FEL control valve-freezing up?

[alchemysa]

i'd settle for some weather in the 50's.I guess you are having your summer now,am i right?
thanks,digger2

Officially its late summer but its more like mid summer. I think we're in for plenty more heat yet. This is our 3rd day around 100 degrees. But thats OK, were used to that. Its the lack of water thats the problem. This summer follows just about our driest winter/spring ever. A total of about 4 inches in 6 months as I recall. The reservoirs were half empty before summer even started. So we're on water restrictions and can only use sprinklers for 3 hours a week. Try watering a half acre garden in 3 hours! About all you can do is settle the dust. Everything is pretty brown and looks near dead. We must have at least 50,000 spongers on the public payroll over here. How we can employ so many politicians, public servants, and consultants and still run out of one of the basic necessities of life is beyond me. It's not like we couldn't see this coming. Another reservoir, even a half empty one, would pretty well solve the problem. Instead they'll probably bring in some greenie consultants who'll teach us how to save water by drinking our own p*ss.

(Don't be mislead by my avatar. That pic was taken at a beach shack that gets more rain than here, and it has plenty of bore water too).

 

[digger2]

I know what your talking about as far as the "spongers".We have the same stuff over here...................digger2

 

[dholly]

Dan, I've been dealing with this issue myself since the cold rolled in. Thanks for the pics, makes tearing into it a little less nerve racking.

 

[dholly]

Well, I finally got into it while doing my pre-winter maintenance this year. Dealing with the frozen control was a pain, but my lazy a** just got use to leaving the snow plow bladed angled so when I started I could just get on and go. After a couple of runs up and down the drive and a few up/down cycles, hyd fluid warmed enough to thaw and unfreeze things. That ended up being important - ie., that the up/down spool worked fine while the angle (bucket curl) spool consistently froze up.

I didn't have an open end large enough to grab the spool covers and hose position etc. make it real tough to grab them. I was able to remove the left side (looking rearward from the front of the tractor) with a pair of channel locks and drained what seemed like a disturbingly large amount of water. More than in Dan's glove tip pic. Thankfully, no rust problems and I packed with grease for reassembly. Even with the extra clearance due to that cover being removed, I could not budge the other cover with the channel locks. Left a good number of battle scars before giving up but, based on the pic alchemysa posted, it appears that is the up/down spool and since that never did give me trouble I let it go to battle another day.

Now I'm curious... it looks like Dan took water out of his right side spool but my problems were with the left. And, when I think about it, it does seem most LA352 frozen FEL control posts are actually about the curl function. Wonder why that is?