Looking for suggestions about water contamination in the system of a CAT E200B excavator. Machine is older and was part of a company that we acquired. No one seems to know how the hydraulic system got water in it, but there's no doubt it's got water in it. Not enough water to turn it into a milkshake, but enough that when it gets hot begins to lighten up in color and expand considerably. Oil sampling confirms it too. My plan is to completely drain the hydraulic tank and refill with clean oil, but are there any other steps that I can take. I'm thinking that a 20 hour run and drain again will hopefully take care of it. Comments?
Filtration cart or kidney loop system with water absorbing filters. You can use diesel to flush the system.
We had a Hitachi ex270 roadbuilder with severe water contamination. I used an electric pump in tank to remove oil from reservoir…. Did this twice; I know not a proper fix but due to remote location “called it good”. Used it for a further 2 years with no issue and oil looked “okay”. Turned out the cap for the hydraulic tank had failed…letting in water during heavy rain events.
There was a video on youtube of some guys putting a skidder through its paces while looping the oil through a filter cart. But you have to know where to rent the cart from. I had an old backhoe that I was considering cleaning up the watery oil but sold it before I could execute the plan. I was thinking about supplying it with fresh oil while running functions full out and returning the wet oil from the cylinders and such to a barrel. Either do that or use air for the supply and return to barrel and have to move all the functions with another machine. Depends on the arrangement whether you can get it all out any of these ways. But I sold it for cheap instead just to be rid of it before any of that hassle.
One I watched was a forwarder. Just dumping the tank and refill will take hundreds of gallons. I did that on my baby excavator. Can hardly even tell it has ~25 gallons of fresh oil in it. My firewood processor had ATF as factory fill. 12 years and easily 300 gallons run through it (uses hydraulic oil to lube the bar and chain) it's STILL red. And that's on a system that holds maybe 35-40 gallons total,
Firewood processor; awesome sure could use that here!
It's alot of work. Do it part time now, but was my full time job for about 8 years