Looding for feedback and info on her. Shouldn't say her but if it was a Mustang ppl would. It is titled and plated up to dtate and runs good 3800 on the hr meter of the hoe, didnt even look at the odometer. F850 Superduty chassis that the frame has been boxed and gussetted. She weighes about 17 ton and both engines run 534ci 15spd twinstick with locking differentials. 318 chrysler industrial runs the hoe......from what little info i have found, around 175hp. marks its spot but only leak that amounts to anything is stick cyl drips a little, est maybe a qt a day if u ran it all day. Any info and literature that someone had on it i would love to buy or pay for copies. I was told the 65 chassis went straight to Minnesota and got the hoe mounted????/:usa
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Oldest wheeled excavator still diggin?
- Thread starter fmccoy63
- Start date
surfer-joe
Senior Member
That looks like a HOPTO hoe, more than that I just couldn't say.
Those Ford 850's with the big gas engines drank fuel at an alarming rate. Good thing that rig doesn't have a dump box like some my brother and I once had. They went through 120 gallons, by lunch-time everyday. All three of ours were used 1968 models right out of Ford's River Rouge steel foundry operations.
HOPTO's were popular in the midwest for several years, we owned one on crawlers for a while with the 453 Detroit engine. I saw one in Michigan this August that appeared to still be working a bit.
Those Ford 850's with the big gas engines drank fuel at an alarming rate. Good thing that rig doesn't have a dump box like some my brother and I once had. They went through 120 gallons, by lunch-time everyday. All three of ours were used 1968 models right out of Ford's River Rouge steel foundry operations.
HOPTO's were popular in the midwest for several years, we owned one on crawlers for a while with the 453 Detroit engine. I saw one in Michigan this August that appeared to still be working a bit.
LowBoy
Senior Member
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I'm gonna second that emotion with a guess at either a Hopto, or even a Warner-Swazey hoe setup. And yes, those old 534's were not a jewel on fuel.
I worked for a guy 25 yrs. ago who had a 1968 F-950 Super Duty triaxle dumptruck with a big giant 16 c.y. body. Had a 5 X 4 two stick trans., locking diffs. that were only rated at 38K if I remember right.
Also had a 1971 Brockway 361 with a 318 screaming Yamaha I used to drive. The 534 gas job would walk away from that Yamaha with ease while loaded every single time, but when the Brockway finally caught back up to the Ford, he was sitting at the gas station with the body elevated a couple feet, filling the thing back up. Used to stop 2-3 times a day for gas with that beast, but man did it have some bottom end torque. Gas was around .75 cents a gallon, around 1980. Unbelievable...
I got the privelige of running an old Sampson truck mounted excavator for some cobbed up old contractor years ago. He had this stupid thing for 25 yrs. and claimed it to be the best thing since sliced bread. Sliced bread wasn't even as old as this old junk. It was on a 1953 GMC 5500 6 wheeler chassis, with not even a sign of a brake on the truck. I got to digging a ditch on a slope with that thing, sitting out in mid-air on an old tractor seat, offset to the passenger side, pulling on about 10 levers to make it do it's thing. All of a sudden, she took off backwards headed down an embankment I know darned well nobody here would have liked to have gone down over, including me. Here I am, out in mid air, rolling like an s.o.b. downhill towards a sheer cliff, when I shoved the hoe in the ground with all the will I had, and it sent me doing a swan dive over the valve body and all those hydraulic lines, face first into the dirt. But it stopped, didn't run me over, and I just did a Rambo roll away from it when I hit the dirt anyway to make sure that old junk didn't crush me. I walked up to my crazy boss and told him to take his job, that old piece of junk and every other piece of junk he owned, and place it in a very common area we all know. Never even went back for my last check. It was on a Monday, only a few hours into the day, so he didn't owe me much anyway.
Never cared much for those "open air, convertible excavators" since that day. Luckily I lived to tell the story.
I worked for a guy 25 yrs. ago who had a 1968 F-950 Super Duty triaxle dumptruck with a big giant 16 c.y. body. Had a 5 X 4 two stick trans., locking diffs. that were only rated at 38K if I remember right.
Also had a 1971 Brockway 361 with a 318 screaming Yamaha I used to drive. The 534 gas job would walk away from that Yamaha with ease while loaded every single time, but when the Brockway finally caught back up to the Ford, he was sitting at the gas station with the body elevated a couple feet, filling the thing back up. Used to stop 2-3 times a day for gas with that beast, but man did it have some bottom end torque. Gas was around .75 cents a gallon, around 1980. Unbelievable...
I got the privelige of running an old Sampson truck mounted excavator for some cobbed up old contractor years ago. He had this stupid thing for 25 yrs. and claimed it to be the best thing since sliced bread. Sliced bread wasn't even as old as this old junk. It was on a 1953 GMC 5500 6 wheeler chassis, with not even a sign of a brake on the truck. I got to digging a ditch on a slope with that thing, sitting out in mid-air on an old tractor seat, offset to the passenger side, pulling on about 10 levers to make it do it's thing. All of a sudden, she took off backwards headed down an embankment I know darned well nobody here would have liked to have gone down over, including me. Here I am, out in mid air, rolling like an s.o.b. downhill towards a sheer cliff, when I shoved the hoe in the ground with all the will I had, and it sent me doing a swan dive over the valve body and all those hydraulic lines, face first into the dirt. But it stopped, didn't run me over, and I just did a Rambo roll away from it when I hit the dirt anyway to make sure that old junk didn't crush me. I walked up to my crazy boss and told him to take his job, that old piece of junk and every other piece of junk he owned, and place it in a very common area we all know. Never even went back for my last check. It was on a Monday, only a few hours into the day, so he didn't owe me much anyway.
Never cared much for those "open air, convertible excavators" since that day. Luckily I lived to tell the story.
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surfer-joe
Senior Member
Brockway, now that's a name I haven't heard in many a year. They built some nice trucks, but like some others, always underpowered. We used some Brocks in the Seabees overseas, and I drove a couple in Michigan for a short time.
The Hopto excavator we had was crawler mounted. This was in the early days when excavators were still mounted on old crawler crane undercarriages. Essentially the roller frames were off a Koehring or Bay City crane, only the chain drive had been changed out to a hydraulic motor on each side. They were weak and slow and prone to breakage. Still a great advance over cable rigs however.
The Hopto excavator we had was crawler mounted. This was in the early days when excavators were still mounted on old crawler crane undercarriages. Essentially the roller frames were off a Koehring or Bay City crane, only the chain drive had been changed out to a hydraulic motor on each side. They were weak and slow and prone to breakage. Still a great advance over cable rigs however.
Beel
Active Member
How about those ol' Koehrings?!
td14steve
Well-Known Member
Lowboy those old samsons were made about 10 miles from me in Lebanon , NY place was still in business in some form until the 80's I believe. They were quite a contraption alright I never ran one but there were a lot of them around here for obvious reasons, seems like all theseptic guys around here had one at one time or another. They still are lurking in the weeds but I have managed to stear clear of them I have enough junk as it is. Steve