Excavators without tilt- rotators - Engcon

Don’t reinvent the wheel, as the saying
goes. Mats Lagerkvist (Matte to
his friends), is painfully aware of the
cost of ignoring this advice.
“Now I’ve gone back to using the
engcon EC 10, and everything’s running
smoothly again,” he says.
Matte started his own company, Mattes Entreprenad
AB, in the early 1990s. As a small
enterpriser, he has chosen to specialise, and in
recent years has worked almost full-time on
various water and sewerage projects for Täby
Municipality.
Last autumn, he decided to replace his five
year-old Huddig excavator loader with a permanently
mounted engcon tiltrotator. He
opted for a Huddig 1060 – but things quickly
went wrong.
“I wanted a permanently mounted engcon
EC10 on my new machine too, but just then
a different brand released a new model. It was
promoted as being narrower, lighter and more
manoeuvrable, and I was offered a discount
price. I let myself be persuaded,” recalls Matte.
But Matte remained deeply sceptical. He’d
tested the other tiltrotator on a demo machine,
and was far from impressed.
“So I bought it on the condition that I could
exchange it for an engcon tiltrotator if I wasn’t
satisfied,” says Matte.
Big problems
That proved a wise move. The new excavator
soon turned out to be trouble.
“It had poor capacity. Both the tilt and the
rotor were very weak. It often got stuck and
you had to start the operation again. What’s
more, the grab claws were much too flimsy,
and buckled even on normal impact.”
The dealer promised to fix the problems, for
instance by replacing the slew motor and pistons.
But the weeks passed by and nothing
happened.
“I couldn’t work properly,” says Matte.
“Things finally got impossible and I demanded
that they mount an engcon EC10 with a grab
cassette on my machine.”
This was duly done, and everything is now
back to normal. Who knows – was the other
tiltrotator defective, or were there other reasons
for the problems? Frankly, Matte isn’t interested
in finding out. Now he’s back to his
winning concept, and he’ll stick with his
engcon tiltrotator in future.
EC oil – soon
fully tested
We’re approaching the launch of the EC oil,
the new engcon quick hitch with automatic oil
coupling. The EC oil is currently being tested
intensively by various contractors.
“It works really well,” says Janne Ottosson at
Ottossons Åkeri AB, who’s got the EC oil
mounted on his Volvo EC140 with an EC15
tiltrotator.
Last autumn, Janne was given one of 20 prototypes
developed for testing purposes. During
the autumn and winter the machine has been
used for district heating installation and road
construction.
“We’ve worked it very hard, but it’s passed
with flying colours. It’s a great advantage being
able to quickly detach the tiltrotator, for example
when you’re digging in frozen ground
and need to attach a frozen earth hook.”
The EC oil works like a traditional adaptor
bracket: the operator hooks the front of the
adaptor into place as usual and then tilts the
hitch down into the locked position. After this,
the hydraulic lock is activated by a sturdy hydraulic
cylinder which pushes the tool into the
correct position, while automatically connecting
the hydraulics.
“The beauty of the EC oil lies in its simplicity,
price and flexibility,” says CEO Stig
Engström. He says that the hitch has a simpler
design than currently existing systems. What’s
more, customers can buy the hitch first and
then supplement it with the oil couplings at a
later point.
The EC oil is scheduled for release this
summer, when the models EC10 and EC15
with S45, 50 and 60 hitches will go on sale.
You can read more in the next issue of
Tilt & Rotate.
A profitable exchange
Matte Lagerkvist was persuaded to change his
engcon tiltrotator for a different brand. Things didn’t
work out, and now he’s back to his winning concept:
an excavator loader with an engcon EC10.
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