I can kick myself, been struggling for 2 days and all that I had to do to make the wp_dropdown_categories option work is change the name to the same value as the taxonomy.
My complete working code is:
<?php
// Equipment Category Dropdown, thanks https://gist.github.com/2902509
class Walker_SlugValueCategoryDropdown extends Walker_CategoryDropdown {
function start_el(&$output, $category, $depth, $args) {
$pad = str_repeat(' ', $depth * 3);
$cat_name = apply_filters('list_cats', $category->name, $category);
$output .= "\t<option class=\"level-$depth\" value=\"".$category->slug."\"";
if ( $category->term_id == $args['selected'] )
$output .= ' selected="selected"';
$output .= '>';
$output .= $pad.$cat_name;
if ( $args['show_count'] )
$output .= ' ('. $category->count .')';
if (isset ( $args['show_last_update'] ) ) {
$format="Y-m-d";
$output .= ' ' . gmdate($format, $category->last_update_timestamp);
}
$output .= "</option>\n";
}
}
?>
<form role="search" method="get" id="equipfilter" action="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>">
<fieldset>
<?php
$dropdown_args = array(
'taxonomy' => 'exc_equipment_cat',
'name' => 'exc_equipment_cat',
'show_option_none' => 'Select category',
'show_count' => 1,
'orderby' => 'name',
'hierarchical' => true,
'echo' => 1,
'walker' => new Walker_SlugValueCategoryDropdown);
wp_dropdown_categories( $dropdown_args );
?>
</fieldset>
<fieldset>
<legend>Kw Range:</legend>
<input type="text" name="kw_min" placeholder="from" value><br />
<input type="text" name="kw_max" placeholder="to" value>
</fieldset>
<fieldset>
<legend>Price Range:</legend>
<input type="text" name="pr_min" placeholder="from" value><br />
<input type="text" name="pr_max" placeholder="to" value>
</fieldset>
<input type="submit" id="filtersubmit" value="Search" />
</form>