I have a long reach excavator that I need to use annually or so. How often should I start it up and excersize it?
About once a month maybe an hour or2 to get the oils up to operating temps, stops the seals drying out and leaking when you need the machine the most.
^What he said. Watch the batteries and if it has a phantom load that drags them down between those runs, just disconnect them.
Sounds like a plan. Seems like it doesn’t have any phantom loads. Gotta love Hitachi
I throw a small portable solar panel with 12v controller on the batteries for a few hrs once a month of I’m not using my machines.
those are handy when they work.
I’ve had a good run with the ‘Battery Tender’ brand. Key with any small controller is to not expose to direct sunlight.
A couple months ago I was speaking to a guy who parked his 25t machine for extended periods in the desert at a gold exploration site. He said he used some product applied externally on the cylinder seals to help ‘soften’ them as he said, to stop from cracking. He said he had both lift cylinders starting to weep and this magical liquid stopped it. I’ve visited 3 hydraulic shops and none had heard of such a product. Would be a handy addition to the toolbox if it indeed existed.
I have a long reach excavator exercise pond in Alabama where you can bring in to exercise it if you like.
On older machines that are parked for long periods of time, parking it on a level spot may extend the life of the house bearing. Rain water that will just run off vertically when it is level can get inside the bearing if it runs over the bearing seal while the machine is parked at an angle. If you see rusty water coming out of your house bearing after periodically running the machine, it usually means that rain water was able to get into the bearing while it was parked. Water trapped in the bearing gets worked out on machines that are used frequently, so those machines do not have the issue.