My 114 no longer has curl power to the bucket and it wont hold its curl position. It will curl back when empty but when I go into a snow bank it dumps down as I raise the arms. To keep the bucket curled back when empty I have to continually pull back on the curl lever. If I hold the curl lever back while lifting the arms to load snow it takes power away from the lift arms and doesn't lift well. Wondering if its all in the valve body or do I have some other major event going on here. The hydraulic oil is full. The hydraulics have performed correctly for the last 20 years. Any advise would be appreciated. Thanks for reading
Cylinder piston seals leaking would be the 1st thought. Seals in my skid steer did exactly the same thing.
If you have two curl cylinders, and you want to see which one is leaking, the next time you start it up curl the bucket all the way back and hold it for five seconds, then jump down and sprinkle some snow on both cylinders, the one that has a warm spot will be the leaker. If the snow doesn't melt on the cylinder, then try it for ten seconds.
Last time that happened on Case W26B was bad o-rings on bucket tilt port reliefs.
Hey thanks Delmer! I talked to a friend yesterday who said it could be the packing in one of the cylinders. I was going to unhook one and plug the lines but your way seems a LOT less messy!
Yeah, that's a quick and dirty way to narrow it down If TVA is right then the valve block will warm up where it's leaking, instead of the cylinder. The valve will be a little trickier to interpret because the fluid is flowing through it normally more than a cylinder. Shut the engine off while holding the curl function to keep from "diluting" the heat from leakage.
Well it was close to 32 degrees when I did the test so snow was melting off both cylinders. However after drying them back off and holding the bucket rolled back on and off for a few minutes one cylinder was noticeably warmer by the touch. That cylinder has been dripping slightly for about 5 years. Time for a rebuild! Cheers and thanks all who chimed in!
Just to confirm. This trick worked! The warmer cylinder was the problem. Been working great for a year now. Sorry for the long reply