Thought today was going to be another great day, sit in the A/C, listen to the radio and knock down trees all day. Nope about 30 minutes into today my skid steer operator manages to knock the track of the skid steer. well after about an hour we finally got it back on as we were very limited on the tools we had. so everything goes pretty good until early afternoon. I'm on the the volvo on the other end of the job, my buddy's wroking on the other side pushing up the fire, then I glempse flames behind his cab. So he starts tracking way from the fire and the machine just quits ( I guess cause the wires/ computer started to melt. So I go hauling ass over ripping the pin out of my fire egstingisher and give it hell, got one heck off a mouthfull of burning hydro fluid, rubber and diesel smoke. well that only only slowed the flames, so i run to the truck and get two 5 gallon buckets start runing back on forth to the creek getting water. After about 6 or 7 trips each we had it out as I almost passed out from the heat. breathing like 80 year old smokers we sit at the water cooler and take in what the heck just happened. so now we have a realtively new deere 160 that, want run, every hydraulic hose is burnt, computer fried, 40' from a pile thats still burning like hell. So I get the volvo and just dump dirt on the fire and put it out. Tomorrow the dealers coming out to take apart the drive motorrs so that we can drag it up on a lowboy and get it out of there. really suck for the owner of the machine, only machine he had that was working/ making some money and this happens... good thing for insurance. But on the bright side i'm going to go look at that 650 H dozer in the morning It's really worse than what the pictures show... got so hot flames were shooting through the radio speaker holes in the cab
I thought I only had horrible luck.
Sometimes cabs with A/C aren't the best thing to be working around burning brush piles!!!!!! With the cool, cool air in the cab it's hard to tell how hot the fires is actually getting,until to late. It's too bad,personally i don't like messing with burning brush piles because of the chance of burning the machine up like the one above. Hope everything works out since looked to be a nice machine,plus if it is his only one that was working,it will be a double blow.Good luck.:usa
Yeah He had been working around the fire for about an hour pushing it up and stacking it all around. Don't want to sound like a know it all ,but that's a bout 50 minutes longer than I would have. I alwasy leave the window open so I can feel what's happening outside. Like I said I'm not the type of person who goes over and tells someone how to do their job, eapecially when they've been doing it longer than I have. I'm just glad I saw it when it happened or there would have been nothing but a burnt deere there.
I'm sure the boys at RW Moore will love that one!
That's where it's going
OK - so I thought I had a bad Monday! I am just glad you were there to notice the fire before it got real out of hand. Yes the tractor has some serious damage, but everyone that arrived at the job that morning, got to go home at the end of the day. My philosophy is that Deere, Cat, Komatsu, etc. makes those machines everyday and you can get another one, however you were only made once.:cool2 So was this guy a subcontractor for you guys?
Happened to a 963 just down the road from me. Went to push up the pile and had a drive motor hose blow on his way in. Between the hydraulic fluid shooting into the fire and the loss of movement, the loader was more black than yellow by the end of the day. The fact that pond was not drained yet only gave the FD more time before they ran out of water.The fire got so hot that one or two hydro cylinders bent and oil pan melted away. Nothing much to salvage form the hole thing. The loader sat for a good six months before, i have a feeling they were playing the blame game. I don't remember exactly what they did to get it on a trailer, almost 8 years ago, but do remember a KW tractor with a couple of winches pulling on the trailer. Wish i had pictures, but i wasn't that smart back then.
always carry a 17mm socket with you for those takeuchis...and a smaller one for the plate...i believe that one is a 7mm, but a 3/4 inch socket will work in a pinch for that grease fitting bummer about the Deere...guess they can't run too well when their tails are on fire
Tell me about it. I have developed a routine of glempsing around the jobsite everytime a swing around on the excavator. It's real easy just ot get tunnel vision and only focus on your stuff but today it saved a machine from completely buring to the ground. I thought I was in good shape, but man I felt like I lost a good fist fight when I was done bailing water. We are actually working with this fellow on this job. He's a good friend of ours and he got the job, but just wanted a little more knowledge and help on building this pond as he does not have much experience with ponds. Hopefully his insurance with supply a rental until it's fixed.
when it comes to argueing with ins. companies...sometimes it's better to let them burn for a good 20-30 mins. before you make the call to the FD. sometimes a total is better than a machine that has been pieced back together.
X2 just get out the marshmallows.
Dude that sux!! I agree about the ins. thing.
good thing nobody got hurt in the incident, Chris.
That poor Deere!! That really sucks!! How many other pieces or what type of equipment does your friend have besides the beautiful 160?
Sorry to hear about your excavator. Thank God no people were injured or killed.
THis is something I've been wondering about. I see burned out excavators for sale all the time and I've been wondering why they catch of fire so often. Now it makes sense to me, and it has nothing to do with the brand of excavator. If I understand this, they park next to the fire and keep adding wood or punching it up, but don't realize how hot it is outside because of the air conditioning in the cab. After so long, oil, greese or hydraulic oil will catch on fire and the machine burns. Thanks, I never thought of this before and I might not actually ever need this knowledge, but just in case, I'm glad to have it. Eddie
That is not the only reason an excavator catches fire. Another common fire cause on an excavator is a blow hydraulic hose. If you blow a hose on the boom it sprays towards the engine compartment. Hot hydraulic oil hitting a hot turbo charger or any other engine part is almost an instant fire. Working in the demo business with attachments that have a large hydraulic oil reserves, Ive seen it happen before. An excavator with a shear usually carries double the normal amount of oil. The pumps are usually jacked to the sky psi wise. Ive seen 2 excavators in the last three years catch fire. Luckily both times our 8000 gallon cat D400 water truck was in the area.
nasty
The Deere was removed from the jobsite on wed. of this week. I was on another site working so not recovery pictures, sounded like everything went smooth though. But now the deere dealer is tring to say that there is $70,000 worth of damages done to the machine.... I don't know if there trying to screw the insurance company out of it of what. That just seems way, way too high for repairs, hell we should have just let it burn... :beatsme
$70,000 sounds about right considering dealer rates and new replacement parts. When I had some problems with the hydraulic motors on my Case dozer, the dealer said it would be $20,000 for each hydraulic pump, and that I needed to replace all three. I took one out myself and had it rebuilt for $2,000 plus another $1,000 for them to go through the drive motor for that pump. Eddie
OOOOw, seem to remember one or two comments along those lines at the time of your first post, and must admit when you wrote about running with a bucket I hoped it was diesel you were adding to the fire . With an insurance claim the dealer will be quoting to replace anything that got excessively hot even things we wouldn't think of, ( O rings ) pipework we would take a chance on, they wont. I bet its a new cab in the quote where as we would rub it down and respray. If it was ours and not insured ( I dont mean, me personally, I mean us part exp ops with a few spanners ) we could probably have it up and running for about a 10th of that, but then add on the labour we none of us count as were doing it and the fact that the colours dont match just perfect but it will do for us as its a machine, etc, etc, etc. Now compare that to your mate who when he gets it back from the dealer following an insurance claim repair has a hose burst after 23hrs due to failliar as a result of undetected damage sustained in the fire I agree it seems a lot of money but at the end of the day whether it costs $50000 or $70000 its an insurance claim, and if you and me had been a bit cleverer we would be working in that industry instead of this one :drinkup AND being on another job is not a good enough excuse for the lack of pictures, do 100 lines " poor planning leads to lack of pictures " After thought, what does a new one cost, roughly.