2022 HITACHI ZAXIS 360HQ Crawler Excavator

I’ve been inspecting quite a few Hitachi excavators lately, and today another Hitachi ZAXIS 360HQ excavator arrived. Now I’m going to conduct a comprehensive and detailed inspection of it. Long reach ZAXIS 360HQ, still holding up pretty well as it’s still in Hitachi orange paint, which given the tracks, I assume to be light to medium use only. Figuring maybe 90-95% remains on the undercarriage pads, wear is fairly uniform between both sides indicating that the runner had not exerted excessive tight pivots (or load-prompted) during its running effort. Grabbed sprockets and gave them a shake ‘rollers spin free with no wobble’ also looked fine; no shark toothing so far. Tension is correct (not too loose or too tight) and chains are not sagging when machine is level.

Engine bay – couldn’t open it up completely as it was wrapped up to transport or store but had a good poke in the grilles and around the exhaust stack – no oil misting – no carbon crust – not indicative of blowby or valve problems.  The black sleeves are covers for the hydraulic lines on the boom and stick, but I couldn’t see the hoses and no dripping was seen under the machine, and no staining was seen on the gravel underneath on which the machine had been resting. Wait let me take another look at the photo… yes swing motor area is dry and main pump housing is clean, the only thing I could see from ground level were no wet areas or fresh leaks. Simply some dust and dirt in the typical areas. The seat is still in factory plastic and the seat bags are still tied over the joysticks, its odd for a machine which as supposedly been (worked!) but it appears as if this sat idle for a while or perhaps came off a lease return where they babyed the machine. Interesting – Interior has no grease smears on console, no hole in floor mat and all gauges behind the plastic are still in there. Somewhat cloudy during inspection – lighting conditions for monitor screen checks were not optimal, but from the outside I would expect that it is fine.It’s a standard size dirt bucket with bucket’s teeth about half worn down, pins appeared tight, and there was no sloppiness when they picked it up off the ground and shook it around a little bit. I didn’t see any cracks or weld repairs on this guy walking around back and there was no hassle with the company decals or serial numbers being stamped clear with Counterweight. Machine digs well. No play. Again, if it is really that low as the seller states, this car should be explored further and the entire start ‘n stop’ must be done, but from a “cold” walk-around this car looks pretty good and its price should be on par with it.