Bell ring the Changes with new Doosan Upgrades

Bell Plant part of the Gloucestershire based KW Bell Group have recently taken delivery of a significant number of new Doosan hydraulic excavators as part of their fleet renewal programme.

Regular Digger Man Blog reader Kenneth Hatcher was one of the early recipients of one of 7 x Doosan DX63-3’s and 5 x DX62’s as part of an order from main Doosan dealer Kellands Plant Sales worth in the region of £0.5 million.

Kenneth’s new mount was delivered to the Taylor Wimpey site he is currently working on in Cwmbran, Wales, where it replaced his outgoing DX62R model which he has been operating for the past 3 years and as you can see in this photo has been well looked after, according to Ken the low loader driver took one look at his machine and said, “Where’s the old one I have to pick up?” this brought a smile to Ken’s face, who is an operator who clearly takes pride in his machine.

The latest upgrade of the DX63-3 which tips the scales at 6.370kgs and is a conventional tail swing model is now powered by a Stage V emission compliant Yanmar diesel engine which offers a power ouput rating of 44.3kw (59.4hp) @2.100 rpm, which according to Doosan is a 22% increase in engine power over the previous generation model.

In its long dipper arm variant the Doosan DX63-3 has a reach at ground level of 6,355mm and can achieve a maximum digging depth of 4,155mm. The machine has been supplied with a fully automatic Geith hydraulic quick coupler and a full set of Geith buckets consisting of 300mm, 450mm, 600mm, 900mm and grader/re-handling bucket. Its early days with his new machine but Kenneth has been impressed with it so far, especially the smoothness in operation, although he does feel there is a lot of vibration from the tracks. Kenneth is a fan of the light feel Doosan levers which he feels makes his job a lot easier.

Its probably fair comment to say that Kenneth is something of a stickler for details, and he has been comparing his old DX62R to his newly arrived DX63-3, especially as on the face of it, they look exactly the same. His own independent research has discovered that they are the same upper-structure, but on the DX62R the slew ring is set 170mm to the front to reduce the tailswing, Ken also states that according to his calculations, this results in a loss of boom/arm reach of 170mm on the DX63-3. “Its funny, I was reaching over a garage on Friday and I thought, that’s strange, this new machine has less reach, then I thought surely it can’t be, but from my working it out I can see I was right” concludes Kenneth. I’m going to be out and about with KW Bell Group real soon for a more in-depth report for the magazine, if I’m lucky I might get the chance to catch up with Ken and his latest machine. We thank Kenneth for sending in his mobile phone shots of his shiny new Doosan and wish him all the best with it.