Excavators
Buy and sell excavators in Costa Rica.
On the banana farms around Siquirres and the pineapple fields of the northern plains, a narrow-tracked mini excavator spends its days cutting and cleaning the drainage canals between the rows, and plenty of the used machines that come up have done exactly that. New and pre-owned, excavators run from one-tonne micro diggers that fit through a garden gate, through the three- to eight-tonne minis and midis a contractor trailers to a house lot, to the 20-tonne class that opens roads and works rivers, with back hoes alongside. Settle the weight class first: it decides the job, the transport and the price.
Micro, mini, midi and the 20-tonne excavator:
the weight class tells you most of what a machine can do. A micro of around a tonne, often Chinese and sometimes on a single-cylinder engine, digs a garden trench where nothing else fits, but it is a light-duty tool, not a scaled-down contractor’s machine. Minis and midis from two to eight tonnes, from Kubota, Cat, Takeuchi or JCB, do house lots, water lines and the secondary canals on a plantation. The 20-tonne class, the Komatsu PC200 or Cat 320 type of machine, opens rural roads, cleans river beds and loads trucks all day. A back hoe is the wheeled alternative: slower at digging, but it drives itself between jobs. If the work is more carrying than digging, a skid steer may suit it better, and pushing earth across a slope is a dozer’s job, listed under tractors.
Tail swing, tracks and the hammer circuit on an excavator:
once the size is right, these decide whether a machine suits your work. A zero-tail-swing excavator keeps its counterweight inside the tracks as it turns, so it can dig beside a wall or a lane of traffic; a conventional tail is steadier when lifting and costs less. Rubber tracks spare paving; steel tracks belong on rock, in a river or a quarry. At the end of the arm, an auxiliary circuit runs a hammer or an auger, a quick coupler swaps buckets in a minute, and a thumb picks up stones and logs. For canal work a trapezoidal ditching bucket cuts the profile in one pass. Ask which buckets come with the machine, because each missing one is another purchase.
A mini on a trailer here, or a 20-tonne in a yard abroad:
a brand-name three-tonne mini is around ₡30 million new, and one with a couple of hundred hours still asks well over ₡20 million, because minis hold their value until the rubber tracks and pins need replacing. The bigger machines are where the bargains and the traps are. Some used 20- and 30-tonne excavators offered to Costa Rican buyers are still parked in the United States or Colombia; one already in the country can be seen digging, and saves the freight and the wait. A 20-tonne excavator advertised for the price of a used pickup is not a bargain: those ads recycle photos from dealers abroad, and the machine in them is rarely for sale.
Cylinders, final drives and pins on a used excavator:
warm it up, lift a full bucket and hold it still. If the boom or arm sinks with the levers untouched, the cylinder seals are going, and wet rods say the same. Track it in a straight line both ways; a machine that pulls to one side or whines at one sprocket has a final drive problem, one of the dearest repairs it can need. Grab the bucket and shake it: some play at the pins and bushings is normal wear, a lot means new pins and sometimes machining the bores. Plantation machines live in mud and standing water, so check the final-drive seals and the electrical connectors for corrosion, and on one that ran a hammer in a quarry, look for cracks at the boom foot. Rubber tracks with steel cords showing are close to the end. Ask for the papers that go with the machine and check the serial plate against them.
Cold-start video, buckets and location in an excavator listing:
buyers want to see it work before they pay for a trailer, so film a cold start, the arm holding a full bucket and a slow run in both directions. Give the weight class, year, hours and track type, list every bucket and attachment, and photograph the serial plate, both tracks and the cylinder rods. Say what it has done, since canal work, house lots and hammer work each tell a buyer something different. Then say exactly where it is: a contractor from Nicoya eyeing a mini on a banana farm near Guápiles needs to know whether it sits by the road or at the far end of a canal track that floods.