Page 4 - Troubleshooting and Maintenance

Buried somewhere beneath the sheet metal, under the gas tank, or stuffed in front of the radiator is the battery. This elusive and neglected component of the tractor is the hardest to get to when it is dead and in need of a jump. But usually, the storage battery is a storehouse of electrical energy waiting to be released at the flick of a switch. A few maintenance tips and periodic cleaning will keep it charged for the duration of its life span.

Our tractor is coming right along. The old oil and filter has been taken to the recycler and the air filter replacement has breathed new life into our motor. Let's take a closer look, now, at the cooling system since it has to work so hard in the summer heat.

Learn simple short tips to keep your articulated truck running its best. Discover how to maximize your uptime and reduce repair costs and extend the life of your parts.

In the preceding articles we discussed some of the various aspects of doing a comprehensive tune-up. Hopefully some light was shed on why we do or don't do certain things pertaining to inspections and order of events when doing a tune-up. Perhaps some useful reasons were given for why parts fail and what to do about preventing part failure in the future. All these tips will help us think and reason out a problem to make our tune up last and, hopefully, keep us from spending extra money.

In Part 1 we inspected and either adjusted the plug gap or replaced the spark plugs. After that, we decided that a compression test was in order so we could verify the internal engine status. That way we wouldn't buy any tune up parts until we were sure that the engine was in reasonable mechanical condition. Our tests showed a fictional compression reading of 85, 80, 82 and 86 psi. 

The engine seems to run rough. In the exhaust you can hear an occasion 'poofing' sound like somethings not firing on all cylinders. Under loaded conditions the tractor seems to lack power and it belches black smoke out of the exhaust. For some reason it just doesn't want to start up without cranking and cranking the starter. All these conditions can be signals that your unit needs a tune up.

Learn short, simple tips to keep your wheel loader living its best work life, extend the life of your machine, and make sure its running optimally on the worksite.

Learn short fast final drive maintenance tips and keep your final drive running well for the long time. A few minutes of maintenance goes a long way.

Keep your track springs working well and you'll be benefiting your entire undercarriage. Learn simple tips for track spring maintenance as part of the Parts ASAP How To series.

Keep your slewing ring running well with these simple, short slewing ring maintenance tips, and extend the life of your slewing ring to avoid downtime, repairs, and other excavator problems.