Hey all Just bought my first skid steer a 4sdk8 Toyota(yep no really a us model) is 100hrs a good oil change time??? I'm in Australia and its hot a dusty work, unit had 275hrs when bought now at 340. Has fresh oil when bough and has gone blackish. Due to the dust I've bought new service kit, both air cleaners and oil fuel filters. Thinking change the air at 375 and the fuel at 375. Any wise men out there with similar conditions Thanks
It's optional, blackve76, we operate loaders and a crushing plant on Yorke Peninusla, you probably know how dry, windy and dusty it is here, this time of the year. As a comparison, we change the engine oil and filters in all of our machines, at 300 hours, with no problems at all. Our newer Komatsu is 500 hours. Most diesel engines will turn the oil black fairly quickly, after a change, so it is really up to you. RnR.
Cheers bud, new to diesels more a v8 man do you do air filters at 300hrs aswell?? I'm working in really fine bull dust atm. clean the pre cleaner daily
We usually change the air filters every twelve months, around the end of summer, but we clean them regularly by light tapping or low pressure air nozzle. We keep a close watch on them, in case they do leak dust, but if you have an inner filter as well as an outer, the inner will catch any light dust that might come through. If you only have one element, I would be inclined to change it more often and of course, it does depend on the conditions you are working in, the price of an element is much cheaper than a dusted engine. RnR.
Tap out the outer end of every day, inner still looks clean. That bull dust is fine though. Cheers
How many hours to do an oil change? The norm is 200 to 500 hrs depending on conditions. But if you desire to do it at 100, sure isn't going to harm the engine. On the opposite side, it's far more degrading if the oil isn't changed for a thousand hours. Change it as often as your wallet can afford, but use 200 to 500 as a max. As for the air filter, I know nothing about your model machine, but you mentioned cleaning pre-cleaner daily. What type of pre-cleaner do you have, a plastic bowl type pre-cleaner?
Yep plastic bowl then a 2 air filter design, outer filter tapped out daily the inner I've been told never touch, as soon as it starts to look dirty change. Cool I change oil at 200hrs then. thanks guys
I use UOA's to determine a good interval on most of our stuff which generally can be extended to 500-1500hr intervals or once per year. Since our SSL's are all under warranty I follow the 500hr reccommendation for the oil and 1000 for fuel and hydro filters. Air filters we plug up fast. We tap them out often and will clean the outers with air 4 times then discard them. Once 3 outers have been used up, or if 500hrs has gone by, or if it shows signs of dust, the safety gets changed.
Yair . . . Does anyone wash air filters anymore? Cheers.
We used to have them cleaned, Scrub, but it became a bit of a hassle sending them off, because they were so bulky. The other problem was, we had to have two sets of filters for each machine, so we could keep working while one set was away getting cleaned. The company doing it was very good, they would inspect the filters and tell us if they needed replacing, of course then we were obligated to buy the new filters from them. We decided it was just easier to buy new filters from our regular supplier. I see they still offer a cleaning service. http://www.airfilter.com.au/SiteMgt/ww_Standard.asp?SitePageId=201 We did try washing some ourselves, but it was a time consuming operation and they had to be left quite a while to dry RnR
If you're working in very dusty conditions that require frequent cleaning of dust bowl and air filter, you might look into a better precleaner. The spinning vane inside them are effective at discharging the heavy particles that get trapped in a plastic bowl precleaner. I once worked on a Case 580E at an industrial plant that was used to move some kind of granular material, calcium or something, they had to tap out the air cleaner daily it was so dusty. I put a Turbo II brand precleaner on it and it substantially increased hours between dusting out the air cleaner. Here's a link for an Engineair precleaner. > http://www.enginaire.com/air-precleaners/
Turbo II pre cleaner's are very good.... I run them on the rear engine's on my twin engine scraper's..... Willie was spot on again....
