I picked up a Cat 299c last week at a local auction. It has around 2700 hrs , looks like new tracks and sprockets are mostly new also. I think its around an 08-12 but don't know for sure, its open cab and I believe standard flow. It was a concrete company that the owner died. I had heard it run before it ever went to auction but knew it needed a few small things. I dropped it off at my brothers as he was building a pad and I wanted him to try it out and see what kind of issues it might have. 1. It needed a new battery 2. Key wouldn't always turn it off, when it didn't you had to bent the throttle arm and push it closed to kill the fuel. 3. Throttle pedal was sticking along with the throttle arm. It has the cable arm and not just the turn dial. I put a new battery in it and my brother ran it several hours that day. At the end of the day the battery light came on and hydraulics quit working. So we knew it wasn't charging. He charged it that night to finish up the pad the next day. He checked it out later that week and turned out the belt was off of it. The belt also runs the water pump so I'm surprised it didn't get hot but he didn't run it long periods of time so it may not have got to the point to get hot. Fast forward to today and i have a new belt to put on it. Get the belt put on start it up and it seems to be charging fine, that was a plus. We decide to check coolant level and it seemed like there was a good bit of oil in it. So much that it made us think someone got mixed up and put the hyd oil in the wrong part of the radiator. It is one radiator but has a coolant cap and hyd. cap. Its my first experience with a Cat like this so I assume its just a separate system inside one radiator. We drained all the coolant from the allen bolt right beside the water pump. It was mostly coolant but there was some oil at the end. We flushed the radiator out with the water hose and filled it back up with coolant (roughly 3 gal). We started it up and let it run for 15-20 min, the coolant never started flowing in the radiator. I don't know if it didn't get warm enough or I have a possible issue with the thermostat. The machine ran great and we finally turned it off. The overflow looked like it had a fair amount of oil in it also. We cleaned it out and added coolant. Thats where we kind of ended it. I told him to run it some and see what happened. Here are my questions 1. Why doesn't this thing have a temp gauge??? I can't understand a machine like this not having a tamp gauge? What warning light will alert me if it does run hot? 2. The only light that is on is the yellow ! This model does not have a display, is there a way other than someone with cat software to check what that is showing? 3. Why is there oil in the coolant/radiator? I know that oil in the coolant can be a sign of a bad head gasket. It seemed like a little much to me to be a head gasket and there was no sign of coolant in the oil. Also there is no smoke and the motor starts and runs very smooth. The belt was off for some reason, did they put oil in the radiator by mistake and wanted to take the belt off to not circulate it through, did the water pump go bad? I'm not really sure at this point as it seems to be charging but people don't usually take belts off and leave them for no reason. Could there be an issue in the radiator where hyd oil is getting into the radiator side? 4. How long should it run before the water pump starts circulating? The fan is hydraulic and was on. The radiator was warm but still able to touch it. The hoses going to and from the pump and thermostat were warm/hot. 5. I'm an atv guy so not as familiar with water pumps on these. It is turning fine with the belt so i assume the pump should be working as long as its turning. I guess my next step will be to check the thermostat but was hoping to make sure things were working with it on it and machine running 6. At this point I'm wanting my brother to just run it some at his house cleaning up to see how it does. Should I tell him different? 7. How are these machines in general? I bought this to do a big clean up in my atv salvage yard along with some other projects this summer. I may keep it to do some side work or may sell it at the end of the summer. Any common issues or problems to check on or be aware of?
Sounds like you need an Operation & Maintenance Manual (about $50 IIRC) as a first step. That would help you in knowing what fluids go where and how to check them as well as a load of other useful info. If you want to know the age of the machine and also get the correct manual you need to post the Serial Number.