DIY service and maintenance for mini excavators

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Move your business in the right direction with the Next Generation Cat® Mini Excavators

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0:09 Hello everybody, I'm Simon Hill. I'm the product demonstrator, based at the Leicester facility. And today we're going to look at the ease of service features on the Next Generation Mini Excavators.

Service intervals. So it's 500 hours for your engine oil and filter, 400 hours for your fuel filter, and 500 hours for your hydraulic filter. Then we have up to 3,000 hours before the hydraulic fluid needs changing, and 6000 hours before the coolant will need changing.

Grease points on the machine: you'll see there's three here, the top one - 500 hours, that's the back of this swing cylinder. And then there's two more, a hundred hours each. They are for the inner and outer parts of the slew ring. You've then got your boom cylinder, stick cylinder, bucket cylinder and linkage. Recommended hours for those are every 10 hours or daily if in severe use.

On this side of the machine, you know,  she's got nice flat panels and they are easy to remove. This one comes off with three bolts. So if this gets damaged or needs replacing, or you need access to the other side, there's a fuel sender I think behind here, you can take this off. Now at the back here, this is a hinge door. This gives you access to the cooling plant and on windy days, there’s a little stay here, stop that flapping about, and now you’ve got access to your radiator. And down here, there's an inline filter and the mufflers at the bottom, wiring harness and your filler cap. So you can check the condition of your radiator course, sweep it out, get an airline in there and blow it out if you need to.

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Moving to the rear of the machine.

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Again, you've got the stay here. You’ve now got your coolant level indicator and expansion bottle, air filter, down here you’ve got your oil filter and dipstick to check the oil level. You've got your fuel filter with water separator and people ask what this little device is at the top. This is electronic fuel priming. So when you put your new filter on and put that on empty so no filling it out of jobs, putting contamination in there, you screw it on, turn the ignition on, and it will prime it full with fuel again. Inside here this is your hydraulic tank sight gauge.

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Now we move to the left-hand side of the machine for another hinged access panel. Three bolts need removing to get access to this. Again, you've got a stay, here we have the hydraulic tank with the hydraulic filler and in here is your hydraulic filter.

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This side of the machine again, left-hand side, little door here, hinge door. This is where we have the optional battery isolator key if you've chosen that on the machine, got your accumulator here, pressurised cylinder for your valve and here is your valve bank.

Now at the seat deck of the machine, remove this panel, two little turns you do on these plastic connectors. We now have the battery, so you've got your battery terminals for jumpstarting this machine or jumpstart a machine from this machine. The battery is easily accessed, you cannot remove the battery without lifting the cab up, so this stops opportunists from stealing batteries on sites or if the machine's left unattended on a job site. To get the battery and change it, you can undo the bolts underneath, lift the canopy or the cab and remove the battery that way, which we'll show you later.

To raise the cab or canopy, you first need to remove both of these corner panels, this side and the other side, using a 16 ml wrench.

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These corner panels just lift off, giving you access then to the other bolts that hold the cab down.

Now to raise the cab or canopy, there's two bolts on each side. It's 24 ml. I'm using a ring spanner on the top and a ratchet on the bottom.

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Once you've got them loose, you can spin them by hand.

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Yep, done that. They're safe.

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Now we've removed the bolts both sides, using the grab handle, raise it up, and you'll see a safety brace click in at the back. So this is now going to hold it up. At the front now there's another brace I'm going to connect.

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Yep, so this is supported both sides now.

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So now we've had full access to the valve, the hoses, the battery, you can remove the battery by taking the cradle away. You have your alternator down there. At the top you've got your oil fill but there is one round the other side of the engine which I will show you later. If in the unfortunate - you have an unfortunate accident with hoses - you need to replace the hose, undo it at this end and then you can pull it through, through the swing cast, disconnect here, replace the hose and rethread it through.

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I hope this video has been useful to you. Look out for more videos which we'll be doing with operator tips and more maintenance tips.