I Bought an 80,000 lb Excavator for ONLY $7,500! What Could Possibly go Wrong

A big excavator, and it was cheap too. Why is it that these large excavators sell so cheaply at auction? My name is Waldo and I'm about to find out. I'm here at the auction yard where I just purchased this, a 1986 Liebherr R942HD for a modest sum of only $7,500 US dollars. In comparison, a brand new Caterpillar 336 has similar specs to this machine, but the cat will set you back around half a million dollars. Now, of course, this machine is a bit old and worn out. The bucket has seen better days, some of the glass is missing, and it lacks the creature comforts of a newer machine. Despite that, this machine supposedly runs and operates, and it is capable of getting some serious work done. The engine is an air-cooled Deutz six-cylinder diesel. These things are ridiculously simple, reliable, and easy to fix. Let's put it to the test and see if we can get this thing running. There's a start button back here. I don't think that came from the factory like this, but switch the battery on and... Okay, I mean it clicks, but I think these batteries are pretty low, so luckily I bought some replacements. The machine uses two 12-volt batteries wired in series for a 24-volt electrical system. All right, I got the new batteries installed. They're obviously not the right kind, but hopefully they will do. These are the right ones. They're big, heavy, and probably expensive. I'll charge them up when I get home, and then I'll break out the battery tester so that I can see if they're any good. Battery on. Here we go. It seems to spin over really easily. Eventually, the auction yard employees came over, and they helped me figure it out. Well, apparently this lever back here is the fuel shutoff, and that was my problem. I'm looking at all the little icons in here trying to figure out what they do, and I was having a little bit of a hard time figuring it out. Now that I know it runs, I need to make sure it operates so I can drive it onto a semi-trailer for transportation. Yeah, it works. Got the bucket curl. There we go. Nice. We got the dipper. That works. And then this should rotate the cab. All right. Now, I should note, the engine is only at about half throttle, and I'm also using the controls gingerly, so that's why the machine is moving slowly. All right. It works backwards and forwards as well. As my semi approaches, this brings me to the next reason why these large excavators are so cheap. To put it simply, they're difficult and expensive to transport due to their size and weight. For example, this excavator is 11 feet wide, which, at least in my state of New Hampshire, requires a special wide load permit every time the machine is transported. I estimate the weight of this machine to be about 80,000 pounds, which happens to be the maximum legal weight of a semi-truck. Once you factor in the weight of the semi itself, the combination is over 120,000 pounds, which, once again, requires an overweight permit. Larger excavation companies do often have large machines like this. However, large excavation companies also have the financial resources to purchase newer equipment. So I come back to the question, why are these machines so cheap? Because there simply aren't many people who want them. For me, on the other hand, this machine is perfect, because once I transport it to my property, I'll never have to transport it again until I sell it. Well, we got it home successfully, and look at the size of this thing. You can really see how enormous it is. Now, the reason why I purchased a machine this large, other than the fact that they are inexpensive, is because I live in New Hampshire, the Granite State, and my property has a ton of really big rocks on it. And this thing is going to help me move some of them. Now, I want to get to that later on in this video, but first, I want to go through this thing and make sure it is in good shape before I give it a bit of a workout. The first task is an oil change, and I think the oil pan will be accessible once I open this hinged panel. Oh, that is a lot of nasty crap under there. All right, so take a look in here. We got easy access to the oil pan. We have two fuel filters right there. They're wicks. And then up there is the oil filter itself. So this thing has five gallons of oil. I have a five-gallon bucket here, and I wonder how much of a mess this is going to make. Loose. Well, that's not much of a mess. What's going on here? Is this thing so sludgy that there's no oil coming out? That would be really bad. There is another hex thing up here that I could put my wrench on, so maybe there's like a valve in there. I don't know. Let's find out. Oh, there we go. Yeah, oh my... Whoa, what a mess. That is unbelievable. This is going to get heavy fast too. Jesus. Oh my goodness. This is the messiest oil change I have ever done. I am soaked in oil right now. These are my hands. You should see my legs. Holy moly. Yeah, so it looks like this thing does have a valve in it. I'm not sure how it works, but I don't know. Let me know down in the comments if any of you know what the deal is with this thing. I think I can probably use that valve next time to not make such a mess. Let's see, this is a German excavator, so I guess I use Gudentite as the torque spec on that. This has the potential to make such a big mess. It's a really large filter and it's full of oil. There it is. Oh yeah. The new filter is also a Wix, just like the one that came off of it, and I'm very much going to pre-fill this. This filter probably takes a good