Information on Japanese earthmoving machinery "Mitsubishi"

[trombeur]

Information on Japanese earthmoving machinery "Mitsubishi"
Hi, what do you think of Mitsubishi earthmoving machines, what is their performance and reputation? I don't think they are built anymore. Thanks for any news.

https://www.earthmoversmagazine.co.uk/digger-man/view,mitsubishi-and-more-excavator-memories_263.htm

 

[Tones]

Was never a fan of Mitsubishi excavators, Hitachi or Komatsu could blow the door handles off em. At that time Hitachi had 96% of the hydraulic excavator market in NZ and Mitzis like Caterpillar were an oddball machine. The E series Cat excavators were a Mitsubishi with a cat engine and had a poor reputation in Australia with a reputation of burning a lot of fuel for very little result and bending booms.
The little Mitsubishi dozer on the other hand was an excellent gadget until Komatsu came out with their own version.

 

[Welder Dave]

Caterpillar and Mitsubishi have had a joint venture in Japan for decades. Most of the smaller(Cat) track equipment is built by Caterpillar Misibushi. Mitsubishi had a few of their own machines like dozers smaller than a D3 and some excavators. The EL series Cat excavators were rebadged Mitsubishi and not very well regarded. You rarely see them.

 

[Tones]

Caterpillar and Mitsubishi have had a joint venture in Japan for decades. Most of the smaller(Cat) track equipment is built by Caterpillar Misibushi. Mitsubishi had a few of their own machines like dozers smaller than a D3 and some excavators. The EL series Cat excavators were rebadged Mitsubishi and not very well regarded. You rarely see them.

Every time you pick up a paper clip you see part of one,about the best thing that happened to them

 

[Welder Dave]

Cat's black period.

 

[trombeur]

Mitsubishi MS 280 excavator is most big?

Mitsubishi MS580 which is powered by a cat 3406c and weighs in at around 155k pounds. Back in the day Mitsubishi and Caterpillar had a partnership that included marketing a line of excavators at the same time the 2 series machines where in production. The largest machine offered in this line was the e650 which took many of the design attributes from the ms580.

mitsubishi ms1600 excavator​

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[John C.]

Mitsubishi machines in my area of the US only came in through the gray market from Japan mainly and the rest of Asia later on in the nineties. They weren't bad machines back then but you couldn't find manufacturer specific parts for them. The changed names to MDI and were sold by a couple of dealers on the west coast and some were turned into logging machines. I have been told that in that time the MDI machines were incorporated into the Kobelco line of machines. I know they were sold by the same dealers. The Kobelco line took over a lot of that segment of the market in the logging industry.

The joint partnership with Caterpillar came to be in the late nineties or early two thousands. Those were all sold as A model machines which began with the letter E as in E240 or E650. Those were for the most part all gray market machines on the west coast of the US. When they started to be imported new into the US markets the model designations changed to EL series. There were a few E series machines that were sold new through Cat dealers but since Cat was still selling their 200 series excavators at the time, the dealers did not promote those models. A few years after the joint partnership Caterpillar quit making the 200 series and started the new venture as Shin Caterpillar. That part of the MDI story disappeared completely. The EL series Cats were at least a generation behind Hitachi and Komatsu in hydraulic and electrical controls. The electrical parts were a big issue at the time as even the dealers hadn't gone through the learning curves of troubleshooting and repairing them.

I only worked on a few of MDI machines mainly because I was one of a few who would. I found them to be nearly the same as a Kobelco. Cummins engines and Kawasaki pumps and nearly the same hydraulic systems and electronics. The other problem was the owners of the machines generally bought them because they couldn't afford anything else and weren't necessarily the best at running a business. Basically you were never sure that they were going to pay their bills and many were just jerks and A holes to deal with.

 

[BC Placer gold]

Thanks for that history…interesting.

 

[Tones]

That's interesting @John C. The E series arrived in Australia in the early 90s and were sold through the Cat dealerships. The labels of the joint venture manufacturer was Shin Mitzui Caterpillar Japan.

 

[John C.]

I remembered some more of that story. Too much stuff is dropping into the archive files in my head now days. Thanks for jogging some more memory cells loose. The Shin Mitzui Caterpillar and the time frame makes perfect sense.
The MDI part of that story was actually Mitsubishi and MDI Yutani. I was told that in those days both the Mitsubishi and the Kobelco units were made by Kobe Steel and that was the connection on those two machines. The Mitsu units all had Mitsubishi engines in them and as I recall so did the early Kobelco units. I don't recall when the Kobelco machines got the Cummins engines but I think it was before the MDI machines disappeared. I did get into the bottom ends of a couple of inline six Mitsu diesel engines and I thought they were pretty impressive at that time. Four bolt main bearings, lots of meat in the block webs and the main bearings seemed a lot wider than the engines built in the US in that time frame. I had an E650 in my customer base for some time that had the Mitsu engine in it. There wasn't anything left to rebuild when it finally died. There were no parts for it anyway so the owner had it pulled and installed a Cummins big cam truck engine in the machine and only had moderate success with it for a couple of years. It's now parked on top of a ridge with berry briars as thick as my forearms growing over the top of the machine.