Hello all Case 1840 owners and mechanics, my 1994 Case 1840 died again while cleaning snow in just about freezing temperature. It started perfectly, run with no problem and suddenly the engine dies. It does it very quickly, there is no slow down or sputtering or anything that would signal this is coming. Yesterday it happened 4x in the row but each time it would start again right away after sitting for 10 to 15 minutes and after that it would run perfectly other 30 to 45 minutes……except the last time. Now it cranks OK but no smoke no sputter even with starting fluid sprayed in the air filter intake. I am aware of the issue with starting fluid entering the diesel engine but in situation like this I am just trying to eliminate all the possible problems with fuel delivery from the tank all the way to the cylinders and I believe that short bursts of starting fluid or WD40 into air filter intake should actually do that and the engine should show some signs of life. To have access to the fuel filters, lift pump, IP, fuel shut off solenoid etc the cabin need to slide out and for that the bucket needs to be all the way up and if the engine is not running for any reason, be it starter or fuel or solenoid – how can that be done? There are a few posts here describing problems starting the engine and they troubleshot fuel delivery components or replace the starter but somehow I couldn’t find any post describing how did they actually lift the bucket all the way up to slide the cabin out and start troubleshooting. This is where I am stuck now. I appreciate any ideas or suggestions, I feel really bad because it looks like everybody knows how to do that so they even not mention it. Thanks for your help.
That should be a fully mechanical machine. You can use the starter while sitting in the seat while holding your boom up position. As the starter turns the engine the boom will start to go up........Do this in 10 second intervals and when you stop the starter, let the boom up go back to neutral. Repeat this until the boom is where you want it. Make sure you don't overheat the starter motor by not letting it cool for a minute between runs. This is not the preferable method, but it does work in pinches such as yours.
That should be a fully mechanical machine. You can use the starter while sitting in the seat while holding your boom up position. As the starter turns the engine the boom will start to go up........Do this in 10 second intervals and when you stop the starter, let the boom up go back to neutral. Repeat this until the boom is where you want it. Make sure you don't overheat the starter motor by not letting it cool for a minute between runs. This is not the preferable method, but it does work in pinches such as yours.
There's that dam site delay again!!!!
It sounds like the shut off solenoid is loosing power and this last time the wire quit giving juice.. There are several inj pumps that can be used on that beast.. BUT I’m thinking it’s a VE pump.?? The shut off solenoid is on the back of the pump, right in front of the lines going to the injectors.. It’s just a 1 wire solenoid and it grounds thru the pump body.. If u can get someone to turn the key ON & OFF.. u should hear or feel it clicking..with the turn of the key.. Check the wire connector.. Good luck and stay warm..
Good morning and thanks for the responses! To Vetech63 - if it is possible for the engine to develop enough hydraulic power to lift up the boom just using the starter then the battery must be weak because I tried that and it would do maybe an inch so I concluded that the starting rpms are not enough do get the hydraulic oil pressure required. There was a fresh snowfall here during the night and the Hydro company lost el. power so I spent the early morning with that issue. But now the backup generator is running so I will plug in the charger and recharge the battery or pull a stronger battery from other vehicle but will have adapt somehow the posts to the current Case battery cables. Thepumpguysc = yes, you are 100% correct. The IP is a Bosh VE with a single wire solenoid but right now there is absolutely no access to it so I will try Vetech63 suggestion first, it would be really great if that works. I live alone on a larger acreage in a mountain terrain, very few permanent neighbors around here in this end of woods. The driveway from the house to the public gravel road is long with some steeper sections so I really need to be self reliant and appreciate very much the help from the forum. Intermittently faulty solenoid would shut down the engine suddenly but what would be nice to know why, after the engine shuts down suddenly itself, it doesn't respond to the air filter intake spray. I spray the WD40 in the intake during much colder weather to save the starter and the battery and normally the engine starts right up, doesn't need to turn over many times. But when it dies in the middle of work then even the warm engine will not try to start or at least sputter. I keep thinking what could be reason for that because using the air filter intake bypasses the whole fuel system and it is scarry when the engine suddenly stops responding even to that. Thank you guys, the battery is now on a charger already and in the meantime I will see if I can adapt the Case cables to the other stronger battery.
In the meantime, check the fuses..
