JCB "Robot" skid steer durability ?

   / JCB "Robot" skid steer durability ? #1  

Renze

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the Steernbos (Holland)
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Not that i want to buy one, but after seeing one on YouTube, i wonder what the durability of the JCB mono boom skid steer digger with side door, is..
The boom is mounted off center, does it ever twist or crack after a couple of hundred (or thousand) hours ?
The side door seems a revelation to me ! now it needs 4w steering and it'll be perfect ;)
 
   / JCB "Robot" skid steer durability ? #2  
It's kinda funny, funny that people will question the strength of the durability and strength of the single boom on the Robot skid steer and never blink an eye at the single boom capablities of the telehandler forklifts.

Consider for a minute some telehandlers come with five ton capacity and forty foot of reach, all on a single boom. Compare that to the maximum of a ton and a half and ten or so feet of lift on the Robot.

It's also needs to be noted that the JCB Robot comes with a lifetime warranty on the boom itself.
 
   / JCB "Robot" skid steer durability ? #3  
There is a great fence builder on here that has one and uses it for just about anything you can imagine and his seems to be holding up great. If it is going to twist, bend or break then it would have happened to him by now with some of the projects he used his for.

Well, he beat me to it :)
 
   / JCB "Robot" skid steer durability ?
  • Thread Starter
#4  
It's kinda funny, funny that people will question the strength of the durability and strength of the single boom on the Robot skid steer and never blink an eye at the single boom capablities of the telehandler forklifts.

My thought is that a telehandler has a centered boom, which results in way lower boom torsion. (only occurring when edge loading the bucket) Its not hard to construct a centered single boom, the hard part is to keep it in one piece when mounting it to the side: to get the wear and tolerance of an offset boom so good that the bucket is allways level, no matter if you are pushing the bucket into the ground, or lifting that same bucket full. Either will result in a torsional moment on the boom, both in opposite direction.
This torsional moment will work on the boom suspension bushes, which are spaced at about 1/4 of the center distance of those of a normal loader: Slop in those bushings will therefor give 4 times more rotational play of the boom....

Because JCB has a lifetime warranty on the boom, i guess i am not the only one with this concern, and that warranty was what it took to convince buyers... :)


Wroughtn Harv, how many operating hours has your Iris clocked up now ? any bushing or pin slop yet ?
 
   / JCB "Robot" skid steer durability ? #5  
My thought is that a telehandler has a centered boom, which results in way lower boom torsion. (only occurring when edge loading the bucket) Its not hard to construct a centered single boom, the hard part is to keep it in one piece when mounting it to the side: to get the wear and tolerance of an offset boom so good that the bucket is allways level, no matter if you are pushing the bucket into the ground, or lifting that same bucket full. Either will result in a torsional moment on the boom, both in opposite direction.
This torsional moment will work on the boom suspension bushes, which are spaced at about 1/4 of the center distance of those of a normal loader: Slop in those bushings will therefor give 4 times more rotational play of the boom....

Because JCB has a lifetime warranty on the boom, i guess i am not the only one with this concern, and that warranty was what it took to convince buyers... :)


Wroughtn Harv, how many operating hours has your Iris clocked up now ? any bushing or pin slop yet ?

Look at the JCB telehandlers, they're all offset booms.

Iris is down with a wheel drive motor hiccup. I've got her in parts at sixteen hundred or so hours to rebuild all the hydraulic motors etc. If the drive motor hadn't developed a hiccup I would still be using it even though I could feel the main hydraulic motor was having issues.

I have a little pin slop in the curl. The rest of it is nuts on. But then I use lots of preventive stuff for the grease worms. It never fails to amaze me to see a rental unit with three or four hundred hours and gobs of slop in the pins just because customers won't grease the equipment.

I've rented and used most of the other skid steers out there. I would go with the JCB because of the door. Without the door I would go with it for the effectiveness of the power application, they just seem to be able to do more with less effort.

