Figured I'd post. I was fascinated by how much some routine maintenance items made the machine work so much better.
Zeb is planning on cutting the hydraulic filter apart to see what's in it.
"Repairs" so far:
- Engine oil / engine oil filter (looked like tar coming out. I believe the last oil change was when I had the machine at my house last about 4-5 years ago).
- Wiring harness re-do. A previous "mechanic" had dropped the lift-able cab on two chunks of the machine wiring harness. A combination of these crappy blue-butt crimp connectors corroding and the marginal fuse holders resulted in all kinds of electrical gremlins. The worst of which was that the boom lift/safety bar interlock didn't work. There was a jury-rigged clamp that you had to clip on the battery positive at your feet to get the boom to unlock.
- About 2+ hours with the pressure washer trying to empty the belly pan out enough to make out hoses, wires, etc. in the 6"+ deep muck that had collected.
- The left wheel drive motor was "lazy" (much slower than the right, made turning almost impossible in one direction). Turns out under the muck there were three hydraulic pumps in series, left drive motor pump, right drive motor pump, and boom/bucket/acc hydraulic pump. Each motor pump has a shaft with a square drive on top that I assume varies the angle on piston-type swashplate pumps (like a car AC compressor I assume). The top of the square was worn so that the left lever linkage had a ton of slop - resulting in no rotation of the shaft. Removed the attached lever and did some weld-build up on the square. Some additional grinding and it was back together. Hopefully it holds up.
- Added hydraulic fluid. Figured one 5-gallon bucket would sufficiently top it off since there were no low fluid symptoms. Empty the entire bucket - still didn't show up on the sight glass. Then I bought another bucket. Emptied it into the machine. Still nothing on the sight glass. Guess I need to buy more oil.
- Replaced the hydraulic filter. This was the most fascinating "fix". Prior to replacement, even at idle, no combination of hydraulic controls would result in any appreciable engine RPM/load change. After the filter change, using either drive motor or even stalling the lift/curl bucket controls would make a noticeable engine load change. The travel speed (based on the highly accurate butt-dyno) seems to be up 20-30% for a given RPM...
Skat Trak 1700C Skid Steer
Re: Skat Trak 1700C Skid Steer
That is some serious neglect but I think that is pretty normal for machines like that.