Hi there everyone, it was a very long Sunday. 1st I repaired the connection between the positive cable and the battery terminal. With freshly charged battery and engine turning the arms would not move. Brought a second battery and connected them in parallel. Engine turning a touch faster, bucket would curl in a kind of a stepping motion but boom nothing. A neighbor from acreage about a mile down the road incidentally called about some unrelated matter and came up with his tractor to lift up the boom. After much dancing around and trying various setups we ended up with a variant where the tractor bucket was above the skid steer bucket both connected by wrapping a long chain around them. The arms would not move, the front skid steer wheels were off the ground up in the air while I was in the cabin, using the starter and moving the boom control but the arms would not move even an inch. We decided to unpin the cylinders and only after that the arm would slowly rise to about 4 feet. Now he needed to get the tractor bucket under the skid steer bucket so we supported the arms with a length of 4x4 and decided to connect the cylinders back to the arms. From the cabin I turned on the starter and very carefully started controlling the cylinders, worried that without any load the shafts would shoot out very quickly. To my surprise they were creeping out very slowly and kept slowly moving out even after I completely released the control. Now they were extended too far to fit the pins thru the holes in the arms and there was no way to retract them back so the tractor had to rise the boom again. Eventually we were able to insert the cylinders pins back. After that he continued raising the arms till the safety bar on the right arm engaged. By that time it was dark outside and slightly freezing which probably caused the hydraulic oil (10W30) not flowing very easy but it can't explain why no matter which way I put the boom control, the shaft would only keep slowly moving out from the cylinders but it would never retract back inside (while using the starter to rotate the engine). But at least I will be now able to slide out the cabin and get to the fuel filters, IP and the shut off solenoid. I will order the solenoid and also the oil pressure sensor probably from Amazon. I bought that skid steer from a dealer who took as a trade in during a transaction for some farm about 12 years ago. It was in a horrible shape, has 3 different JAF numbers on various locations so I am never sure which one is the right one. The pumpguy, you were correct about the type of IP and a single wire solenoid. Could you please find the part number for the solenoid and even possibly for the oil pressure sensor, I would appreciate that.
This almost sounds like the hydraulic fluid level is really low and you have air in the cylinders.
Just do a Google search for Bosch shut off solenoid.. I don’t have the other sensor #..
Vetech63 - This almost sounds like the hydraulic fluid level is really low and you have air in the cylinders.... good morning and thanks for suggestions! Wouldn’t the air in the cylinders compress under the lifting pressure and the shafts retracted at least a bit? When we started this whole procedure, the tractor bucket bottom lip was under the skid steer bucket bottom blade, Because his bucket is much smaller he was only able to engage in a sort of diagonal manner, engaging only by an inch or so because the reinforcement ribs and the side wall of his bucket were in the way. I curled up the bucket a touch so his bucket could slide under. During the lifting, the skid steer bucket trajectory is a large diameter circle and the bucket is pushing against his tractor. It was difficult for him to keep lifting up and at the same time inching backward to allow for the skid steer bucket forward movement because his bucket lip would slip from under and lose contact. Those two machines were fighting against each other resulting in the skid steer front axle lifted up off the ground and we were hoping the skid steer own weight would develop enough pressure for the arms to lift up. Had there were air in the cylinders the shafts would probably retracted at least a bit but they did not. It was like welded together. We were also thinking to suspend the skid steer bucket with a steel rope or long chain from the tractor bucket having a single length of chain between those two buckets which would allow for that forward movement. But that would require his tractor boom to be much higher and we worried about his light weight tractor losing balance while lifting up the skid steer arms that way. Regarding the hydraulic oil level, it never dropped below half full . The boom was working perfectly moment before the engine died. There are no leaks of any fluid, it would be also clearly visible on the fresh white snow and the oil level in glass gage would show low oil level. I thought that when any of the control levers are in the neutral position it allows the pressurized hydraulic oil to freely circulate from the oil pump through the hydraulic system, through the spools back into the oil reservoir and would expect this kind of high oil flow resistance if the pump is not rotating. It would prove no leaks through the pump. But when the starter runs the pump (and it worked fine to control the bucket) it should also move the arms at least a bit but they did not. No matter which positions the boom control was in, the arms would not move either direction. And after we unpinned the cylinders and there was no load on them at all, the shafts would only move out very slowly and never retracted back. This is something that is hard to explain and it would suggest something wrong with the spool valve otherwise how to explain that the bucket which runs off the same oil pump responds correctly and the unpinned rods in the lift cylinders basically don’t move at all or very hesitantly and only in one direction. If the boom was not working without any issues just before the engine died it would point in this case to the spool valve, wouldn’t it? To Thepumpguy - thanks for the suggestion. One result of the search is on the attachment, I will hold off with ordering the solenoid after I remove the old one along with the oil pressure sensor just to make sure those look the same. Thanks all for helping with this, now it looks like the boom control is becoming more and more puzzling because it should not behave the way it does.
MF135 with Allied 350 loader? Is it a diesel? I have the same set up except a UK model and a cab off an MF20 industrial. Most reliable machine I own. Didn't read all the text but could the aux. hyd's be engaged? That could stop or slow boom and bucket functions.
