What a little ripper!

I had a tight access job booked for today. Knowing it would be reasonably soft under foot with all our recent rain, using the narrow access kit on my machine (K9-3Pro Perkins), would have meant sinking for sure. Not only that, there was on I/O down the side of the house that would have been right under a wheel track. I rang Rocklea branch looking to see who had a K9-2 to hire, but they volunteered the use of their R&D machine for me to try. They told me to take it and give it a hard time. Man did I have a chuckle to myself....I KNEW it was in for a REAL test out!    

This is what greeted the K9-2!    

Now I have to admit, even I doubted it's abilities to get through this, but the choice was K9-2 or shovel. Both of us were suprised by it's power. It's only pushing a 760mm bucket, but it was unbelieveable how easily it cut through this crap. This is the result after just 1-1/2hrs.

Now for the good bad and ugly.....For it's size, it's amazing what it can do. It was / is slow compared to my 9-3 (which is slow compared to a 9-4), but it's market aim is essentially toward the hire companies and amatuer (read : Weekend warriors) use markets, so it would fit in nicely there. For doing turf preps where continuous runs down the side of the house would be required, it's probably NOT ideal.
The machine I had ran awfully hot in the hydraulics! I understand that the production models have an oil cooler fitted to minimise this. Heatsoak after we had completed the dig out eventually caused an issue with the machine, but prior to this it performed flawlessly.
During the digout I would have liked a bit more "rollback" on the crowd ram. It didn't quite roll the bucket back far enough in my opinion. Having a 4in1 available probably would have nullified this, but with the standard bucket it was a bit of an issue.
Apart from those few small things I was very impressed with it. Another winner in the Dingo kennel!

Last edited by "The Guru" (2010-05-14 18:21:43)