have several thousand pictures of testing 800/1800 machines in Oregon.....I plan on posting some of those in my 'Madill Loader' picture gallery over the next few months here:
http://www.pbase.com/rustygrapple/madill_loaders_bunchers if you care to look.
The same was going on in Washington State and Russ S. was up there working with his group doing the same things. In Canada too, but I didnt really get in on that action as i was pretty busy on the road with my own group of customers. Several 1800's were bought during all this- and they still live there in the North Oregon Coast area with names you guys would recognize.......It was fun for sure, great times and some great people.
THEN the big BC Timber industry shakeup happened and Madill crashed along with many of its biggest customers. The rest, as they say, is history.
