Caterpillar's purchase of Bucyrus

[L.Kezz]

Yeah, we will have to see, they'll have the black cabs and black cylinders, along with the crisp paintwork. But there just too much yellow and maybe cat won't touch or mess with anything on them, as they were that successful.

[Joes1989]

In all honesty.....in the future i really do think cat will start to tinker with them to try and get the little bit more productivity out of them! Im not the biggest fan of mining or cat but it would be a shame for cat to start playing around with the already great and proven product!

[IBH]

If my memory serves me well, CAT intially said they were going to retain the Bucyrus name on the companies 'legacy' products- i.e. cable excavators but have decided to badge them as CAT machines.
Only Unit Rig has escaped the poo-ee yellow spray can it seems (so far)

[Joes1989]

They have kept the names of the rope shovels.....theyve just put a 7 in front of it....eg, the old bucyrus 495HF is now the 7495HF....only time will tell what cat will do to the rest of them!

[SRB]

Seriously,

Cat need to tinker with them. Any one who has spent time with RH will tell you that O&K stands for oil and cracks, a change to cat hoses and seals will keep them dry, and maybe a dose of engineering will limit the cracks,, RH have always been a strong digger but that is there down side, they are heavy on the maintenance.

The cat 5000 series did not "fail" because of poor undercarriage or slew rings, they were too late in the Market and sold wrong, the 5130 is a RH90 size machine that should have been pitched at 50 - 70 tonne trucks, not sold as a direct competitor for the 120 and miss matched with 80 - 100 tonners.

Idle speculation and wild rumours really get my goat, I'm all for free speech but not when it's childish dribble.

Sorry off my soap box and back into my cave.

SB

[SRB]

The number designation makes a certain amount of sense.

60xx is the series and the last 2 digits are the weight class, ie:

6030, 6000 series and 300 ton, same weight class as pc3000.

6000 hydraulic shovel range
7000 rope shovel
8000 draglines


SB

[Jeremy Rowland]

Thanks Stu for enlightening us all on Cat nomenclature

Jeremy

[Gavin84w]

Seriously,

Cat need to tinker with them. Any one who has spent time with RH will tell you that O&K stands for oil and cracks, a change to cat hoses and seals will keep them dry, and maybe a dose of engineering will limit the cracks,, RH have always been a strong digger but that is there down side, they are heavy on the maintenance.

The cat 5000 series did not "fail" because of poor undercarriage or slew rings, they were too late in the Market and sold wrong, the 5130 is a RH90 size machine that should have been pitched at 50 - 70 tonne trucks, not sold as a direct competitor for the 120 and miss matched with 80 - 100 tonners.

Idle speculation and wild rumours really get my goat, I'm all for free speech but not when it's childish dribble.

Sorry off my soap box and back into my cave.

SB

Back you 100% there Stuart, a 5130 in Texas i think it was just retired with 115,000 hrs on it, must have been a heap of $hit to chalk those sort of hours up hey.

Reliability has as much to do with people and processes as it does about the iron itself, sure the 5000 series had shortcomings but so do all the rest of the large diggers, go try a PC5500 for some fun, David Brown farm tractor pumps on them, cylinders you have to shim the seal packings on.

Cat will more than tinker with those machines, the day of dual engines in machines up to 400 ton op weight is gone so i see the former 120 and 170 going single engine atleast otherwise they will get left behind in the fuel burn wars. Cat always said when they had dealers supporting O & K machines they would look at GET and hose on them, well guess why they would look at that? they are high usage items and turn $$ for there dealers. I even see a Cat cab making it,s way onto them to give them a bit of a new look so Cat,s VIMS can be integrated, Cat engines will be std right across the range. They are a great machine as is, best ever to work on with there layout but they need to be brought up to 2011 and beyond.

[Ian Fletcher1970]

Further to Stu's information here's the guide from Caterpillar regarding model No's. Personally I think the machines look impressive in Cat Yellow, particularly the draglines and rope shovels. Who will purchase the first Cat RH in the UK - Banks or UK Coal

Ian

[Mike d550]

I'm looking forward to seeing photos of the ex bucyrus machines in cat colours, i dont think the photoshopped images on the cat website do them justice.
I agree with SRB and Gavin84w about the 5000 series machines, when you browse through various forums and they all spout the same information about the 5130 being no good because of the slew ring problems, its always the same photo which is posted, how many machines went to work and never had a problem? The 5130 with 115,000 hrs on was the first machine in excavator configuration and has just been stood down after 15 yrs service. Its replacement is another 5130 with 65,000 hrs on the clock! From personal experience the only 5130B working in the UK (there was an article in earthmover magazine) the last time i was there had 17,000+ hrs on with no major issues and is still going strong.

I think it is obvious cat is going to tinker with the machines to some degree, if cat make a bolt or hose the same as on a bucyrus machine then it makes sense to use the cat one for standardisation throughout the range and to keep things as simple as possible for part numbers/ordering etc, wether they start changing the look of the machine is another thing but i like the look of the RH series machines and am surprised cat never bought O&K earlier as it was a big void in the cat lineup not having faceshovels to match their haulers!

Look at what Komatsu has done to the machines which were once Demag, gone are the existing numbers like the H185 and the paint scheme is now in line with other komatsu machines and minor design changes have been made to the cab etc, i'm not sure but i think all the engines are now komatsu? Cat will go down a similar route with bucyrus machines!

I am going to predict UK coal as the first UK owner of the new 120 sized cat machine.

Thats my 2 cents worth.

Mike D550

P.S cannot open the conversion chart PDF, anyone else having problems?