Hello everyone, We have a 2008 Bobcat S205 here at work. It has the selectable hand or foot controls and just under 2000 hrs on it. Lately we've been noticing that every now and again the controls get very jerky when using the pedals. My boss was loading stuff into his truck with it and the arms "Went berserk" according to him, they jerked up so much that they broke the back window in the canopy of the truck, and then when he went to lower the arms they whacked down on his tailgate... I wasn't there when this happened but he has been around equipment all his life and he knows what he is doing... Then the other day I was using the machine to backfill a trench and the arms slammed down all the way fast. I thought maybe I pushed the pedal too much but then it did it again with only slight pedal pressure... Another fellow operating the machine also noticed the same issue. Are there any known issues with these machines? None of us are proficient at using the hand controls so we don't know whether or not it does it with the hand controls too, and it has been very intermittent... We need to get this issue resoled ASAP as we use the thing around aircraft and to move aircraft parts and having it behave this way is definitely a bad thing... On edit one thing I forgot to mention is that my friend was using it the other day and said that when he got in to use it the lift arms didn't unlock but everything else did, so he shut it down, restarted it and pressed the "press to operate" button again and it worked normally after that...
rusty/crusty/muddy pedal pivots :drinkup
Thanks Crewchief, we checked that, they're free as a bird, no binding or crud whatsoever... This thing has an enclosed cab so it's actually nice and clean inside...
Little more info, I ran the machine after work yesterday and put it in hand control mode. Now I don't know how to operate it with hand controls but when I just went to raise the arms slowly they would move slowly, and when I went to move them faster they continued to move slowly then suddenly they would get fast. Same thing on the way down. Strange thing is with the hand controls active the bucket got a lot more jerky while with foot control mode the bucket is as smooth and predictable as my old mechanical 873... I'm thinking there's probably something going on at the actuators and the valves, but I have no idea how this system works. Is there anybody who can point me in the right direction here? Thanks!