well, heres a little review of my little toy. I have put in a big drainfield with it and backfilled a house and dug a soakaway pit. The only thing I had to struggle with was the soakaway pit today. In true engineering fashion, the CB and pit were at the high end of a sloping lot. So the outlet invert was at 4 feet, and I had to trench 20 feet farther, which added over 2 feet of elevation, and then dig 6 feet deeper for the rockpit. So that adds up to 12 feet and I have 10 feet of dig. Hmmm. But it worked out ok. I subcut 2 feet off the top and that did the job. It took me 3 hours to dig it and backfill, but what the hay, 95 an hour for an extra hour probably. The rest of the job made up for it because I could sneak down the side of the lot(6 feet wide) and I bucketed 80 yards of pitrun in and I dropped my little red monster inside the foundation to spread it. So I got it all done in a day and he was happy.
I found a couple more niggles with my toy though. When I was digging the pit I would hang the machine over the pit with the stabilizers supporting me, but they are very short. So it was a little precarious. Another 6 inches per side would be real nice. The ones on the Kubota were really long I noticed. I also found that when I wanted to pull away onto terra firma, It was really hard to move the machine with the bucket, because the hydrostatic transmission gives so much resistance. This is a plus and a minus because you can stop anywhere and it won't roll. This makes trenching actually quite fast because I can lift up the stabilizers and bucket a bit, reach behind me and put it in gear, and drive ahead while facing backward. That is tough to do on a real backhoe because as soon as you lift the stabilizers and bucket, it wants to roll. And theres nothing more terrifying than rolling backwards down a hill in a backhoe while facing the wrong way. Talk about helpless. But the downside is I can't push and pull myself into space like I like to do.
What else. OK, the hydraulics are open circuit, and they don't work unless the revs are up, so you can't even lift the stabilizers at an idle or you risk stalling the engine. And if you do that, you need to set the handbrake to start it again.
The auto leveling went haywire today. It decided I didn't need to roll back the bucket at all, so I disconnected it. Backhoe number three with autoleveling controlled by the microprocesser between my ears, which is how I prefer it anyway.
Found that in addition to a really nice swing up back window, the bottom also removes completely, so that for trenching, you can have the back completely open. It stores beside you, and there's still lots of legroom when you spin the seat. Backhoe is full time 4 wheel drive, so working on pavement you leave a lot of rubber behind. And on turns with a full bucket, it clicks like a ratchet. I assume that is a driveline clutch of some kind. I need to find out.
Air conditioning works like a charm.
Machine is really well balanced. I can load it onto my deckover trailer with the dig bucket inside the cleanup bucket, and extend the stick all the way out and it still doesn't want to tip backwards. Also, I can dig very smoothly with the stabilizers and bucket in the air. I guess I put that down to light weight and smaller profile tires.(less bounce)
What else.... handles the big (way too big) 4 in 1 bucket just fine at up to about 6 feet. but then it doesn't want to lift any higher if its full. Not sure why that is, because I calculated it out before I bought it and it seemed like it should handle it with almost 1000 pounds to spare. I am going to check to relief pressure. The backend has lots of breakout and lots of power. I dug all morning through compacted native 6 inch minus, and it has no problem filling my 3 feet cleanup.
I guess thats it for now. So far so good. I am pretty happy with it. Oh, also, I put 10 hours on it today, about 6 with the front end, and it burned 6 gallons of diesel. I love that part!
