Last week I got a call from one of my customers. He has a 930M (KTG00960) loader that seems to be a lemon. Around 2500 hrs it was out moving snow for the town. Started cutting out and dying intermittently. Turns out a hydraulic line had chafed through some of the wires for the engine ECM (1 of 5 ECMs on that machine). So this call they were driving it from the shop to a job to move some jersey barriers. Operator went over a bump and everything hydraulic stopped working. Since it was now 5pm, getting dark, and the side of the road was no place to messing around with this machine we loaded it onto the trailer with another loader and dragged it back to the shop. We sent it up to CAT the next day. The symptoms were: No steering, no brakes, no implement functions, NO COOLING FAN, multiple warnings for brake pressure on display. ET was showing 15 psi for hydraulic pressure. The coupler from the engine to the hydraulic pumps had failed. Notice there are 2 sets??!! The ones towards the back of the table were from a 938M that had been in just before our machine. Same failure. 938 had a little of 6000hrs 930 has 5600hrs I'm having the service manager have CAT do a search for 346-8615 and part failures. I'm beginning to think that coupler replacement needs to be done at 5000hrs. No service bulletins or updated parts......yet. Teeth on the steel gear connected to the pump shaft. Teeth on the PLASTIC coupling half mounted on the engine flywheel. Trying to upload a copy of the exploded view of the coupler from SIS. Haven't learned how to do that yet. Hopefully this will help somebody down the road.
Is this the exploded view you are looking for.?
Not an uncommon failure. Although the hours are relatively low, what's the age of the machine in years?
Now a similar failure in a different world. Honda motorcycle drive splines, they'd strip out in a heartbeat if they were dry, but there was a special 60% moly paste grease that prevented all the issues with splines stripping out. Not sure if it would help there but maybe worth a try.
Believe it or not I'm up against a similar issue stripping the internal splines out of the couplers that connect the hydraulic motor and the pump for the differential lube system in the latest generation of Cat off-highway trucks. Difference is that the parts in question are all steel - no plastic in them.
Chris, take a look at NPR for the 346-8615 and tell me what you see....... IMHO if the OP has a proactive dealer that's prepared to fight for their customers he ought to be able to get some parts support for both those failures.
I can't see service letters with my access. Googled the first one but it expired a year ago.
I know that, but just from the document numbers both you & I can see that they are Service Letters. Most of them are still in date. Problem for the OP is that they all seem to cover K-Series loaders in the 924-930-938 bracket, not M-series. Hence my comment about how good his dealer will be at going into bat for him. If I was still a TC I know I would.
I suppose it also depends on if they are Before Failure or After Failure letters. You would have to assume After Failure because dealers are pretty good on administering Before Failure ones. But yes, there's no harm in asking the dealer to pursue a policy warranty claim.
THANKS NIGE for posting the exploded diagram. It was late last night and I didn't have the patience to find the work around to getting it posted However, after a good night sleep I seem to have figured out how to post the diagram after reading all your replies!! Our dealer is Milton Cat here in the Northeast. I had no idea I was going to get the numerous responses I have received. Just figured I'd throw it out there if anyone else was having a proplem. The mechanic at Milton Cat and I had discussed how we could rig something up to get some lube in there. Machine was bought from Milton Cat 2015. It was builit 3/9/2015. Like I said, we've had too many problems with it. Chafed wiring harness to ECM, speed sensors going bad and needed to go up to cat to be recalibrated, now this coupler. Any chance this coupler is a hold over from the 'K' series machines??
I wouldn't say it's a holdover, more like "it worked on the K Series. Why would we change it" kinda deal.
Ha, I thought the big gear was coated, but its plastic? well, hmm, that's a hell of a thing.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the problem might be more prevalent than just being a one or two machine failure. I also wonder whether the 'service manager' was just placating me when I asked him to research the plastic gear part number. I base that on the fact the old service manager dropped dead of a heart attack on the shop floor last month. This guy was filling in and has 3 dept.s he's running. It was very apparent he wasn't happy with the extra burden. Anyone have any contacts at CAT HQ whom I could get contact with?? Wonder if they'd be interested in doing a failure analysis if I sent the parts down??
You'll have to do it via the dealer, at least in the first instance. Cat likely won't accept communications any other way unless you demonstrate that you tried every possible avenue via the dealer first and only bypassed them as a last resort. Check your PM's.
Chances are they are known problems and any improvement will be on machines in production. New updates will be on new parts that filter into the system. Cat, has been well known over the years to do R&D on the customer's dime.