RC4WD Excavator

[Straywolf]

Went and looked at the site i saw they now have a pic of the lowboy done in black but still no video of the excavator yet, i really wanna see a new video of it in action.

[trucker n]

video is up but the operator sucks and nothing showing digging in the dirt to see the power

[Straywolf]

I clicked on the link but it wont let me see it it sasys this video is private

[Trucker Al]

Here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBy2Y...layer_embedded

Works for me..


Alan

[pigeonfarmboy]

Almost looks too light the way it's lifting? Guess that's what happens when you try to dig with the flat part of the back bucket....

[9W Monighan]

When is somebody going to just buy one and test it so everybody can stop speculating????

[Papy]

A friend of mine ordered one last week.....now, I can't say if this was just before or just after they ran out of stock

[kyleandtavion]

Video is up sweet... Operator looked a little rough in his abilities lol

[FreddyGearDrive]

I'm no expert,but,looks like a real light built model. It takes nothing to get a half or quarter bucket full of pee gravel.with a better built machine you can grab a full bucket of stone & not phase the pump,or move the machine around.
It looks like it would never cut the mustard in a dirt dig situation.
But then again,you can buy two or three of them for the price of one good one.
Guess the feed back will be filtering in soon.
Some pics of the guts,mil per min,bar & weight would be a nice thing to know before spending $2700.
Just my .02.
FGD

[rc_farmer]

Being the responsible company RC4WD is, I'm sure they are brainstorming on how they can send a representative out to the Indy show to demostrate their fine product. I know they want to satisify all the questions about this model and I am sure they would receive the appropiate feedback from hands-on operators. I really believe this......

[Lil Giants]

Are you that representive Rob?

I know that two were sold in the USA... though they didn't mention who.

I think the inquisitive info everyone is seeking will surface here shortly.

[Papy]

Is it me or there is another 100$ more on the price ????......people interested should order it fast

[Straywolf]

Originally Posted by Papy

Is it me or there is another 100$ more on the price ????......people interested should order it fast

You are correct last night it was $2,399.99 i wonder if shipping went up also? At this rate i will never be able to save up for one guess i can build one out of tinker toys

[Lil Giants]

Seeings how so many of you would rather speculate than take a chance on trying something new, a couple wks ago I snapped up the last HK hoe presently available.

It arrived Friday in less than perfect condition... it was well package, no structural damage from the trip overseas... it says on rc4wd's site "that product has been tested prior to shipping"... well that's great I guess, except that person responsible forgot to close the vent on the hyd tank ---> model soaked in oil!














Here's a couple of videos I made this morning... listen to how the brushless pump motor sounds & compare that to 850 on my other vids.

In the basement with the lights on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8eyMILf-UU

Outside on the pile http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6c2ZIpgOqE


















I've got a few issues to work out, like the hyd pump seems to be straining
awfully hard...

I got it Friday, noticed on the outside of the looked like an oil stain. I'm now
wondering if the brushless motor is somehow affected with possibly being
soaked up with oil? And what pray tell may have the oil contamination done
to the rest of the electronics?

I sent rc4wd a mail about it Friday and pointed out in the videos I sent
today that the brushless motor is not sounding or seemingly operating
properly... guess I'll wait to see what they say.

1st impressions, despite the pump motor trouble; it's a nice sized model
with pretty good ability to move earth effectly. It's right in the middle
between Stahl's 922 & Vario's 850 size wise. Only time will tell of what its durability factor is?

[Espeefan]

Joe, I'm a bit surprised you bought one of these. I guess someone had to figure out if it was worth the money. Kind of neat that you have three different sized machines now, and interesting that it is a little larger then then the Stahl.

On that brushless motor sounding weak, or slow, it sure acts like it's short on power, especially on your outdoor video. Seems the cycle times of the cylinders is really slow on that one too. The indoor video, not so much, but in both cases, one can certainly hear the motor lug down when the hydraulic oil is going over the relief valve. I see a really thin wire coming out the back of the mode, on the outdoor video. Can't be an external power supply wire, could it? It looks to small. Antenna wire? On your basement video, I seem to hear the motor getting slower and slower, as the video progresses. Just curious if the battery was going dead? I never saw the lights dim....

It looks like it's capable, but sounds horrible, and weak. Not a bad looking model model though. The detail is pretty reasonable and it looks scale, though I don't know what machine it's based off of.

