I have a 5200 hour Volvo EC240B Yesterday while trenching it started making a sound that was a little concerning. Sounded like hydraulic cavitation sounds coming from the swing gear area. 2 hours later it grew to nasty cringing, shiver down the spine, metal on metal gear grinding squeaking, clench your teeth, pray for mercy kind of sound. hahaha. I think there is something wrong. Still working good though, so run er! No oil in the gearbox. I imagine the seal tore out and dumped the oil out the bottom. So my question, is it hard to replace the gearbox, and should I expect to change the drive motor as well? Anything else I should be worrying about while I'm at it. Where should I go for a re-man unit? Ken
Seals normally go out because of bearing failure or pieces of the gears getting in there and cutting it. You should of stopped when you first heard the noise best bet is tear it down and see what is bad drive motor should be ok Volvo parts are ridiculously high maybe find a used one. The ring of bolts can be tough to break loose but once you get them loose it will lift out
Yes, the koreans are very fond of red loctite. If you've resigned yourself to swapping out the gear box, you could buy time by pumping it full of light grease. No moly, just paraffin based. The grease is NOT a fix, just a bandaid to prevent a grenade until your job is done. The original dipstick had a positive seal and didn't allow the box to breath. The solution was to cut a breather slot in the rubber plug portion so it could breathe. Good luck.
Good day Had the same experience used this it worked good for me maybe of help. Kind regards Uffex
Should have added it could be wise to check the wear in the swing ring it should be good at 5000 hrs but better check than rebuild the transmission for nothing. Kind regards Uffex
Further to this thread. I purchased and had installed a new gearbox. Seemed to do the job. Went to first jobsite, and set to some light grubbing. 10 minutes in and the swing motor literal blew apart. Cracked the swing motor housing up near the top where the valve body bolts on. I would LOVE to hear the comments on that. Its so far out in left field I don't know what to think. Mechanic to remove to determine potential causes. Ken
So you replaced the gearbox, but reused the motor? From the way you described the noises you heard, I would have guessed something is wrong with the motor too.
With the motor disassembled, the upper bearing went bad. Probably slowly failed over a week or so. Eventually the bearing piled up and grenaded the pump entirely. It's possible the failure was unrelated to the failure of the gearbox, but who knows.