The Digger Girl Review

Molson Equipment, one of the UK's leading suppliers of construction machinery, recently provided Amy Underwood, widely known as Digger Girl, with the opportunity to test and review the new Kobelco SK26SR-1E

“Air-con is essential, and it’s great that Kobelco adds this as standard now...

Amy, with her vast experience and keen insights, was the perfect candidate to put the Kobelco SK26SR through its paces on her current project in Scotland.

AMY’S REVIEW

This is the latest excavator to join my fleet temporarily – the new Kobelco SK26SR. The zero tail swing on it is quite obviously very good for working in tight places. The first concern when you hear zero tail swing is stability, but I feel like it's quite long on the track base, so no worries there.

It's roughly a 2.5-tonne machine, so the cab is clearly a tad smaller than the 8-tonne I spend most of my time on, but this Kobelco is much more spacious than other wee machines we’ve got on the fleet. It’s so comfy in there. The seat goes so far back that I actually can’t touch the pedals at full reach! Though that may not be the best measure as I’m a short a*se, my dad fits in the cab perfectly.

This model has a brand new LED screen and updated heating controls. It has air-con (standard), a radio and Bluetooth, alongside a more traditional AUX and USB, which is very convenient, as is the built-in phone holder.

Dipper's (my French Bulldog) first day in the Kobelco was cracking too. There’s plenty of room for him to sit down on the floor in there when I’m operating. I had the door shut yesterday because the wee man was struggling with the heat towards the end of the day, so I had to close the window; the air con was amazing and it’s very quiet too. I can’t quite believe it was 26 degrees in Scotland during May (when this arrived), but in the modern day, that air-con is essential, and it’s great that Kobelco adds this as standard now.

My dad had been asking me if the machine was noisy in the cab – it isn’t, because it's got an integrated noise and dust reduction system. So when the door is shut, you hardly hear anything. It's really, really nice and makes a massive difference for the operator… and dog! Plus, it stops the filters from getting choked up.

The auto-deceleration feature, which reduces the revs itself, is very useful – my smaller machines don’t have this, and I don’t think a lot of them do. It not only saves a job doing it manually but it saves fuel. As we all know, there's nothing worse when you're jumping out, jumping in, jumping out, doing groundworks or whatever, and the machine's still revving away in the background.

It's a really smooth machine. Fast on the tracks. And so easy to use. The quick hitch this one has come with is effortless for changing buckets over. There’s a simple lock and unlock, that’s it. This machine also has all of the aux lines to run various attachments.

Luckily, I get the opportunity to demo a lot of machines of many sizes and colours. It’s worth noting that I also own many excavators – 7 models across 6 different brands! So when I tell you that we have asked for a price to keep this one, hopefully that shows how much I have enjoyed my time with it. Our little Hitachi is in need of replacing, and this Kobelco fits the bill perfectly.

This particular one is not perfect, though; it was specified with a small dipper which doesn’t allow you to grade up to the blade. I am told future orders to hit the UK will be optioned with the longer one, which is a relief – if I were to keep this exact machine, I would want the dipper upgrade. There’s also one thing that is annoying, which is the placement of a clip/handle just above the door entry… I hit my head many times on it, but I suppose over time you’d get used to it being there.

A massive factor for buying any machine is the backup, and I just know that the service we get from Molson is second to none. They deal with many of our machines, but they know Kobelcos better than anybody in the UK. The Scottish branch is a lifesaver, and we need good local backup, being 2 hours north of Glasgow in the ‘middle of nowhere’.

Whilst on demo (which, by the way, has never ended – I still have the machine here pending a final quote to keep it!), I used this machine for lots of water pipe installs, digging the trench and lowering in the pipe before backfilling, and digging lines for power too. With a lot of jobs I’ve been doing recently, it made sense to use this machine as I could just stick it on the trailer (yes, it’s light enough to be towed, which is ideal), and as it’s so good in tight places, I knew I wouldn’t be stuck with this SK26SR.

Digger Girl approved. Keep an eye on my socials, and let’s see if we can get the deal done to keep it on the fleet!

KOBELCO