Excavator

The media could not be loaded. I've been using this to dig up a rather large hole near our pool cage to repair a cracked pvc pipe for our swimming pool that a tree root grew through and cracked. The excavator is amazing! I live in FL and the mosquitoes are terrible.. with this I'm able to sit inside the screen porch and dig up the hole I need to repair the pipe! This thing has a lot of power for its scale, enough that it not only is able to dig through the dirt but is able to rip up small plant roots in some tougher soils, which we have a lot of in our yard. I honestly thought this was going to have some trouble in our yard but it seems to do just fine! Especially once you get past the roots. Once I get down into some softer dirt where it's able to dig a little easier, I'm getting well over an hour run time on the battery! Under heavy load, like pulling roots where I'm operating several arm components and the tracks to pull backward all at the same time the battery lasts about 45min. The only negative thing I can say about this machine is the included battery charger.. If you really want to drive this more, get a better charger. I have an Align charger from my rc helicopters that charges this battery in 1hr, much faster than the included slow usb charger.. The only component that lacks the strength the rest of this machine has is the body rotation. As another reviewer stated, if you try to push anything tough at all sideways using the body rotational motors, you will hear the gear click and skip.. This isn't really much of an issue as I spend much more time digging, pushing, & pulling opposed to trying to move anything with a sideways motion. If you do want to do this to spread around a pile of dirt you dug up, it does work just don't try to push a whole big pile at once, it can move a fair amount of dirt pushing sideways this way, but to avoid straining those gears I simply ordered the wheel loader for all of the pushing and leveling jobs, as the excavator wouldn't be very fast at that anyways.. I'll post a review on that as soon as I receive it and have a chance to check it out! As for the other motors, that operate the arms and the tracks they have a lot of power and if you do manage to push/pull too hard on something the motors simply come to a halt, nothing clicks/grinds like it's going to break. The tracks have an incredible amount of power, I haven't seen anything yet that can stop or slow them down! Another concern I had ordering this machine was that the controls may not have been well designed, that's simply not the case! The controls are really well designed, the machine is quite easy to get the hang of and the 23 channels allow you to operate as many components at the same time as you like, this helps in adding a lot of power for tougher jobs like pulling roots as your able to have the tracks going while operating the arm for a lot of additional pulling/ripping power! great for tougher jobs, and for being able to climb up/down ledges or in/out of just about any hole you can manage to dig with this thing.There was however a small wiring issue that rendered one of the arm motors inoperable in certain positions, it appears to be just a bad wire, if you push on it, it starts working again. I contacted the manufacture and they were very responsive and helpful, providing a return label and are shipping a replacement unit! I'll update this post after I receive the new machine and have some time to confirm it's holding up well. Super excited to get it though, I had a lot of fun digging with this for the time that it worked. Overall construction of the product is as described and as other reviewers stated, very heavy duty and high quality. Hoping this little wiring issue was just result of a bad/defective wire or something. If it wasn't under warranty, it's honestly something that wouldn't be difficult to fix myself though.

Thing is very strong, smoke machine did break, secondary boom isn’t as strong as main lift and bucket but still very adequate. Thing is built like a tank very heavy, made of metal, can be used for real work I’ve been digging out a water box with it

Just less than 1 year of very light adult use the Boom Ram seperated. I contacted Top Race for another ram and they replied"Jan 1, 2024 2:12 AMHi ,Thanks for reaching out! Unfortunately, we don't have spare parts available.Best regards,EdgeCustomer Service"Update 4Jan24: I found some tubing and remanufactured the ram piston. Although it moves it does not function. The boom rams are just for show. The arm and bucket rams do function. It still works but I'm on my own for repair.

If you're on the fence about this Excevator, don't be. This machine is absolutely amazing. It's where Toy and Powertool collide for a creation that will leave wanting more while you charge the battery. This machine is super strong and I got close to 2 hours of operating on 1 charge. I was really surprised. This machine uses SAE (CAT) Control Pattern. The machine itself is insanely high quality. The remote is also very high quality with black soft touch paint. I'm blown away by its digging ability and it has no problem lifting itself so you can perform all the special skills associated with Excevators. Its essentially ALL metal except a couple of trim pieces but it's truly ALL metal. It's quite heavy but I'm going to find a way to tuck some lead strips inside for even more weight. The drive system could handle a bunch more weight no problem. As a plus The case mine came in was beautiful. Get this Exkee!!!!!

I don't even know where to start on this one. I purchased this model at the beginning of April and it worked great for roughly three weeks...at that point the smoke unit died even though I rarely ever turned it on. I contacted Top Race about the issue and they sent me a replacement part (here's where it gets good)....I swapped out the dead smoke unit for the new replacement unit they sent me and turned the model on and POOOF! The replacement part fried my main receiver board immediately making the model unusable. The smoke unit can only plug in one way...impossible for users to reverse polarity. I contacted Top Race again about the much larger issue and sent them detailed photos. I then had to buy a replacement receiver board for the excavator which took forever to get delivered due to "shipping issues" they said. Once I finally had the new board I swapped it out with the old one.....aaaaand nothing.....the new board would not bind to the stock radio even though they assured me it would. Contacted them again and they wanted me to package everything up and ship it back to them to "troubleshoot". At this point I was so fed up with all the defective replacement parts and them giving me the runaround that I just wanted a refund. So I shipped everything back like they asked and was eventually refunded for the excavator, but not the replacement receiver board that I had purchased and shipped back as well. I was told to contact Harry (Top Race manager) about the refund for the Rx board and I can honestly say I have never dealt with a more unprofessional/childish individual in my life. Top Race refuses to refund my money for the defective Rx board (that they now have as well) because they feel that the couple weeks of use I was able to get out of the $539 excavator "was worth the money" I spent on the Rx board even though it was only purchased due to the faulty smoke unit they sent me before. I'm pretty sure that legally you can't keep my money AND the replacement part that was shipped back to you. I am now in a PayPay dispute with Top Race to get back my money.....money spent replacing something that was caused by them and their lack of quality control. For a model costing over $500 you should expect more than a couple weeks of use before parts start to fail.....and even if you are one of the lucky ones who gets a properly working model be very weary when it comes to using Top Race replacement parts. I would give this purchase less than one star if that was an option.Update (11/20/20) - I know this is a long overdue update, but figured it might be beneficial to some folks. So Paypal had immediately sided with me after seeing the emails between myself and Harry regarding the problematic replacement parts and I was issued a refund for the board as well. And just so you are aware, I had Paypal confirm that a company can NOT legally keep your money after you send a defective product back to them (must have proof of returned item). Shortly after my original review (years ago) I went with the Huina 580 and have been using it at least once a week and still have had no issues.