One of my 310SJ has developed a real bad sqweak on the loader when raising and lowering. It is so bad if you lower it at a slow speed it's almost chattering you can feel it in the seat. I have grease and greased some more sprayed penetrating oil. Nothing seems to work. It's driving me crazy. Sounds like it hasn't been greased in over 100 hours. Anyone ever had this problem? Not sure where to go from here.
Sounds like a busted bearing.
A bushing?
Backhoe only has around 2400hrs and gets greased regularly
If you watch closely when you lower or raise the loader, you may see the bucket tilt a little. Like from the sqweeky cylinder not wanting to move as easily as the other side. If you see that tilting, You need to replace the seals in that cylinder. The seal has swollen some how.
You could try rising the loader and have someone put the grease to it as you lower it so the grease gets in in a different spot than when you you grease it at rest. If that doesn't work I think you need to pull the pin and get a look at it.
I'm with Deon, I'm betting you have a cylinder with a bad piston, either a bad seal chattering or metal to metal contact in there. YMMV
With that many machines to work with, just hold the bucket up with another and pull the top pins for the loader lift cylinders and let set down on the tires. Operate the cylinders and if that doesn't show the problem then lower and lift the loader with the other machine, at least you'll find the problem, then figure out how to fix it.
Figured someone with a stethoscope or a broomhandle could find the problem area in a hurry.
Know nothing about a 310SJ but by any chance does this one have lines going from grease fittings to the bearings? We sometimes had a problem with some of our Cat loaders with remotely mounted grease fittings. Especially on a couple of the lines to the boom and top of hoist cylinders. Seems they would rub a hole in the line and when you pumped the grease to it it would look like it was coming out of the bearing. In fact the hole in the line was right next to the bearing and nothing was actually going into the bearing. Another thing I would ask did this squeaking start up fast or did it come on over a period of time? One more thing I just remembered. Most of the time when I greased a machine I would lower the bucket to the ground and grease it like that. But on one machine that was giving a problem like yours I found that if you greased it while putting a good amount of down pressure on the bucket it would let grease get to the place it needed to go.
I tested the loader like deon suggested and the one corner of the bucket will move slightly before the other. I also had a knowledgeable friend of mine look it today too and we came to the conclusion it's the right hand lift cylinder. Now my question is. Should I remove both to have them disassembled for inspection. Of just the one we think is causing the noise?
Do both. They are connected together and will cross contaminate. If you have metal contamination, you will need to clean or replace the hoses, clean the circuit reliefs, and replace the filter. If it were mine, I would clean the hydraulic tank and use all new hydraulic oil. Contamination failures can be Bearcats to solve.
I would open up the squeaky cylinder first. A seal can swell with just a small amount of rust on the gland or just because of nothing. Don't get too worried until you see the seals and gland. Inspect the seal groove for rust and clean out properly before installing new seals. And if you don't see anything that you can identify as wrong, replace it anyway and your squeak should be gone.
well good you have it isolated, its also possible that the squeaky cyl has a whisker of a bend in the rod, check it with a straightedge, have seen that on lighter machines, quite a bit, no, it wasn't always my fault, but usually Bent a lift arm rod when the pivot pin broke in the bore, ended up straightening the rod with a hydraulic jack and a chain lashed to the welding table. Glad I made the welding table out of 1 inch plate with a 2x2 heavy wall tubing frame.
Took both cylinders to the hydraulic shop. They disassembled them and told me it was rust in the head that was the problem and both need a rebuild.
I always pack hardgrease in all empty spaces around the gland and snap ring etc purposely to stop rusting.
Hope this doesn't turn out to be what's squeaking on mine. My backhoe was creaking and making a sound like a crack in metal somewhere. I was out of the EP lithium grease that the manual says to use so I went ahead and used the moly grease I use on everything else. Creaking noise went away and the loader started squeaking. Plan to go over it with the moly next. I just went through and replaced ALL the grease fittings. Bought a new gun to load with the recommended grease. Should have just stuck with my old favorite that I grease everything else with. This old hoe was fairly tight and quiet before I greased everything with the lithium stuff and seemed to loosen up and get noisy soon after. Cylinders do seem to fail in pairs. Did one of my stabilizers as soon as I got the machine and the other went 2 weeks later. Helped my son in law do his boss's loader cylinder last week and the other side blew as soon as he tried to use it.