I just had a skid steer (Cat 262C) scrap a drive motor, The hydraulic shop tells me it was pretty catastrophic, the housing is junk. This is uncharted water for me, as I have never really dealt with a failed rotating group and all the drama that comes with it. What is everybody's advice? A couple general questions, 1) How do I flush the machine out properly? Buy a case of filters and a barrel of oil and start draining and filling? 2) Maybe its time I finally bought a filter cart. Any advice, reccomendations? I would rather not spend $4k or more on a filter cart right at the moment. 3) The machine is a 3500 hour Cat 262C, worth maybe 20K, how far does one go with this? I guess the theoretical ideal is to flush everything, and then pull the pumps and motors and have everything rebuilt. Not sure if the machine is worth that.
Sounds like a system clean oit is in order anything oil touches taken apart cleaned and resealed or rebuilt. Is it worth it in this case sure if your doing the work and have time. If money is involed to pay for labor most likely not
My hydraulic shop, and I think the local cat man, both have a rentable filter cart. You could run the machine and work through all functions, while running the filter cart. I've never actually done that. We've always just changed the filter and run them. Because totally draining and rebuilding a crane system, just isn't happening. The hyd. system on the skid loader is a little different proposition. Personally, I'd replace the bad component and run it, but I'm a "roll the dice" sort of person.
These days, it’s very easy and somewhat inexpensive to build your own filter cart from Amazon. Last year I borrowed one from a friend that owns Curtis Hydraulics and did a Round Robin after losing a drive motor on my skid steer and while doing it, he told me I should just build my own. He claimed, you could do it for about 400 bucks from Amazon. I haven’t done it yet but have been thinking about it. You only need a pump a couple of filter housings that can incorporate cheap filters. Maybe a 10 or 15 micron, then a 5 and some hoses. Then a cheap dolly, which I already have. I drained my tank first and completely flushed it out, to start.
We've got one of the cordless fluid pumps now, it and a filter base would do the same thing.
Personally, I would just pull the hoses and pipes in the rotating group circuit. If it is a travel motor I'd get some of those foam slugs that some of the hydraulic shops use to make sure newly built hoses are clean and with plenty of air pressure just blow them through those hoses and pipes hooked to the motor. Pull any suction strainers in the hydraulic tank and short change the hydraulic return filters a couple of times. Unless you ran the machine for a long time after the problems started happening most of the metal ends up in the hydraulic cooler. That is for a skid steer. If you are talking about a 40 ton or larger excavator or a D8 size or larger dozer I would probably think a little differently.
I'm with John C on the foam pigs. A kit of those and the driver can't be all that much. That would be a good way to inspect the internal condition of the lines and give them a scrub. Watch for filtration carts on Ebay and auctions. I could have purchase one last year for $600 but I did not need 2. That was a bargain for a Parker unit. A guy at one of the better hydraulic shops that I've dealt with told me that diesel fuel is considered a good flushing oil. I keep a barrel of that that has been mixed with oil from previous flushes for flushing other systems with my filtration cart. It gets filtered down to 2 microns before entering a contaminated system and allowed to run for several hours. Be sure to run every hose, valve set and fitting if you don't tear everything down. It's much cheaper to spend time on the labor that another pump or motor. Most importantly, find a good, quality hydraulic shop that is meticulous. I made the mistake of dealing with a wrong one that does not care. The pump I got back had black crap in it when I inspected it so I had to tear it down and clean it before I put it into service. They had disc grinders running in their hydraulic rebuild area - that should have made me walk away and find another shop right then. Lesson learned. Hydraulics should be treated like OR's and chip manufacturing facilities where cleanliness is the standard, not like a junkyard rebuild service.