The only exception would be if I was going to buy a machine that was going to be used exclusively for digging and moving dirt. Then it would the Takeuchi hands down and walking away. I don't know how they've done it but the Tak's I've rented have never failed to amaze me with their ability to dig and move dirt easier than anything comparable.
 
   / JCB "Robot" skid steer durability ? #6  
I like the deere CT series but since the closest ive drivin to a takuchi is a GEHL track loader, I havent ever experienced the diging power since i only used the pallet forks.
 
   / JCB "Robot" skid steer durability ? #7  
My son is a shop foreman for an outfit that carries JCB. He says he has only seen one damaged boom, and that was from an outfit that was doing a lot of digging rock on the left corner only. :(

As pointed out, JCB has a lifetime warranty on the boom. OTOH, stability of dealerships handling JCB is not good, at least not around here.

As for liking the side entry door, I can understand that, but have you considered if you wanted to use OTR tracks?

I had a demo here for a couple of days. I liked it except that it was very tippy going up slight grades with an empty bucket. I got it stuck on one of my trails in the woods. I had to pull it out with my Kubota excavator. I've found JD skids a lot more stable, at least with OTR tracks.
 
   / JCB "Robot" skid steer durability ?
  • Thread Starter
#8  
Iris is down with a wheel drive motor hiccup. I've got her in parts at sixteen hundred or so hours to rebuild all the hydraulic motors etc. If the drive motor hadn't developed a hiccup I would still be using it even though I could feel the main hydraulic motor was having issues.

1600 hrs is not that much for a commercial dirt mover...however i know about a lot of problems with hydrostatic wheel drives on wheel loaders of competitors (Ahlmann, Liebherr) of the company i work for, so i will believe what you say straight away... We use ZF powershift transmissions that need one or two partial overhauls in 25.000 operating hours.... The downside is the slightly higher fuel consumption due to the torque converter losses.

It might take another 10 years or so, when we can buy axles with an electric motor integrated in the differential, plugged in to the diesel powered generator. That will bring major savings in both fuel costs as well as maintenance costs over both powershifts and hydrostats.
 
   / JCB "Robot" skid steer durability ? #9  
Not that i want to buy one, but after seeing one on YouTube, i wonder what the durability of the JCB mono boom skid steer digger with side door, is..
The boom is mounted off center, does it ever twist or crack after a couple of hundred (or thousand) hours ?
The side door seems a revelation to me ! now it needs 4w steering and it'll be perfect ;)


I've also thought they looked very handy, clean, and operator friendly
 
   / JCB "Robot" skid steer durability ? #10  
The only exception would be if I was going to buy a machine that was going to be used exclusively for digging and moving dirt. Then it would the Takeuchi hands down and walking away. I don't know how they've done it but the Tak's I've rented have never failed to amaze me with their ability to dig and move dirt easier than anything comparable.

I was helping a guy this last week and have to say that I agree with your take on the Takeuchi machines. There was a Bobcat T300 there and a Takeuchi TL150 on site. They are similar sized machines but there was absolutely no comparison in abilities. I ran the Bobcat for the first 2 days and the Tak the last 2 days. Talk about a difference!! The guy who owned the Bobcat bought it based on it's "superior" rated 'tipping load'. On paper (not what we experienced on the job), the Bobcat has a 1500 pound advantage in that rating. However, in real life, I don't see how. The Takeuchi ran circles around the Bobcat, moved slabs that the Bobcat couldn't budge and could clear an area so much better than the Bobcat that it was unreal.

I had to look up the specs and see why there was so much of a difference. It seems that the rated 'traction force' between them is huge. The Takeuchi is rated with a traction force of 13,770 pounds and the Bobcat is rated at 5,900 pounds. No wonder the Takeuchi was so much more productive! The Takeuchi also has about a 50% advantage in lift strength and bucket break out force. I liked the Takeuchi so much that I went out and bought one today. The owner of the one I used said that his only had 2000 hours on it and he runs them to about 4000 hours and wasn't near ready to sell his. Not many people have heard of the little beasts outside the industry, but I have one now. :)
 
 
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