Hey everyone, I'm about to start researching some hydraulic test tools for troubleshooting/diagnosing machines. I'm thinking something like a dial pressure gauge, flow meter, etc. Does anyone have a test set they like? The budget would be commensurate with a non-professional home user. Thanks in advance!
Hydraulic test sets and home user prices usually don't go together. Anytime a company has taken the time to put a set together the price seems to double or more in cost. For home use I would do some research on Google and then keep an eye on EBAY and purchase individual components, be careful on EBAY, sometimes stuff sells there for more money than you can find it elsewhere, do your research. I'd like to say to stay away from the Chinese stuff but even the good name brands are often made there. You don't say what you will be working on, flow meters generally come in 2 pressure ranges, 3500 psi and 6000 psi with the higher rating obviously being the more expensive. Hedland makes a good tube type flow meter for a fairly reasonable price, Hydracheck sells the same one with their brand on it and is often a little less in price. Hope this helps a bit.
Company I worked for had one of these. Was pretty nice. About $350.
If time is on your side, I recommend a "buy as you go" situation. I what I believe was a privileged education from an old school tech that knew his **** and was good at teaching. What I did is as I experienced an issue, I ordered a gauge and used a simple hose and some fittings to get done what I needed. It has created a pile of parts that don't "fit in a blow molded case" to impress the friends, but I probably don't have $100 in that jazz. Today, lots of things have sensors, so that can really help, but I have educated SO many rookies that sensor data is not always reliable or accurate. It is up to the smarter side of the wire to decide go/nogo. I think I spent like $10 each on a few gauges as needed. If you have a pressure, say pilot of 250psi +/- 10, a 0-300 or 0-400 will work great. Always buy liquid filled gauges for this stuff.
I don’t have a set I build my diagnostic stuff as I go along. I buy Cat gauges because I get them at a good price and if they get damaged my employer will pay for them to be rebuilt. I buy fittings as necessary. Most of our pressure checks are done using on machine quick connects so it’s usually just a hose and quick coupler and gauge of appropriate range and away we go.
Before buying anything you need to define what your are going to use this "kit" for. This is necessary because there are so many different types of hydraulic systems and pressure ranges you could be dealing with. Gauges are not expensive at all, but you need to buy the right range of gauges to fit your needs. Are you working on wheel loaders and dozers or are there excavators involved. You don't want to buy a couple of 10,000 PSI gauges if you systems only run 3,500 PSI. The inverse of that goes also. Why buy a 3,500 PSI gauge if all you are working on are excavators running 5,000 PSI. Hoses and fittings are next. How much distance is there between the gauge port and where you are going to have be when testing a function. If you have to be in the cab and the gauge ports are on the pump on the opposite corner of the machine, you might need ten to fifteen foot of hose. Fittings are the icing on the cake. Cat quick couplers are kind of common on a lot of different makes of machine. Then again, you would find any of them on a Komatsu or anything built in Europe. I have built five different "Kits" for places I have worked plus my own kit. Somewhere on this forum I have posted photos of my setup. I'll look for them later on and post them again if I can't find the thread.
I found the photos of the kit I put together for myself. I have a mounting bracket where multiple gauges can be hooked up and viewed all at once. This is used primarily for excavators of all types. Note the tote tray full of fittings. The couplers on the gauges and the bracket are the standard type used by Cat. This is all the gauges in my kit. I carry gauges in 600, 1,000, 6,000 and 10,000 PSI. The box is an old steel Craftsman tool box and the tray above sits in the box.
The fittings in the plastic bag are specific to Komatsu machines and the hose is one of six #4 two wire hoses ten feet long that I can hook up to the pumps and sit in the cab with the gauges. These hoses are for special applications. The gauge and hose is for checking boost on the intake manifolds. There is a gauge for Din connectors on European machines. The others are adapter hoses to get from one type of fitting into a totally different type. Note that I have an oil soaked piece of foam that holds the adapters separate from the gauges. It's there for cushioning and the oil keeps rust from getting into anything in the box.. Gauges are less than $80 a piece. The fittings and hoses were put together as part of jobs that had to be done. The long gauge hoses were all purchased at once. I put this set together through my business accounts and it cost less than $500 twenty years ago. It's probably around $800 or so today. That's probably less than any of the "Kits" you find on the market today and has the capability to work with nearly every hydraulic system built.
