What did you do with your Chinese baby digger today?

[MattB4]

What are your thoughts on this when it comes to reliability and future parts availability? If the basic 1 ton Chinese units can be kept repaired with commonly available parts, that would seem to be in their favor so far as many of us? Proprietary parts get to be expensive and can disappear altogether over time.

Just my opinion but these little diggers are in the same category as riding lawn mowers you can buy every Spring from a hardware or farm store. Inexpensive to buy, good for light duty and repairable to a small amount depending on whether the cost of doing so is worthwhile. And some of the parts may not be proprietary as such but may still be unavailable.

Do not buy one thinking it is going to be commercial duty.

 

[dfkrug]

What are your thoughts on this when it comes to reliability and future parts availability? If the basic 1 ton Chinese units can be kept repaired with commonly available parts, that would seem to be in their favor so far as many of us? Proprietary parts get to be expensive and can disappear altogether over time.

Parts all seem off-the-shelf but access to the hydraulic parts in particular is not secure if there are few clear parts nos or suppliers. Complexity can lead to more problems.

The only parts on my machine that could fail and I would need to buy replacements for are the house motor and drive gears/bearings, distribution valve, idler wheels, and drive sprocket. The rest I already have or I can repair myself.

 

[oldrustysteel]

Today we DIG!!! Need to fill in a washed-out culvert. 24 hours and all is well.

 

[2manyrocks]

Parts all seem off-the-shelf but access to the hydraulic parts in particular is not secure if there are few clear parts nos or suppliers. Complexity can lead to more problems.

The only parts on my machine that could fail and I would need to buy replacements for are the house motor and drive gears/bearings, distribution valve, idler wheels, and drive sprocket. The rest I already have or I can repair myself.

How do they make these so that the machine is able to rotate 360 degrees while also supplying hydraulic power to the wheel motors? Is there some kind of hydraulic connection that is also able to rotate 360 degrees? If it were just a run of hydraulic hose, looks like it would get all twisted up?

 

[oldrustysteel]

How do they make these so that the machine is able to rotate 360 degrees while also supplying hydraulic power to the wheel motors? Is there some kind of hydraulic connection that is also able to rotate 360 degrees? If it were just a run of hydraulic hose, looks like it would get all twisted up?

I believe it's called a distribution valve by some. It looks similar to a hydraulic motor, like the swing motor, but it has 4-6 hydraulic lines. I haven't seen inside one but I think a very smart person had to be involved in the engineering. I think there are 2 halves and lines going in the top half and lines on the bottom half.
Probably one of the most expensive parts in the hydraulic system.

 

[2manyrocks]

Thank you. I looked up distribution valve and now see how it would work.

 

[dfkrug]

I believe it's called a distribution valve by some. It looks similar to a hydraulic motor, like the swing motor, but it has 4-6 hydraulic lines. I haven't seen inside one but I think a very smart person had to be involved in the engineering. I think there are 2 halves and lines going in the top half and lines on the bottom half.
Probably one of the most expensive parts in the hydraulic system.

Yeah, I have not been inside a distribution valve, either. Mine even has a case drain to return leakage to the tank.

 

[oldrustysteel]

Another nice day, so went to work on the culvert repair.

 

[oldrustysteel]

This 36" culvert was blocked and had washed out years ago. The Baby Digger, the Baby-Bota and I went to work cleaning it out and filling in the huge holes. Those are roots on top. 6 loads dumped so far.

 

[oldrustysteel]

Almost 26 hours and still working better than it should. Thats 26 hours on the L12 not the Gator, it has over 2400 hours and over 21,000 miles on it. Quite impressive.