half gallon of oil. It's unbelievable how big it is. Yeah, I'm just using Shell Rotella T4 15W40. That looks pretty good to me. I don't see any leaks, so it looks like we're in good shape. Grabbed a little oil sample here to send into the lab just out of curiosity to see what they have to say about the condition of this oil. I'll tell you about the results in part two of this series because they won't be ready by the time this video is uploaded. These Deutz air-cooled engines use a fan to cool the engine by blowing air over the fins on the cylinders and the cylinder heads. These fins can become dirty over time, and so it's important to clean them for optimal cooling performance. Let's take a look and see if they're dirty on this engine. There definitely is some gunk built up on the fins in certain places. The oil cooler is also important for keeping the engine cool, and it's very dirty. I'm gonna see if I can clean these fins off with a little brush. While I had the air duct cover off, I found the engine model number, BF6L913C. Each one of these numbers and letters has a meaning. It's a turbocharged, high-speed compact engine with six cylinders. It's air-cooled, the engine family is 913, and it also has a charge air cooler. This is the high output version with 170 horsepower. I also found a plate that says the engine was rebuilt in 2005. That's not surprising since the engine runs so well. So this thing right here looks like it's the throttle, which is broken off unfortunately. I would really like to have access to the throttle so I have full power, which is going to be really helpful for moving rocks. So I guess we'll see if I can take this apart and fix it. It might be seized, which could explain why it was broken off. All right, so here's the broken lever. This looks like it's an aluminum casting, and I don't know if it's going to be easily weldable, but I am going to try to TIG weld it. Well, the good news is that it looks like it is welding well so far. Right there, I backed my foot off the pedal too much, which is why the weld looks too cold. I obviously could use some practice to improve my TIG welding skills, but look at this. The results speak for themselves. It works. Look what just showed up. The air filter and one of the fuel filters that I ordered. So let's do these next. I always like to check these water separators to see what is in there. Yeah, it looks like fuel, but there is a lot of dirty crap in there. It's definitely time to change this filter. Yeah, I'll change this other fuel filter when that comes in, but it was a little bit harder to find than this one. Man, it's a huge air filter. Mowing my lawn can be a little bit tedious, if you'll pardon the pun. I have a ton of rocks to mow around, and I'm trying to decide which one to dig out with the excavator. Funny enough, you can see my backhoe over there, where it developed a hydraulic leak attempting to dig out a rock that ended up being quite a bit bigger than expected. All right, let's get this thing going. All right, let's see if the throttle works now. Oh yeah, it does. That's excellent. Let it warm up at partial throttle. While the machine is warming up, I'm kind of thinking about trying it out on this rock right here. Now, I have no idea how big this thing actually is. There's only a little bit sticking out, but I suspect it could be very large, kind of like an iceberg where only the tip is above the surface, but underneath the surface, there could be this massive boulder, but we're going to find out. Let's start by prying at this rock, and we'll see if it moves. Nope, it's a big one. By the way, I've never operated an excavator before, so bear with me as I learn. They say it takes a significant amount of practice to be able to operate the controls smoothly. Since the rock is so large, the strategy is now to dig around it and see if I can break it loose. Well, the excavator is able to move the rock, but I'm going to dig the hole deeper, push it back in, and then bury it. Well, this didn't work too badly, huh? A little bit of work with a rake, smooth out this dirt, remove some of these smaller rocks by hand, throw down some grass seed, and this is going to be back to lawn in no time. Well, it has been a really long and hot day working on this thing, and I am completely filthy. However, it was pretty successful because the boulder that was here is now far enough under the surface that it should no longer be an issue, and I don't have anything to mow around, so I'm very excited about that. In the future for this machine, I can definitely see myself replacing these teeth. That'll be a pretty good opportunity to do some stick welding on the channel. I may need to repack the hydraulic cylinder for the bucket because I think it does have an internal leak. I was also thinking that this machine could use a paint job if I can find someone with a hot water pressure washer to come down here and spray all of the grease and stuff off of it. A quick and easy paint job on this would make it look pretty darn good. I typically give all of my vehicles and equipment names, and this is certainly no exception. Because it is a German excavator, I was thinking about giving it an old-fashioned German name, something that a non-German person would think is a stereotypical German name. I had a few names in mind like Hans, Gunther, Wilhelm, and Otto, and I would love to hear what you guys think about that, so do leave me a comment down below and let me know which name you prefer. I'd like to thank you so much for watching, and we will see you in the next video.