Classic 1980’s Mitsubishi excavator restored

Thu 14 May 2015

Classic 1980’s Mitsubishi excavator restored

Barry and his father run a turf cutting and contracting business in Co Longford, Ireland and had been looking for an old digger for some considerable time to load turf during the winter season. This would enable them to free up their more modern machine, which was often being less productive than it should be, just sat loading a few lorry loads a week. Good reliable old machines are hard to come by these days, as they are often snapped up quickly by the export boys. However Barry’s father had spotted this old Mitsubishi MS110 whilst out on his travels delivering turf, so after a bit of detective work they found out who owned the machine and discovered that he had owned it for 10 years, during which time it had hardly done any work at all.

Barry said, “We headed down to see it and were fairly impressed. It was a nice honest machine good runner and nice and tight for its age. A deal was done and a week later on the 8^th November last year, I went to collect it and brought it back to our workshops”.

Barry himself is a time served fitter and welder and as such has always done any repair work on the firm’s machinery and has even built many different types of attachments and equipment over the years, but this was to be their first full restoration of a digger.

The process began with a few days of washing and stripping down. Barry then started to make repairs to the cab, including cutting out any rust, a new door and a new sunroof.

The next step in the process was to make new side panels, engine panels, repairs to the bonnet and fitting a new dash console, Barry explains, “I then moved on to the base machine itself, my main job here involved changing the controls to the Hitachi style pattern, it’s what we are used to so I felt it needed to be done. I started by modifying the levers under the cab, during which time I re-pinned all the linkages on the controls which made them all nice and tight again”. I would add here that any of us who have operated the Mitsubishi’s in the past would relate to the eventual wear in the linkages and the need to have the door open to save ones knuckles!

Barry continued, “My next job was to fit 4 rollers and both idlers. These items were bought form James Wrightman who runs a plant breacking business in Co. Down, he is a top man to buy second hand parts off and his yard is a good place to start when looking for donor spares for the older kit”.

With these items fitted Barry made a few repairs to the side rails of the machine before focussing on the sanding down in preparation for the paint. The actual paint job was performed just before Christmas last year and in the New Year the machine was rewired and stickers were applied.

Barry said, “So far I have been using it around the yard doing a few jobs, levelled a few loads of stone and its going good it was an enjoyable project restoring this machine and was very happy with how it turned out. We are hoping to start to offer plant and machinery restoration service soon. Next project in the pipeline is a Massey 50 loader.

I personally have fond memories of my time on Mitsubishi excavators back in the mid to late 80's, on both MS120's and 140 models. Its great to see that these machines are still capable of putting in a good days work and I think you will agree, this restoration is a real credit to Barry and his father.

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Classic 1980’s Mitsubishi excavator restored

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