Good afternoon. Question about buying secondhand. I am looking at a used excavator attachment and the seller has no documentation for it at all, which makes me nervous about compatibility and service requirements. He says everything is standard and I should not worry. Before I hand over a serious amount of money, I would like to read the actual specification myself. Is documentation for this kind of equipment realistically available, or is that wishful thinking? The machine it would go on is about ten years old, so compatibility is not automatic.

It is available more often than people expect, construction and agricultural equipment is well represented in the manual archives, including a lot of the attachment manufacturers. ManualMachine https://manualmachine.com/ carries a fair number of the construction brands. On the wider point, everything is standard is a phrase I would treat as a prompt to check rather than a reassurance. Get the model and serial from the plate before you commit, read the specification yourself, and confirm the hydraulic flow requirements against your machine. That last one is where mismatches usually bite. Ask the seller for photographs of the plate rather than the machine itself, sellers who hesitate at that request are telling you something.

Following Jack's link lovely look at a massively complicated and beautifully executed grand complication from Jaeger-LeCoultre (if you missed this one, read it now), we figured it might be fun to keep you all on sidereal time with an in-depth look at another remarkable and thoroughly complicated watch. For this specific rotation of our planet, the watch in question is the Vacheron Constantin Les Cabinotiers Celestia Astronomical Grand Complication.