06-17-2025, 02:56 PM
On March 17, during the peak sales season for excavators in the first half of the year, I purchased a SANY SY330 excavator. After putting it to work, I began to notice several problems.
When I first received the machine, I immediately felt that the operation was not smooth. The movements were sluggish and jerky. At first, I thought the problem was due to the operator being unfamiliar with the new machine, so I didn’t pay much attention to it. However, after a week, the issues persisted. The boom and arm were particularly slow — raising the boom at a horizontal position took more than 10 seconds, and fully extending or retracting the arm took over 6 seconds. Doing leveling work was painfully slow: leveling a 20-meter stretch of road could take half an hour or longer. I called the service technicians, but they couldn’t fix the problem.
By the time the machine had run for 200 hours, the service team had come six times but still hadn’t resolved the issue. The machine’s speed sometimes improved temporarily but would slow down again. Later, SANY’s own technicians came and modified the system from negative flow to positive flow. After testing, the performance seemed much better: the boom took about 6 seconds, the arm about 4 seconds, and the bucket about 3 seconds. We thought the problem was finally solved — the technicians even set off firecrackers to celebrate. But the improvement only lasted for three days before the machine slowed down again, although it was slightly better than before.
Now, with over 600 hours on the machine, the problem still hasn’t been properly resolved. The dealer’s service staff have visited about 20 times and driven almost 8,000 km just for my machine. They even bought a new service vehicle because of these frequent trips. However, nothing has really changed, so I have no choice but to keep using the excavator as is, hoping that the manufacturer or dealer can eventually fix it properly.
Here is a summary of the issues I have encountered with this SANY SY330:
When I first received the machine, I immediately felt that the operation was not smooth. The movements were sluggish and jerky. At first, I thought the problem was due to the operator being unfamiliar with the new machine, so I didn’t pay much attention to it. However, after a week, the issues persisted. The boom and arm were particularly slow — raising the boom at a horizontal position took more than 10 seconds, and fully extending or retracting the arm took over 6 seconds. Doing leveling work was painfully slow: leveling a 20-meter stretch of road could take half an hour or longer. I called the service technicians, but they couldn’t fix the problem.
By the time the machine had run for 200 hours, the service team had come six times but still hadn’t resolved the issue. The machine’s speed sometimes improved temporarily but would slow down again. Later, SANY’s own technicians came and modified the system from negative flow to positive flow. After testing, the performance seemed much better: the boom took about 6 seconds, the arm about 4 seconds, and the bucket about 3 seconds. We thought the problem was finally solved — the technicians even set off firecrackers to celebrate. But the improvement only lasted for three days before the machine slowed down again, although it was slightly better than before.
Now, with over 600 hours on the machine, the problem still hasn’t been properly resolved. The dealer’s service staff have visited about 20 times and driven almost 8,000 km just for my machine. They even bought a new service vehicle because of these frequent trips. However, nothing has really changed, so I have no choice but to keep using the excavator as is, hoping that the manufacturer or dealer can eventually fix it properly.
Here is a summary of the issues I have encountered with this SANY SY330:
- Slow and uncoordinated operation, very poor control performance.
- Power cannot be fully shut off: when the key is removed, the power remains on. (This has since been fixed.)
- Bucket teeth cannot be replaced easily: each time, the tooth pins get stuck and have to be cut with an oxy-acetylene torch. So far, I have replaced four sets of teeth and had to torch ten pins, costing about 1,000 RMB each time. All the teeth and pins are genuine parts purchased from SANY.
- The pin connecting the boom and arm has a retaining plate, but this plate once fell off because it wasn’t welded securely. The pin slid halfway out — if I hadn’t noticed in time, the arm could have fallen off completely.
- Doors on the battery box and hydraulic pump box have broken pins; the cabin door latch has also broken.
- When using the heater, there is a burning plastic smell inside the cab, and the cabin is very noisy. Even though the machine is new, it shakes and rattles like an old one.
- The work light is poorly positioned and cannot be adjusted.
- The machine lacks power under load: whenever there is pressure, it belches black smoke, similar to the smoke at startup, and this happens frequently. When starting in the morning, it emits blue smoke for about 10 minutes. The service staff claim this is normal.
