As the title states, I bought a 2012 Cat 242b3 with 720 hours on the meter. It was an expensive purchase and I know it was a rental machine at one point in its career. I am looking to do as much general maintenance myself to try and save some money. Just wondering what kinds of things I may be missing in my list below: 1. Clean / replace air filter 2. Change motor oil and oil filter 3. Replace fuel filter 4. Grease all pivot points (plan to do this every 5-10 hours) The machine had a hydraulic leak when I bought it so the Hydro fluid has pretty much all been replaced with new fluid. Any other things that I should be paying attention to or servicing? Thanks in advance guys!
An Operation & Maintenance Manual would be a good start. Sounds like you don’t have one. It contains all the information needed to do all the basic maintenance. It can be downloaded from Cat for around $50. Post a Serial Number and I can walk you through the process.
Hey Nige, I actually got a manual for the machine yesterday and its been really helpful. I purchased some items from a local dealer yesterday as well, so I think I am ready to start freshening up the fluids and filters. It seems like the manual has a lot of generic information in it that is not applicable to my particular machine. For example, I read about draining the motor oil by opening a valve and letting the oil flow through a drain hose.... I am not so sure that's the case on my machine. When I open the small access door under the motor it appears to lead straight to a bolt in the oil pan that I assume is how I drain the oil on my machine? I was still a little confuse because there does appear to be a hose in the area as well, but I followed it all the way up to somewhere in the middle of the motor, so I highly doubt that its a drain hose for the motor oil, being as high on the motor as it is. I am stumped as to what this hose may be for... Perhaps an oil overflow hose? I am also still a little confused about a fuel filter... does the water/fuel separator serve as the fuel filter? Or is there another filter somewhere on the machine specifically for fuel?