Golden Oldies spotted in Finland

As I so often do when travelling abroad, I’m always keeping an eye open for old bits of kit lying around, either working or just left to rot in a hedgerow, they are always something of immense interest to me.

On the recent trip to Finland, I came across a couple of machines which were accessible to me, first up was this Finnish built Valtra C 812M backhoe loader, which I discovered out the back of the CASE dealer Rentti’s yard.

Valtra has been manufacturing tractors since 1951, but the company’s roots go back to the 19^th century. Though their tractors are commonly seen, it’s unusual to see their backhoe loader offerings.

There is not much information around on these machines, and a web search proved to be pretty fruitless, but I understand these were built around the early 1980’s. Considering its age this machine appears to be in very good condition.

I came across this video featuring another surviving C 815 M-4 model at work.

At the premises of Finnish Hyundai dealer Telkone, I came across this Swedish built Volvo BM LM 640 model. This machine, the first 4-wheel drive loader produced by Volvo, and its two-wheel drive variant the LM 620, were Volvo’s first loaders equipped with in-house built power shift transmissions and torque converter.

These unique machines had a production run from 1965-1970 during which time, 6148 examples were built.

Weighing in at 6,600kgs, the LM 640 was powered by a 3-cylinder, BM 1113-ALH diesel engine producing a power output of 51 kW (69hp), maximum bucket capacity was 3m³.

Check out this interesting video clip from Volvo CE that explains how the LM loader concept came to be.