Chinese Mini Excavator - 1 Year On

[Music] hi we're Ian and Julie follow us on our tiny Homestead and our debt-free project of a lifetime the building of our shipping container home here in the Pyrenees and all of this alongside our full-time jobs [Music] hi welcome back to the channel my name's Ian and this is a bit of a different video to our normal series which is the the garage Workshop project but we have had this little machine now for over one year so 14 months it came at the end of February last year 2022 and I just wanted a quick update on how it's been going we did the unboxing video which basically just flew through the roof on YouTube with nearly 1.8 million subscribers and that means I've had a lot of comments and a lot of contact from people who wish to buy or wish to know my feelings about this machine and whether I do it again [Music] thank you along with the unboxing video we did how to buy one of these machines off the site Alibaba and also then the testing and the daily use of this machine so there's a small series and I'll put the link to that playlist down in the description below but because it's had so many views probably two million views no probably a bit more than that 2.4 million views over all the playlists we've had a lot of comments a lot of them aren't very nice as you can imagine buying that Chinese trash it'll break oh my God you know and uh well a lot of them are going to say in one year's time I Told You So as it disintegrated into the ground well this video is to explain how it's got on not all great but it's not in the ground it is still here this is uh part two of our mini Digger Series where we purchased uh this mini Digger in China and I have been waiting for a long long time is the unboxing of our one ton mini Digger so wow one of the biggest comments I got is how much how much was it and I must admit in the unboxing video I didn't say how much it was because I went through all of those details in the buying from Alibaba video but I'm going to go through a quick cost of the machine the machine itself totally nude but with the accessories um I asked for was four thousand five hundred dollars now this is February no not February December 2021 it was on the boat just at the end of 2021 and as I said I received it February 2022. the accessories I got were the 80 centimeter grading bucket a 20 centimeter trenching bucket and the auger and I did a complete video on the auger when I fitted it it came standard with the 40 centimeter trenching bucket so I didn't get a huge amount of accessories because the whole point of this project was by a cheap machine get as cheap as possible with the implements that I required at the time on top of that four and a half thousand dollars the supplier charged five hundred dollars shipping now that included putting onto the boat the insurance and the shipment to my destination port my destination port in this case was Marseille that was all included in the 500 shipping charge the hidden charges that you never hear about basically the cost of it on buying it on Alibaba um I put down a 20 deposit I think something like that that cost me 70 euros in credit card fees and then when I paid the balance that was another 70 or nearly 80 Euros in credit card fees so straight away that's another 150 Euro I have bought synths from the same supplier and I went direct to them and just sent them a bank transfer because I trusted them I know I got the equipment so there's no worries I wouldn't I wouldn't advise sending Bank transfers to people you don't know unless you can get advice from somebody who's bought from them the shipping fee does not include any of the arrival charges which are called Freight forwarding and Customs so basically craning it off that ship taking it out of the container on a pallet truck storage put it into the warehouse sending off the forms to the Customs writing out a name tag any little cost they can find they will add on now that added for this machine 900 euros a fee that I had in my head but I I had no clue when I bought it it was going to be that much on top of that you have the vat the value-added tax or the state tax or country tax now here in France it is 20 of the machine and the uh the shipping so basically the commercial invoice you get which is basically in my case 5 000 20 of that so that was another thousand Euro so in total the whole machine costs 7 000 Euro just over that and um I went down to the port with my truck and my trailer and picked it up from the port so Chuck in another 120 euros of diesel fuel and tolls so it's about 7 200 maximum this machine cost from order all the way back to my house in the French Pyrenees here so they're all the costs [Music] foreign biggest question was where am I going to find spares this machine's made in China oh you'll never find spares for it come on where are the most of the things you buy off Amazon come from it's China so the supplier is still there they're doing very well I've bought from them since I've got some spares not spares I'll tell you about that in a minute coming from China now um in the crate of somebody else who bought um one of the remote remote controlled lawn mowers so I asked if I could put slip in that spare part into that box because they're just down the road from us and they've come and visited us on site to check out this mini Digger and the remote control mower I'll put a link in the description to the radio radio controlled mower because again that's another great bit of kit but other than that the spares are pretty standard so the hoses I got from a local supplier all the bolts and grease nipples zerk fittings as most people call them you can buy anywhere the tracks probably I'd have to buy from them but they take a week with my radio I can't say it with my radio-controlled lawnmower I accidentally dropped the remote control and the Machine went over it wasn't my greatest day but within a week I had a new remote control and they actually covered all the costs for that it doesn't take long at all it is just like ordering off Amazon so I'm not worried about spares and if you look after the machine that that little motor is going to last I must say all my experiences is a DIY self-billed person I am not a company I'm not a business I do not run this every day on work sites I I've used it a lot I mean there's nearly 