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Homeowners buying old giant excavators?

Deere500a

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 4, 2012
Messages
822
Location
Castro Valley ca
6 or so hobby machine helping out fuel was always fun no body gives it a thought til low run & get a Jerry can I would walk away to see the cans lined up around the 1900
 

Nige

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 22, 2011
Messages
38,544
Location
G..G..G..Granville.........!! Fetch your cloth.
It's usable with no use for it. That's sad!
The other big problem with it is that it is fitted with a coal blade because it spent its entire life working in a power station (the last operating station in England as a matter of fact) pushing on the coal feed stockpile. So it’s pretty much a one trick pony.


Back in my uni days I used to drive right past that plant on a regular basis. It was almost new back then.
 

Nige

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 22, 2011
Messages
38,544
Location
G..G..G..Granville.........!! Fetch your cloth.
Nige Vme 280 made clean up around shovels can't put OEM u blade on it?
There's no mining left in the UK now so really no use for a machine of that size.

Apart from that it's so old that where would one find a U-blade for it anyway.? Certainly not here because I'm betting it was the only one ever imported into the country. I certainly don't ever recall seeing one until Nicky showed me this one in his yard a couple of years ago.

What also made me do a complete double-take was the fact that Ratcliffe had an all-Cat fleet of machines apart from this one. Why didn't they just buy an 834 or 844 and have done with it.?
 

nicky 68a

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 14, 2013
Messages
1,617
Location
england
The blade for it is lying in the undergrowth.As Nige said,the machine spent its last days rolling coal into stockpiles at a British power station and has no foreseable use anywhere in the world due to it not being a Cat.
Back in the day,the UK coal and power generation industry relied on large numbers of Terex,Michigan and Cat equipment for its material handling with Michigan/Clark or whatever being prominent in the big shovels up to 475 status.This is the only wheeled dozer I’ve seen on any UK stockpile with the mainstay being shovels,scrapers and dozers.
Terex were a big supplier of TS24/TS40 scrapers aswell as fleets of shovels in the 966/988 sort of size.
In more recent times,I’ve worked with quite a lot of Cat 637E/G coal scrapers,but not one is working here anymore and never will.
There have been a few 657E coal scrapers over the years and I’ve seen a couple up close,but the biggest fleet was 4 657G’s working at Drax power plant.I’ve no experience of those beasts and they’ve left the UK for good.
I’ve got some old pics of the Mich 475 along a fairly new Cat 992C somewhere that I’ll have to dig out.
 

nicky 68a

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 14, 2013
Messages
1,617
Location
england
There's no mining left in the UK now so really no use for a machine of that size.

Apart from that it's so old that where would one find a U-blade for it anyway.? Certainly not here because I'm betting it was the only one ever imported into the country. I certainly don't ever recall seeing one until Nicky showed me this one in his yard a couple of years ago.

What also made me do a complete double-take was the fact that Ratcliffe had an all-Cat fleet of machines apart from this one. Why didn't they just buy an 834 or 844 and have done with it.?
I think the Mich was at Ratcliff from the days they ran Terex and Mich kit on the job.
When Cat took over,the Mich was kept very well maintained and worked up to around 2018 I believe.
 
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