There was a thread on these a few weeks back with lots of opinions... none were good as I recall.

 

You happen to have a link? I didn't see anything in this forum. I know this is a tractor forum mostly, not for excavators but I don't know of an excavator forum 😁

 

https://www.greentractortalk.com/threads/kymron-excavator.230250/#replies

 

Thanks! I did see this thread but didn't know Kymron was one of the Chinese brands. Shows how much I know about excavators lol

 

20% off coupon
Free shipping
3yr warranty for $189

Pretty interesting that you can get a mini-ex from amazon.

 

It's like a captor giving their hostage a discount on their ration of daily gruel.

 

Do you get free delivery with Prime?

 

The posted screen shot says "Free Standard Shipping"...

 

On Anotger tractor forum someone bought one and did quite a bit of work to it for improvements. I think he’s happy with it for the cost but I think he’s a pretty good fabricator and mechanic.

 

Someone there summed it up well saying something to the extent that they're an excellent base for building your own machine if you have the skills. You can neither buy nor build your own reliable ex for $5k, but you can buy one of these and with a little more money and time you can turn them into little power houses.

There are a few owners over there, and it seems they did their homework prior to buying.

 

Thanks for the replies. They have some other models as well with (apparently) genuine Kubota and Perkins/CAT engines, so maybe parts (at least for the engine) wouldn't be a major issue. I'm handy and can do basic maintenance and repair, but not a welder or fabricator, so I might be better served getting a used big brand on FB marketplace/CL. Maybe it's just marketing but this particular brand definitely seems more polished/put together than your average Chinesium mill. Everything actually is pretty intelligible and not just randomly generated by AI or translated from Mandarin by Google.

Any other thoughts or links to guys that have these and have upgraded/repaired them themselves would be welcome!

 

As much as I would like and could use a mini-ex, I'll rent before buying one of those. My understanding is excavators in general take a fair amount of maintenance and I don't want to fight a non-existent supply line for something that should be a relatively simple fix.

I am watching CL and FB Marketplace but haven't pulled the trigger yet. Renting will give me a bit of a comparison on what a particular size machine can do as well as reminding me of my inexperience on one.