Equipment World Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/489028
W ith a combined 14,000 hours of uptime with the Caterpillar 336E L and after consider- ing every aspect of the machine's fi t in their business, our reviewers gave the excavator high marks in nearly every category. Based on their reviews, the 336E L is a machine that performs well and makes op- erators happy, despite a few quirks. Chris Cunningham has been running excavators since he was 16 years old. The 26-year-old operator has worked for underground utility contractor Garnto Southern of Evans, Georgia, for the past three years. Carpenter has put in 1,500 hours on the machine by himself and calls it, "the perfect all-around machine for what we do." He said his favorite aspect of the ma- chine is its size compared to what it can handle. "I can not only lift a structure that's 20,000 pounds but also put it on the other side of the road," he says. "And it's fast. The 336 is Cat's bread-and-butter in my opinion." Howard Chaney of Hunter Construction Group in Moorseville, North Carolina, agrees. "It's a bigger ma- chine with more power that I don't need a super load permit for," he says. But the machine isn't without issues, as our reviewers pointed out. One of the more common complaints was poor rear and side visibility, while one reviewer has concerns over the machine's performance compared to older Cat excavators in his fl eet. There were concerns over fuel consumption as well. Here's how our seven reviewers scored the specifi c aspects of the Cat 336E L, which has now been re- placed by the Cat 336F L. All ratings are given on a scale from 1 to 10 with 10 being the best possible score and 1 being the worst possible score. Serviceability: Overall score: 9.1 out of 10 Our reviewers gave the 336E L high marks for service- ability, though a few of them did subtract points for the machine's ease of radiator clean out and for access to service points. One reviewer noted, "They changed the location of fuel fi lters to an extremely hard to reach location behind the cab. The fi ll port for the hydraulic pump interface is even more diffi cult to access to fi ll with 10W-30 in the sight glass. Still can't reach boom, stick and stick cylinder eye zerk fi ttings without start- ing and moving machine. Competitors have installed grease lines to ease maintenance so they don't get skipped by fuel guys." Caterpillar 336E L excavator out of 10 9.0 OVERALL RATING: EquipmentWorld.com | April 2015 31 GIVE US YOUR THOUGHTS A full review of the Cat 336E L is on our website, equipmentworld.com/reviews. There you'll see what individual reviewers thought, plus you'll be able to join the conversation, adding your comments to those of our reviewers. reader reviews | by Wayne Grayson