Another Komatsu Rarity Unearthed

Our friends over at the well-respected French forum Technique TP are always finding unusual and rare items of heavy machinery to share with their massive number of followers, myself included.

Long standing member of the movement Jimmy Pourcelot has a real knack of discovering these rare items, and he recently shared images of a strange looking machine the Komatsu PG75-1.

This squat looking excavator was, one would imagine, designed to be working in underground tunnelling applications. The Japanese know a thing or two about designing machines for specific and sometimes dangerous jobs, especially after earthquakes, landslides and the like.

Many of these machines are never marketed outside of Asia so we rarely get to see them here, which I feel makes them all the more interesting.

On this zero-tailswing machine, it appears that the operator enters the cab via a front door feature, similar to those fitted on skid steer loaders. The hydraulic dipper ram is mounted underslung below the boom, for protection in those tunnelling operations that it would be engaged in.

The other strange anomaly with this machine, is that it’s fitted with apex style track pads, which would signify the intention for it to be working on soft underfoot conditions.

I have been unable to discover any video of one of these units in operation, if anyone knows of any footage, give me a heads up.

The Digger Man Blog would like to thank Jimmy Pourcelot for the share of the images contained in this blog post.