40 40 hours on it in 10 months of real usage which isn't probably a lot but um I don't use it every single day so what I wanted it for was to build my garage my workshop and my house and then odd jobs around my site so and that's what it what it's doing and it's doing it perfectly another big question and it comes from one channel I'll put a link to his channel in the description uh digit stands he's a well-known Digger guy um from little baby diggers all the way up to the the big stuff but he bought as an experiment a Chinese mini Digger and put it through its Paces now he noticed on his Chinese mini Digger that the teeth weren't the same way as his other diggers and he swapped them round and of course as soon as that video went out I got another barrage of comments saying your teeth are the wrong way around oh the teeth it's not going to work the teeth are the wrong way around well as you can see in this little clip I went ahead and changed those teeth around when I was digging the foundations for the garage I tried him one way tried him another tried him back again and but basically put them back into the original position these buckets were designed for the teeth to be that way round it didn't scrape very well with the ones that I assume known Brown branded diggers have so I'm going to leave them as they came but check out digit starnes's um Channel you know there's a lot of good information on there and he did also an after um video on that mini digger he bought another really pleasing comment I got all the time and this was most of them me driving off the trailer um when I bought this thing you can't operate that oh my God he's gonna kill himself oh look at him blooming amateur more money than sense yeah there's not more money than sense it was the cheapest option I could buy and basically when I took it off that crate that was the first time I'd driven anything like this but um this was the first time I took it off and I made a little ramp everybody laughed at that but that little ramp was to protect the lights on the bottom of my trailer so I didn't want this um jerking off the bottom of the trailer and breaking any of the lights so it's more for that I know this can go anywhere up to a point but as you can see over the sort of past six seven months I've got used to the machine um I can drive it I still have mine fog sometimes and think if I move this lever is it going to go that way or that way but if you're gentle with it you'll know where it's going but also I think everybody should learn on one of these machines as I said I haven't tested out many of the large machines but this thing is so unstable it's very skinny very small very light and the controls are quite jerky and that's because it's got a very small hydraulic pump but any slope you can feel it you know it's got no stability the tracks are very skinny and that's probably one of the things I my advice would be to get the extended tracks the ones that pull out and give it an extra sort of bed to sit on but they are very unstable so you have to be wary all the time another one of the comments was it didn't come with a seat belt you should wear a seat belt because I said if I uh if it rolls over I'm going to make a jump for it of course I'm not going to make a jump for it I've fitted the seat belt and you do feel a lot more secure with that seat belt when you're going over undulating ground so I hope that you can see in the video clips that I'm showing now that um I have got a lot better and I feel a lot more confident I can jump on this get out there and start digging but um yeah thanks for all those encouraging comments right at the beginning they were yeah they were fun one thing like you can see in this clip I came on site thinking I could basically Terrace they call it in French terrorismo the whole of this land it's a big slope it's sloped down from the top down two meters so that's probably what seven or eight foot I thought with this little machine I could come here with my digging bucket my trenching bucket and my grading bucket and basically dig all that out in a week or so and I gave it a good go I even went out and bought for my Kubota a grading blade for the back just to get rid of the soil this was one take away from this video that I must give you and that is know your capabilities with this machine it can't do everything do what the homeowner the diyer the self Builder wants but for the initial groundworks I bit the bullet got a local guy in with his I think it was a 15 Tonner he came in and within one hour had basically stripped the site got it totally level put the soil where I wanted it which was a lot more than I thought it was going to be and it cost me nothing well it cost me 500 euros actually but I thought it would be about two or three day job after using this he did it in about an hour perfect job and it wasn't worth the risk of destroying this machine doing so much work when I needed it for other things so know the capabilities of the this machine it is for smaller jobs so we've got to do the same again for when we build the house so I'm just going to get the guy back scrape away probably a meter off the top this time and position the the soil where we want it and with his blade he's a self-leveling blade this one isn't you have to level it as you go and because it as I said it is so unstable when it tilts down it'll dig in and it'll come up over that lump it's not the greatest thing for grading out it'll do majority of the stuff but not when you want it down to to you know a couple of inches a couple of centimeters of Tolerance so the things I probably would have bought for this machine is the thumb attachment now I only thought you used thumbs for logs all the videos I watched are all just for logs we have so many Boulders and stones in this land it's one thing I have to jump off the machine roll it into the bucket and then move it like that so I would have bought the thumb it was an extra 450 euros for a mechanical thumb so it's static no Hydraulics it just it was a static thumb and I thought I'm not paying that much but I thought I'd be able to add one later but that is what is in the Box coming over with the remote control lawnmower for this other guy is a thumb and I'm going to weld on a boss onto the boom and uh and fit that fit that thumb another option as I mentioned may have