Could use some help with Hitachi excavator purchase - TractorByNet

Hi all,
I'm hoping some of you have eperience with excavators, and more specifically Hitachi Excavators. I don't know hardly anything about them. A friend of the family is selling an excavator and it just so happens that I'm also clearing my land. I've been using my tractor but it's a slow process. If I could buy the excavator for a decent price, then it may be worth the risk of buying it, using it, and selling it when I'm done. I have experience operating backhoes and of course tractors.

I started a thread about replacing my tractor with a skidsteer and mini ex, because I thought what he was selling was a mini ex, but then learned it's much bigger than that. I posted the following pictures on this thread, but will post them again here as well.
http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/.../-single-tractor-vs-skidsteer-mini.html

My question is, what do you think this excavator is worth?

It's a Hitachi 230-LC5
No hyd thumb
good condition
it's currently in use on a job and I can try it out
I know the owner, he's a lifelong family friend, and I absolutely trust that he wouldn't sell me something about to blow up.

I suppose you can't really say what it's worth without knowing the hours and undercarriage amount, which I don't know about yet, but will update when I find out. Is there any rough idea you can give me for something like this, if we assume the undercarriage is fair, and the hours aren't excessively high?

I apologize for not having more info, and I should probably wait to post this until I do, but I'm too interested to wait :laughing:

If you can't help me with any pricing info, can you share any and all experience, good or bad, about Hitachi excavators in general?







I purchased an EX100 from an aution prior to building my house. Cost me 16k at auction and i put about into it. Did everything i had to do from digging for the foundation to cutting in the driveway and digging a hole to china to get unwanted debris underground. If you plan on doing all your own site work get estimates on what it would could to have the work done. You can take that and put it towards the machine. One thing i do know is the bigger the toy the bigger the price to repair. Your unit is a big boy and has its own market for buyers. A lot of guys don't want a unit that big because your looking at a flat bed to move it around and that gets expensive. I have been to many auctions and the market for a mini excavator has a high demand bringing in big bucks. Most even higher than some larger 120-160 excavators. My machine ran great with no problems and it is a JD twin. By the way the i put into it was mostly stuff it didn't need in order to run. I sent it to a repair shop and told them to go thru it ( learned my lesson ) wouldn't do that again. When i was all done with it i sold it for 20k. So it cost me zero for my site work aside from my time. I know you said you would sell it when your done just be careful if you do purchase due to the fact that the market for that size machine is a lot smaller. May take some time to sell or you might have to cut the price down big time. Hope things work out for you. I can tell you i would not spend 50k on a unit and then take the chance of having that 50k sitting in the yard with nothing to do. I think you would be best of seeing if he would rent it out to you. Just my 2 cents . Good luck.