[CustomRCmodels]

Hello Joe ,
Why I am not surprised that you are the first one of us here having one of these , ha .

I haven’t messed with model-hydraulics ( not yet ! ) ,
but that weird loud noise , besides that it seams like that the pump is working hard ,
is probably a result of to much play in the internal components of the motor and pump .
Precision is what costs money , therefore I am assuming they used relative large tolerances in manufacturing of these pumps .
To tide tolerances would make it sees up after a while , to large tolerance just make everything more loose , therefore more noise .
That would be my guess on that .

As for damage via the leaked out oil to the electronics , oil is an electrical insulator ,
therefore I doubt that you did get any damage out of that ,
except of the chemistry of that particular hydraulic oil.
I came across some ball-bearings from China which had a grease-filling which eat up plastic ! You may could see over time that some plastics or rubber get damaged ,
which again I doubt , since hydraulic components hold all kind a seals and such made out of plastics and rubber , would be kind a dumb having a hydraulic-oil with such damaging ingredients ?!

[doodlebug]

Hey Joe, after playing with an esc, for pump control on the 850, would that help the HK excavator out any? As for the outdoor video with the cable, I'm wondering if voltage drop throught the cable made it sound slow? Thank's for sharing!
Later, Neil#2 aka doodlebug.

[Papy]

I know Leimbach recommanded to run new pumps without pressure and on low RPM for some hours, increasing step by step up to the nominal, and then change oil before using them at full power.

The purpose was to allow the gears and casing to self-adjust together gently (sorry, can't find the english translation of the exact word we use in french for that operation...).....

[Lil Giants]

Yeah well, I was curious too to see what this new model on the market was like and an excavator is my favorite model to operate.

In the basement vid I had a 4amp NiMH pack in it. It was fully charged when I started and after loading that trk twice it was dead! The vid is the 2nd load. Much too fast of a kill rate. The 850, that pack will last about 25 mins of tough digging.

Outside vid, it was really cool temp this morning, model sat out there about twenty minutes before I started using it... can't see the oil thicking up that much in that short of time. The cord hanging out the back goes to a car battery, it's 18guage wire, I've used this small guage wire for yrs with the stahl hoe & it worked fine for the 850 as well. I checked the batt voltage, it was about 12.3v, a little low.

Tonite however, I made a new power cord from 14guage wire and that has seem to help, but the wire still getting warm after ten minutes or so of the pump running continuous thru the relief valve.

This brushless motor is about the same size as my 850, but the plumbing is the same size as the Stahl... might be too much motor for this hyd system.

I see in the radio settings that the EPA for the pump is set @23%. I tried turning it up and the motor stops increasing in rpm @35%, the 18ga power cord would get almost too hot to the touch within mins! Even now with the 14ga power cord, the wires get quite warm, but not hot.

I've left the EPA setting at 24%. and the 14ga has only a little bit of warmth to it.

Neil, I've been monkeying with the P-Mix settings in the tx, but I can't get it to work... don't know what's wrong there. It's a bit different than the DX8, as in a couple extra settings: offset, uprate, downrate. I've tried changing these values one way and the other to no avail. And the manual (translated from chinese) doesn't offer any insight as to what these values will do.

I guess if oil were a bad thing, something would blown up by now, eh Willy? Thanx for the insight.

Although, I've had leaky Leimbach pumps seeping oil into the electric brushed motor which causes it to labor for a short time till the oil burns out of it.

Papy, I did not know Leimbach had this recommendation for "break-in" (probably the word you're looking for?). But I did use a 7.2v batt during 1st time start up to fill the Leimbach hyd system to keep the oil foaming/air bubbles to a minimum while cycling the cylinders.

As I sit here typing/thinking about my pump motor problems, I'm thinking maybe this brushless motor is just a little too big for this hyd system. Back off the EPA to 22%, maybe decrease the relief psi a bit... more experimenting to do to get it to run efficeintly without killing packs so fast or cooking the power cord from a car battery.

[SmallHaul]

Joe, I applaud you for taking a chance on this purchase! You have so much experience with hydraulic construction equipment that I believe you made an educated guess from the photos and info that the gamble wasn't too big.
It seems to run quite well. The very high pitched sound to the motor/pump concerns me the most. It could either be a bad bearing or the magnets in the brushless motor are touching the armature.