I had to change a small hydraulic hose on a little 40 odd HP tractor yesterday. Seemed like the easiest way to get access was to remove the platform that supported the seat. There were various plates and gussets to come off and it required five wrenches eight through fourteen millimeter . . . and then I found the mudgaurds had to come off first . . . and guess what? I found out that to remove the mudgaurd I had to first remove the wheel. It's ludicrous, do you blokes have to put up with this all the time? Any halfway competent person could sit down and re-engineer those components to be assembled with one sized wrench and be easily removable. This kind of muddle headed thinking must cost the industry millions. Any thoughts as to why servicability has (apparently) such a low priority? Cheers.
I don't know. Some things are easy to change and some are always going to be hard. You can't engineer a quick change solution on everything. I had to change a fuel line on a truck the other day. It ran from the tank on one side, across the back of the engine under the cab, and over to the filter on the other frame rail. After beginning disassembling the multitude of clamps and ties that held everything together, that were installed before the cab was put on the truck, I came to the conclusion that I would be another entire day's work if I ran the new hose in the same place as the old one, and probably busted knuckles and lost parts as well, so I ran the new one alongside the old ones and just used 3/8 zip ties to support it well. Sometimes stuff just breaks and has to be fixed however it can be done.
I've been doing tight access excavation for 13 years, what a joke, should have got a five tonne excavator and at least a 6m truck from day one. One of the crappiest parts of this business in working on these small machines. I'm often fuming with the designers for not thinking about access to all the gear they cram in to such a tight space. I do the lot from a nut and bolt to stripping down the slew motor, or the track drive, or machining a new rod for my hydraulic rams. It would have cost a fortune in labour I reckon, if the work was given out to a repair shop, just in labour costs because of the difficulty of access. I got an insurance repair job done on my Cat 301.8 excavator a few years ago. The slew ring and slew motor got replaced (an old lady drove straight across my path while I was travelling at 80 KPH, we were both OK but the excavator was bust). Now you think you are safe with a cat "technician" doing a repair on a cat machine, well not with my little difficult to work on machine. The hex / Allen head bolts used to hold the slew motor had round indentations in them after the repair. How did I find this out, the slew motor bolts had came loose after a few months and the tilting of the slew motor had caused the teeth of the slew motor shaft and the slew ring to chip off left right and centre. I can only conclude that the difficulty of access made the "technician" take a short cut and he's used one of those ball head allen keys to "tighten" the bolts, and I might add no thread lock either. When he's torqued up the bolts the round head allen key has just slipped causing those indentations, and the bolts have not been torqued up tight. They totally denied any fault and I had no choice but to buy a new slew ring and get a new ouput shaft made at a gear making shop. I did the whole repair myself in 4 days in my shed and its been good ever since. To tighten the slew motor bolts though I took a long allen key, chopped off the top bit to leave me with a straight shank then used a socket on the end of this. This is what I go through with difficult to work on gear. I believe the manufacturers don't want to make it easy to work on. They make their money from: new machine sales (just trade it in when you have to start repairing it), repair shop service, and spare parts which they get made specifically designed (OEM) so you can't find one off the shelf, and the OEM manufacturer won't supply it too you if you can identify the part (I've tried it). Then as in my experience they (CAT) often don't have the part in stock yet they are the only one who could supply it and they told me so many week to get it to Australia. Sorry if I'm getting off subject a bit but I'm very bitter with what's happened with my ill chosen equipment supplier. Also when the machine is manufactured, there's probably more focus on speed of assembly than ease of maintenance for the user / repairer. I have even cut an access hole in a non-structural part of the excavator just to access a hose clip. Seriously I just could not find a way to access it without removing a bunch of other hoses all around it in a very dark blind crevice area. During manufacture they must do that clip first then install the other hoses surrounding it. My other machine is a Bobcat mini skid steer (463 size) and it's been a pig to work on too. Overall I've had to get a bit creative to loosen and tighten things in horribly confined spaces.
more focus on speed of assembly That's the answer mancavedweller. Sometimes when I am at the point of throwing something in frustration I sit down and have a smoke and have a think about why someone would assemble something like that and that is what I usually come up with.
Got a giggle from the sit down and have a smoke bit. I don't smoke but the answer to many problems has been to walk away from it for a while and calm down. Been quite a few times when I did this and when I come back to it with a calmed mind I can't beleive I sorted it so quick. But it never seems to work like that from moment one. I reckon after the dummy is spit your mind is ticking on how you are going to sort this problem, even without us realising it. Then when you come back a plan is already in place and you just execute it.
I agree that it wouldn't be all that hard to make things a bit easier. Maybe the manufacturers don't want to make their machines easy to work on, as it would be like an admission that they think it will need to be worked on? They want you to think that you are buying a machine that wont need to be worked on? The Chinese are particularly good at this, they tell you that you wont even need spare parts because their machine wont break down....... The old Cats are the best for working on, all you need for most general repairs is a 9/16", 3/4", and a 15/16"
The only place the manufacturers care about easy in when the machine if first assembled. Things are layered onto frames under cabs and and behind other things. Starters come to mind. They are easy to install on an engine on the floor. Maybe not so much when the engine is inside the frame.
Yeah, every time I have to work on one of my Bobcats or change the primary fuel filter on my Ford. Ford put the filter in the frame rail which is easy to access unless it is a 4x4, which the front drive shaft makes it impossible to get a socket wrench in there.:Banghead I have used this technique many, many times but it's usually to wipe the blood off my knuckles.
Yair . . . Even just standardising on bolt sizes would help. I'm sure there was no need for Cat and Allis to use 1/2" NC on floorplates but as Plant Fitter mentioned they did standardise in those days--to some extent . . . which reminds me of the time one of our operators, trying to be usefull, ran a 1/2" Whitworth tap through all the floor plate mounting holes on D8--or maybe it was a 21-- and commented "they were just a little tight". Cheers.
What? Standing on your head, squirming into a tight spot with blood running down your hand and finding out you have the wrong wrench builds character
I see you have worked on a Bobcat.:drinkup
I particularly enjoy the hot 623 engine oil filters inside the engine enclosures, tight sob's back in the corner, bleeding arm and cuss words guaranteed. Could'nt be where you could get to it easily.
it's all part of the job, one of the best jobs I had was to change out a leaking hose on a rotary coupling on a little 14.5 ton Sumitomo digger, halfway into the job found out the bolts holding the coupling broke causing the coupling to move with the top half of the machine stressing the hoses which had caused the failure, had to remove the whole coupling as the hose ends into the coupling weren't swivel ends arghh happy days! later model CAT loaders are abit of a pain for access under the cab, early models you could pull the floor out to remove a hydraulic pump or fix a leak, the G's and H's have a sealed floor so you have to pull the cab off to get to anything!