I joined a page on the chineez mini excavators just to see if there were any that were half decent at all...so far it seems like no...bad QC from top to bottom.
There’s a guy in town with one of those, brand new. Gasoline engine. I’ve looked at it, don’t look like it would even be worth much for scrap iron.
I watched a factory tour vid for one company. Those at least looked like reasonable clones of the toro units they are based on. I imagine for the rest you get what you pay for. There’s a guy in the toob called Metaspencer that has gotten a lot of use out of yet another one. So I guess I’d say verdict is still out in my mind. for mini ex I’d go with something from a reputable NA reseller like Kymron.
A mini excavator was for sale close to me. It was brand new and I was a little excited until I saw it was $4500.00 and figured I'd better keep driving. No possible way it could be good at that price.
Yep... had a Yardmax. Set it up to go on snow (sorta) by adding a belly skid plate up under the axles... made it "float" a little better in 12" snow. It had impressive load cap for a small rig, about 700 lbs. Going up hills with a heavy load was no sweat. (Going down, go in reverse to keep the load balanced. It would tip forward if you didn't.) All in all, a handy machine. I like the idea too of whipping up something similar rusty ranger 44 , using a snowblower or walk behind mower as the power... if traction wasn't an issue. I think it would work fine.
I have to disagree, engineered to do exactly what it was designed to do. Haul a little kid around, spin the wheels if he rams something so nothing breaks. Like most "bad" products today the product was fine as designed and some "smarter" person modified it to be better than the original engineers designed it to be and now it broke.
Was recently in the market for a powered dump cart. While browsing marketplace I saw someone made a tracked vehicle out of zero turn mower. There’s some merit to that idea LOL It’s was for my mom, 89 years old. The wheelbarrow she uses everyday is getting a bit much. I ended up buying one of these. Not the greatest unit by far but for mom at 89 I think it fit the bill. No gas engine, lower ground height, enough wheels not to tip over easily. Easy to operate. Don’t think it would handle long term firewood usage in the forest very well.
Had a concrete job yesterday, the contractor had 3 machines going at the start. They took the electric one out of the line up pretty quickly. It looked pretty useless to me. The green toro brand had a longer track frame which would seem important in off road situations. The red Allen branded buggy had a steel hopper, which seemed like it would be better for cold weather firewooding The electric one was red also and steel hopper, but tires and walk behind. The other two were tracks, gas engines, and ride on. I should have taken the time to get more and better pictures