Yair . . . In our scrub operation in the South-west air cleaners were a very big deal. With the oil-bath on the older Allis's they were serviced every day. Then, in the early sixties we were very exited to get the first of the power-shift machines with the new-fangled Farr-Pamic dry air cleaners. The bloody things were useless. They blocked up twice a day and were not cleanable being a square element in a housing with many small paper elements encapsulated in a soft plastic material. The cost of the elements was prohibitive and, on bad days equal to a significant proportion of the hire rate of the machines. Apart from that they didn't work and we ended up with dusted engines. Allis didn't want know about it but eventually, after a visit from the big brass, (who popped across from 'Stateside) they conceded there was a problem. As far as I know they came to the party with a retro fit of Donaldson's . . . or at very least there was some agreement about warranty obligations when the boss financed it him self. The Donaldson's were better of course and there was the peace of mind of having the inner. Still they were a pain compared to the oil-bath that just needed an occasional 44gallon drum of cheap air cleaner oil which was delivered to the paddock with the fuel and other oils. Transport was always the problem as most of our parts came out in a Cessna 206 and air cleaners were bulky and took up a lot of room in the aircraft. Despite the better design, in heavy Mulga dust it was not unusual to have to change them every day . . . often with several pull up and bump outs to keep them going. We did the the back blow with low pleasure air in camp but eventually they had to go back to the shop for washing and inspection. For transport we made special plywood boxes to keep them safe and to keep the residual dust contained and not sprinkled though the plane, as you can imagine with three machines there was a need to keep a supply on hand. In town we had a washing machine with a modified agitator to accept the various elements. There was a dark(ish) room for inspection with the light and all in all air cleaner maintenance was a real pain in the arse. Elements were numbered and a complete history of blowouts washings and inspections kept in an effort to control costs on what was still a very expensive item. Was pleased to see oil bath air cleaners as an option on a line Chinese tractors but when I went to buy one found it only available on 80horse and up. (sad) Dunno if any of this stuff I post about is of interest as cost structures have probably changed and it is irrelevant today. Cheers.
Oil bath filters were effective, like you mention though the maintenance on them was not ideal for some people. Good pre-cleaners go a long ways towards keeping filters clean. Turbo II or any of their other pre cleaners are very good. Donaldson also makes some very good pre-cleaners. They are all a couple hundred dollars but it doesnt take long for them to pay you back. I am still trying to figure out a good way to get some on our skid steers but without having to butcher them since we do trade them often. I have thought about trying to wash some of the filters but haven't tried yet. The Skid steer filters is where it would really save us. We are throwing a couple away per month and at $25-40 each it adds up, but its not like they are $100+ air filters either so I am not dropping everything to figure out a way to make them last a little longer yet. We actually are having the best luck with our new tractors, more and more are coming with Donaldson Powercores which are much smaller filters overall but have a lot of surface area. We get 500hrs out of these with no issues, they would probably go to 1000hrs too as at 500hrs they aren't even full yet. The tractors do have a good aspirator on them though also. Previous models with traditional filters we would get 200-300hrs and need to clean them. The tractors operate in cleaner conditions than the skid steers do. A good aspirator helps a lot too. A blue light can be used in a dark room to inspect the filter for holes after cleaning.
I didn't know that a filter could be washed. Do you guys use different filters? Paper type filters are most common here.
Yair . . . durallymax . The standard pre-cleaner was the Perspex bowl with cyclonic swirl carry on. I think they were quite effective and provided a source of nice clean dust/gripping agent to put on the brake bands and cone clutches of the Le Torneau PCU's. (big grin) ValleyFirewood . I don't know about now but yes, back then the paper elements were washed. A blow out with air and straight water agitation to begin with and then a detergent wash to get rid of oil/soot and another freshwater rinse, dry out in the sun and inspect for damage in the darkroom with a light. I suspect though that (relatively speaking) the elements may have been more expensive then than is the case today. Cheers.
We do our equipment at 250 hours. Fuel every second service and air as required. Anything that works in dusty conditions, 250 is max for an air filter anyway. I've been noticing the service stickers from the rental company we deal with are 1000 hours now. We certainly won't be buying any of their used stuff.
The reason I asked is I tried washing the old filter off my skid steer this summer. The machine came from Georgia and the filter was pretty well full of that red dust/clay that they have there. Tapping it out and using shop air cleaned it some but not enough. I bought a new one but before I threw out the old one I thought about trying to wash it to see if I could. I used the garden hose and cleaned it out. The dust washed out nicely, seemed to work, BUT after it dried it was brittle and crinkly. Still looked like a filter and all, but I suspected the filtering qualities were diminished. I had it happen once with a shop vac filter that I forgot to take off before sucking up a bunch of water. I let it dry but ended up having to put a new filter because it would blow dust out the exhaust.