Hello Welder Dave, thanks for bringing up the aux. hydraulic point. When using the starter to run the pump I had the floor plate removed so the jumper cables could reach the Case battery down below and the second battery was sitting on the cabin stepping plate. To get in the seat from the outside I had to step over the second battery and put my foot on the chain inspection cover on either side of the missing floor plate so it was impossible to step incidentally on the aux. control pedal located on the floor level. I recall seeing the pedal in a horizontal position while sitting in the seat but the next time I will test the lift I will remember to pay extra attention to this. I have stepped occasionally on that pedal in the past but when the engine runs normally this creates so much load on the pump that the whole engine sound changes and everything loses lots of power. Great point, thank you!
Wouldn't putting your machine in "float" have been a better way.
I would get the engine to start, don't worry about the hydraulics if they worked up till it shut off. And it shut off more than once, so the hydraulics worked even after it shut down several times. Moving the hydraulic control from lift to lower while lifting externally will usually work also.
Hello and thanks to everyone who responded. My skid steer is running again which this time of year when there is frequent snow fall here makes me really happy but at the same time it leaves me wondering 1) why, when using the starter only, the pump which runs the lift and the bucket was able to curl the really heavy bucket with grapple but did not move the lift rods even when they were unpinned from the arms (so there was basically no load on them at all but the rods itself) and 2) why the diesel engine does not even tried to start on ether or WD40 sprayed in the air filter suction. It turned out that the whole problem was electrical. The harness with wires to the fuel shut off solenoid, engine oil pressure, coolant temperature etc has chassis ground created but the flywheel area. Long time ago, when there was a problem with excessive voltage drop while starting the engine I have found that it was caused not only but voltage drop on hot wires but also by less than perfect electrical grounding. I have used almost an inch wide braded grounding strip I purchased somewhere and created two extra grounding point, one on each side of flywheel using the flywheel bolts to go thru the braded mesh and then using copper grounding connector to make a good electrical contact between the harness ground and the chassis. Apparently when I was replacing the coupler rubber bushings inside the flywheel I forgot to bolt the braded strip to the flywheel housing and the harness was getting ground just by accidental contact when the relatively heavy chunk of wires was touching the flywheel bolt. I discovered that only accidentally when, after I was able to lift the arms with the help of neighbors tractor and slide the cabin forward and I wanted to remove the fuel solenoid I realized that even now there is no way I can get to that solenoid. I removed the engine oil filling tube, the oil dipstick, the fuel filter and I could see the solenoid connector but there was no way to get to it with hands or tools to unscrew it from the back wall of the fuel injector pump (btw it is Lucas, not Bosh as I thought). That was a shocking discovery and while I was trying to figure out what everything will have to be removed to get to that fuel solenoid (or engine oil pressure sensor) I decided to test the solenoid itself. Because I had completely disconnected the main battery before, I now brought a small 12 V accumulator I had from uninterruptable power supply and as I wanted to connect the accumulator minus terminal to that ground braded chunk of wires by the flywheel I noticed it was not bolted to the flywheel but hanging loose. So I bolted it back to the housing, connected the negative terminal of the external battery to it with a jumper wire and with other wire tested the fuel solenoid. It was clicking and responding perfectly. So I reconnected the main battery and after a few turns the engine started running. I really did not expect it to run it so perfectly because the day before I removed the fuel filter and there was constant fuel dripping from the fuel filter holder till the next day afternoon. We had freezing weather here so after I removed the linkage, the cabin, the fuel filter, engine oil fill tube and dipstick I was frozen enough and went home so there was diesel dripping about 20 hours and I was expecting air in the fuel lines and associated problems later on when the engine will start running. But to my surprise none of that happened, after fixing the ground connection I only topped off the fuel filter, mounted it back and the engine fired up without any hiccup. I let it run for about 10 minutes waiting for any problems but it run perfectly. So I reconnected the linkage etc, slide the cabin back and started cleaning the snow from the house parking lot and around the wood shed. Everuthing work perfectly, including the lift. It took almost an hour without any problem. So the whole experience left me wondering why this engine will not even attempt to start using ether or WD40 with the solenoid closed (some people in this forum described that their engine will die the moment the stop spraying ether when they have difficulty starting) and why the same hydraulic pump that can curl the bucket using the starter only will not move even the unpinned lift rods no matter if the hand control is in float, up or down position. This is mind boggling and if anyone has any idea or expatriation please post it here because it will help anyone to better understand the reasons and how to troubleshoot similar problem. I realized this might too long reading for many people but I do not know how to condense all of that without leaving out anything important but my apology for the long writeup and thanks for reading.
One more thing I forgot to ask: exactly what everything must be removed to replace the fuel solenoid on the 1840? After removing the engine oil fill tube, dipstick and fuel filter I was a few inches from it but in no way to actually get to it with tools to remove it. The fuel lines from the injector pump were in the way, the hydraulic hoses, control valve and linkage for lift and bucket was in the way, they really could not find a place with a more difficult access to something so important like the fuel solenoid or engine oil pressure sensor.
You'll get more responses if your posts weren't so long winded.