A couple weeks ago I answered an ad on FB for a cheap diesel screw compressor. It was a big electrical contractor cleaning out their yard. I bought the compressor and the yard manager asked if I was interested in a partially disassembled excavator sitting in the row of shame. He said they'd had it sold a year or so before, but the guy that came to get it didn't have clue and spent two days unhooking hydraulic lines trying to get it freewheeling to move. I guess he just blew away after that. I said I might be interested if it was cheap enough and he said he'd find out what the boss wanted. He text me on my way home with the compressor and the price was plenty low enough to buy it very safely even sight unseen.
The next day I rented a 14k tilt trailer and headed back over. It was an under 5 minute task to get it rolling. All that is needed is to pull the final drive covers and take the center drive shaft/gear out so the motor brake isn't holding things locked. After that it was a miserable hour of cranking a comealong in the rain to drag it up on the trailer. Had to dodge the DOT jump scales they had set up a mile away on my way home, but made unscathed otherwise.
Once home and unloaded (a lot easier with gravity helping), I needed to see it run. It had been sitting without a fuel cap for who knows how long, so I plumbed to jug of fresh fuel. I jumped the electric fuel pump and shutdown solenoid. The little kubota diesel is really shoehorned in there, and I didn't see a way to crack injector lines without pulling the returns and glow plug buss, so I just cranked the ever loving schit out of it in 30 second sessions for a couple hours. It finally popped off and ran like a top to my surprise. The only issue I could find was rubbed wire under the floorplate keeping from powering the lift pump.
Dumped 10 gal of hyd fluid in it and started bolting pieces back on. It's got 6k hours and the operators must have been allergic to grease meaning she's sloppy in the pins. Nothing mechanical seems broken and the hydraulic functionality is all there. I'm not sure what I plan to do with it. I have so little in it, I might as well keep it around to play with.