That’s very crafty, John C. ! I run my gauges with the male compucheck fittings on the gauge. I use the open fittings so I can drain the gauge. The quick couplers are on the hoses.
I use the #4 JIC females swivels on one end so I can drain off any residual pressure that way. It also contributes to all the oil residue in the tool box.
Bang for the buck it’s hard to beat Cat gauges. They come in every possible pressure you’d need, even low pressure with a vacuum scale. I prefer to build all my setups with the PD series fittings and then adapt from there. It’s darn near impossible to buy a kit and have what you need. There are so many fittings out there if you did get a kit to cover them all it would cost a fortune and need a rollcab toolbox to carry it all. I’ve got JIC, flat face o-ring, flange type, DIN, British pipe and the proprietary Komatsu. stuff. Two drawers in my service truck are nothing but gauges, hoses and fittings. Cat makes a nice hose I use for testing. It’s small, 1/8” pipe and flexible. If memory serves they’re good for 8,000 psi. Once you own good gauges, some hoses and a handful of fittings you’ll just have to buy as you go for testing. Get familiar with fittings and how to identify them. Some will fool you!
I bought all my gauges from CAT when I worked at a dealer, the employee discount helped. Word of warning, they're glycerin filled and I believe they can freeze, as all my gauges now are no longer glycerin filled. Or maybe the seals just go bad, mine are all twenty years old. Flow meters are spendy, even the inline style.
I agree. The Cat gauges are the bee’s knees. So are the test hoses. You guys are correct, there isn’t a kit. It’s best to collect the gear as you need it. After 20 years, you’ll have a decent set-up.
I was about to post this same thread a few weeks ago and got sidetracked and just struck out on my own. From that experience, I have to agree w/ Excavator that home user prices and hydo test kits are mutually exclusive. I'm working on a Deere 310SG at the moment, so I first determined fittings and adapters I needed (mainly ORFS) and bought those from discounthydraulichose.com. They're Grade Q Chinesium, but appear adequate to what I'll subject them to. The flowmeter/load valve came from Hydracheck and was, IMO, reasonable considering a single trip to the shop will cost more than half as much as that tool. I picked up a Wika 5kpsi gauge from pressureworx.com for about $25. I got a few Stauff Test20 fittings for $1.35 ea off EBay and hose to adapt the gauge to those came from Amazon. All of that was in the vicinity of $700, if my quick mental math is remotely accurate. While we're in the neighborhood, legit hydro troubleshooting tips on the web or YouTube are either well hidden, weak, or in Hindi. I think it'd be great to have a sticky thread w/ tips and strategies to t-shoot hydro systems. There is a lot buried on specific threads/machines, but nothing consolidated that concentrates on general theory.
I don't have a picture of it but the cabinet where my fittings are is 24x24x48 and it's full, no room for Cd 61 & 62, they're in a separate job box and the flow meters are in another cabinet. But when you work out in the field on every different brand you need a bit (or alot) off everything.
The more I know about hydraulics the more I know how little I know about hydraulics and the more I know that very few who actually work in the industry know very little. We are privileged to have some top notch guys on this forum who know their stuff. One of the biggest problems I see is that most any generic hydraulic training is geared towards plant systems and while hydraulics are hydraulics mobile equipment throws a whole different curve into the mix.
My hydro training is a mishmash of ancient hydro-tuned transmitters on B-52s and working around acft flight control systems for a long time. I like to understand what I'm working on. Hydraulic systems are not a mystery to me, but the practicalities are beyond my experience. Agree that the members here are a great resource, especially their willingness to share. I've learned more than I can easily state just from reading various threads here. edit: Interestingly, to me anyway, is that in training avionics troops we would often use hydraulic examples to demonstrate electronic principles, as people tend to more easily understand examples of water flowing in a hose than they do electrons in a conductor.
My father was a plumber in the 1960-1990 area and he always said a hydraulic system was no different than a water system. The actual system may be but how it is controlled is where is where it gets complicated. There seems to be an infinite number of ways that engineers can dream up to control a system.
I've been calling people like us "High Pressure Plumbers" for some time now.
Like I said my father was a plumber and electrician and I always said that's the last thing I wanted to do. But that's about all I do, now it's just higher pressure and lower voltage and no working on toilets.