been the extendable tracks just to give that stability a little bit more and also when you're trenching out it's just nice to be a bit little wider than the 40 centimeter trench in the middle because this thing is only 90 centimeters wide so um with 20 centimeter tracks each side of that 40 centimeters you haven't got much tolerance another thing I would have done is with the shipping I would have got quotes from Freight forwarders from the country or the area you live in and basically ask them to pick up that machine from the port in China and then to do the whole of the all of the rest of the work then you know from the get off that you are going to pay this amount of money so instead of having the Chinese supplier organize their shipping and then halfway you have to swap to your Freight forwarder I'd have it all in one package now this remote controlled lawnmower coming across from the same supplier I bought from they're actually delivering it to the door of the guy who's buying it now it's not as big as an excavator it is it's a you know 180 kilo crate but he's having it shipped all the way and for a very good price so I would sort out your shipping before it actually gets onto the boat I think another option if you can afford it and I just couldn't at the time I got a quote for it but it doubled the price of the whole machine was get a known brand engine for it say Kubota or a Yanmar or something like that I could have put the Kubota three-cylinder motor into this and that would have just made it less jerky it would have made it feel like a a real machine as they say but um it added three and a half thousand dollars onto the machine at the time I couldn't find and this is another reason I bought it I couldn't find a secondhand machine for less than 12 to 14 000 Euros and that would have been a 15 to 18 year old rust bucket something that I wouldn't know whether the bushings are all worn whether the motor was any good so that was sort of the price that um I was looking for locally here and it's not really local you still got to go and get it and there weren't many one-ton machines and my trailer can only carry a one-ton machine so if I go above that at 1.52 I'm going to get transport and I cost a Fortune 500 to a thousand Euro when I've got quotes from the auction sites so you know I'm talking then sort of 14 15 000 Euro for a machine so when I bought this as I said right at the beginning of this video I was looking for the cheapest possible option and this at 7 000 all in to the door was that cheapest option so if I was to add a known brand but to engine to it that would have been ten and a half eleven maybe with the vat so we're getting it up to that region of being patient and looking around locally for a secondhand machine would I do it again of course I would this machine I've had no problems with it has saved my back it has made our work a lot easier on site but I wouldn't advise just to rush out and get the the next Chinese machine you can get back on a boat look around locally prices have dropped so you can look around if you are patient and can find a machine and you don't need it transported I needed to transport between my current home and to site don't do now because I have my garage that we've built and you can see that in our garage Workshop project series I can store that machine here but if you can get a larger machine cheaper let's say a 1.5 or a two tonne for a 10 grand I would advise to go that way have it checked over by somebody who knows what they're doing but you don't have to import I had no other option it was the the tail end of all the covered stuff um there wasn't a lot available so this was the cheapest and quickest option for me so my advice is if you like it if you don't want to pay a lot of money out and you want a brand new machine then this is the way to go if you're going to be patient you've got a little extra money and you can you know what you're doing then look around for a second hand machine a known brand secondhand machine there are companies that actually import these there's one in France but again I'd like to go down and get it and that was that was in Marseille so it was very near to the port but they added another two and a half thousand dollars on top of the price so if you've got a bit of time you can work out Alibaba you can work out sending money all that stuff and you're okay with the shipping hand the ship Freight forwarding and the shipping then do it yourself you'll save a hell of a lot of money so if anybody does have any questions from shipping from the company I bought it for newer men engineering who by the way have used us to the Limit if you look on their website which I did only recently for this video when I was looking into this video they have our videos up there they have our YouTube Pages circled with every single video I was quietly um it was a nice compliment but they didn't ask that they could do that but I don't mind I don't get payment at all from newerman we're not sponsored they did a nice gesture and they put this thumb because it was free shipping they gave me the thumb so I'm quite happy about that I hope you've enjoyed this video as I said drop your comments down below I'll try and help out when I can I'm getting really busy with my day job now so I haven't got a huge amount of time but if it's simple questions am I happy with Newman yes I am would I do this again of course but look around locally things like that so please hit that like Thumbs Up Hit the Subscribe and share this video it's how it supports our Channel and if this can match my unboxing video I'll be truly happy all right I will see you in the next video when we're building this garage and workshop [Music] foreign

Channel: Homesteading Uncontained

Views: 1,089,560

Keywords: Chinese Mini Excavator, 1 year on, chinese mini excavator review, chinese mini excavator price, chinese mini excavator attachments, chinese mini excavator digging, chinese mini excavator auger, chinese mini excavator working, mini excavator digging, mini excavator attachments, mini excavator working, mini excavator grading, mini excavator jobs, mini digger attachments, mini digger machine, mini digger footings, mini diggers at work, mini digger excavator

Id: FdPoCsTaS2w

Length: 22min 17sec (1337 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 20 2023