pretty sure I had a short play in one of those at a Mec day, Brumm/Solihul way a few years ago .... Adam
@APhillips will know - he was there demo-ing it ... very nice but the reverse dipper set up takes some getting your head around - limited travel compared to excavator set up ... amazingly powerful weapon for its size
I beleive the demo day you can to was an 11MWR, but concept is the same. The boom configuration definitely takes some time to get used to, once you've got your head around it they are amazingly capable, I used to put my little 7MWR in places I think most other wheeled machines would struggle and it would out lift a similar sized machine by a long way! If anyone ever wants to speak to me about Mecalacs I am more than happy to take a phone call and give you my thoughts on them.
It is tough to find a second hand one in the UK but there are a few out there working and some one decent hours now (5000+), I have a reasonable idea of where most of they are these days but unfortunately thats likely to diminish now that I have left Mecalac. They are still a machine I am very passionate about but until 'Mecalac' put some focus on the MCR and MWR in the uk they are going to struggle to sell many
On the note of Backhoes and the EW100:
Every 'normal' backhoe that I am aware of (with the exception of maybe Lannen & Huddig) runs on a torque converter and either synchro or power shift transmission, most of my experience (as expected) is with the Terex/Mecalac product which was a 4spd box and if it was the powershift version it had auto shifting between 2-3-4 when 4th was selected, which was quite nice on the road. They later added 'Direct Drive' to that transmission which essentially bypassed the torque converter to help the machine maintain speed on hills etc, and the difference was massive!
A Friend of mine had the Wacker UK EW100-2 demo machine out for a week not long ago, that machine is an all singing all dancing 100kw (135hp) version which, according to the GPS log he sent me happily sat at 40kph on the flat and on subtle down slopes hit 49kph before sending off an alert! Even on some of the hills he told me it was a stark contrast to his Liebherr 910, where the 910 would be doing 10 - 12kph the Wacker was 20kph +
Roading wise it seems they have hit the spot with that machine although it is significantly higher power than most machines of that size, as they tend to be around 80kw, I am very interested to see what the new Liebherr 909/911 manage with thier 80kw engne and 37kph transmission, for me the configuration of that machine with the side mounted boom is far better than the kingpost boom on the Wacker.
