I had a significant amount of H2O in my hydraulic system on my 580E, and consequently drained the reservoir and, thanks to some great advice I received when on here, blew out each of the umpteenth cylinders with compressed air (both ways). After doing all that, I imagine there's still some contaminated fluid in the lines & pump and was wondering what might be the best way to get it out. I was tempted just to start her up and methodically move each and every control valve fore and aft, but am not sure that would do the trick or may even inadvertedly burn out the pump. I also thought about using compressed air again, but am unsure as to how well that'd work either or if I'd need to keep certain valves open when doing it. If I can avoid it, I'd rather not use fresh oil to purge the lines due to cost and the messy-ness factor. Any helful comments would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.
How did the water get in the system? any remaining water left(if there's just a little) will evaporate when you get the oil hot! take it out and work it good get that oil up to temp,hot it'll burn off any remaining water.
PHP: How did the water get in the system? Yea, I don't know. I got it used and found the problem out when I noticed the hydraulics were kinda weak. I'm assuming maybe someone left the cap to the reservoir off for a while and rain got it there? The cap itself seems to seal well so I'm not sure how else that would (unintentionally) happen. Speaking of the cap, would I have to leave it off for the water that burns off to escape?
No... was the oil milky looking??
Yup. Mostly water drained out 1st, then came the milkshake. Cylinders all had milky fluid in them too.
Wow not good that bad huh....you may have to still do a flush IF...the oil looks cloudy still.
Do not start the machine without enough oil in the hyd. tank to keep the pump from running dry !!! The water source has to be found and eliminated or all your work and new oil is wasted. If it is an enclosed system any remaining water cannot escape. I know this from my own experience with a contaminated hyd. system. Although you have stated you do not want to flush the system with new oil I found that to be the only way I was ever able to ride the system of all traces of water.
IF........it's minimal water still left it WILL burn off with use,, been there done that. most hyd oil's have demulsification for water separation, UNLESS the concentration of water is too great then a flush is in order.
OK then, a flush it is. All lines are disconnected from their respective cylinders right now, so should I cap off all but 1 line (one at a time) and hit its corresponding valve to do this correctly? It is an enclosed system, Tinkerer, and thanks for the info regarding pump burn-out with no fluid.
seagull369, if you have a 580E Case, there is a way to do yours and do a fairly thorough job of it. First, Raise the front loader all the way up, roll the bucket all the way down. Drop your outriggers. Fully raise the backhoe boom, fully extend the backhoe arm, and curl the bucket all the way in and fully swing to one side. Then, drain the hyd reservoir and remove spin on hyd filter. Next, disconnect pipe #15 from fitting #16 on filter housing. Connect a length of hose to end of pipe #15, send that hose to a waste oil drum. Put a JIC cap on the fitting at the filter housing, screw on a new filter, this is just to prevent oil loss back through filter. Fill the hyd reservoir. Make sure throttle is set to idle. Hold lever to roll out backhoe bucket with one hand and keep other hand on key, start engine. When bucket is rolled out fully grab lever to drop backhoe arm. When it's fully retracted, shut of engine. Add more oil to reservoir. Start engine while holding swing control to swing boom to opposite side. Stop engine and check oil. Start engine and immediately lower backhoe boom, stopping just short of contact with ground, then immediately grab levers, then grab levers to retract outriggers, stop and check oil level again. Lastly, start engine, roll loader bucktet up then drop loader. Reconnect pipe #15 to filter housing, fill reservoir to proper level. By doing it this way you purge the bulk of the contaminated oil out of the system and send it into a waste oil drum. There will be a small amount of residual contaminated oil, but not enough to affect system.
that's somthing like i did,,makes a mess sometimes but you get most the old oil out .
Thank you posting those very detailed instructions, ATCOEQUIP. I'm a little leary, however, of sending contaminated fluid to the very cylinders I spent more than a few hours cleaning out. Wouldn't the 'capping' idea I mentioned earlier be effective as well? All I really want to do is just remove/flush out the remaining (bad) oil that's in the pump and lines.
Well, if you have time, certainly it's more effective to take all your lines loose and flush them out, no question. But it's not an easy task to take every line loose on any machine and effectively remove the maximum amount of contaminated oil. Not impossible, but very time consuming. Using the method I've described gets the most contaminated oil from system that can be done in a practicle manner very quickly. The remaining amount of contaminated oil is generally managable and have little detrimental affect on the system.
There are hydraulic filters that remove water aswell, Stauff makes some. Be sure you don't create to many air bubbles in the hydraulic tank since you have allot of air in your system. Aerated oil = cavitated pump. Its best to move all functions around at low rpm and allow the hydraulic tank to settle if it becomes to milky looking (Aerated oil can appear to be contaminated with water) You can also get filter carts that will circulate your hydraulic oil and remove contamination and moisture if its still an issue.
I wouldn't be overly concerned about a little water, in a steel mill environment we run a water/glycol mixture instead hydraulic oil because it is a fire retardant(40% water). BTW, aerated oil(air entrainment) and cavitation are two distinctly different problems, often mistaken for one another but different. Hope this helps, Tom
I am just about to start following Willie's directions to flush the hydraulic fluid in my 580E and realized that I don't know when to extend/retract the 4-in-1 clamshell cylinders or the extendahoe. My intuition was to just extend all cylinders and retract them one at a time, but after more thoroughly reading his instructions I see that isn't the case (for example, starting with the loader bucket rolled all the way down means those cylinders are fully retracted.) Thanks for any help.
Kevin; Willies procedure will work. Here is a link, where I described in detail how I do it. It is in post #6. There is no air involved for clearing the contaminated cylinders. I can guarantee if you follow my procedure you will flush all of the contaminated oil out of your machine.
In Jackson, WY my windows of good weather are so short that I’d like to do Willie’s method, but it didn’t include what to do with the clamshell or extendahoe.
The order in which you do it isn't that important. Which ever way the rod moves be sure you don't force contaminated oil back into the system from the opposite side of that particular cylinder. Extend or retract the cylinder all the way then remove the dead side hose and blow the crap into a bucket while you are forcing clean oil into the cylinder.
That was my thought. I figured I’d start with all cylinders extended, drain and refill the tank, run the return hose at the filter to a waste drum, then one at a time retract all cylinders while keeping the tank topped off. But, Willie’s directions have me starting out with the bucket cylinders retracted, so I was wondering if I was thinking about it incorrectly.
Doesn't matter is you start out with a cylinder extended or retracted. It would be better to take the hoses off of the cylinders to prevent contaminated oil from staying in the system. What I mean is, purge the lines with clean oil. Then connect only one hose so you can move the rod to extract the contaminated oil from the open side of that cylinder. Two cylinders at the same time if it is a pair. Like on the clam-bucket or loader or hoist.
Unfortunately, there has been so much water mixed with the oil that it has emulsified and no longer settles at the bottom. As far as I understand, the entire system needs to be flushed a couple of times with new oil. The serial number is partly worn off, so I cannot provide it. However, I’m interested in any LS386 documentation if someone happens to have it.
sorry, this came wrong place...
Welcome to HEF, JKV ! Perhaps one of the forum mods will move your question to the excavator forum, you may get answers to your questions about your Pel job LS386. If you do the flush correctly it will need to be done just once. Get a service manual. It will describe how to do the flush. There is such a thing called a filter cart. It can/will clean the oil that is in it now. It may be cheaper to flush the contaminated oil out.