Re: How much \"slip\" on your TC hydrostatic?
<font color="blue">I have been stuck twice where I had to push out with the FEL because the wheels would not turn, the traction had them "froze" in the mud. Low range, easy pedal pressure, little pull on the motor. More pressure would eventually stall it, but never moved the wheels. </font>
Brad,
Do you mean that one time you can push the directional pedal down without stalling the engine and the tractor does not move, while at another time you can push the directional pedal down and the tractor will stall out, also without moving? In essentially the same circumstances? This does not sound normal. In both cases the tractor did not move and the wheels did not spin. Why would you get two different reactions?
Now if you meant that both times the engine stalled, because it did not have the power to move the tractor, this may be consistant with the dealer's service people finding your HST pressure relief valve set on the high end of the normal range. Many tractors will pop the PRV before the engine stalls, from what I understand, depending on where their PRVs open I suppose. If yours were on the high end of the range, perhaps the engine starts to bog down before the pressure gets high enough to trip the PRV.
It sounds like you may have erratic operation, and a real, rather than imagined problem. Perhaps the pressure relief valve for some reason trips at different pressures at different times. Sometimes too low (low torque to wheels and engine doesn’t stall) and sometimes too high (not enough engine torque to turn the wheels, and the engine does stall)?
Now your dealer saw the problem you are describing and he thought it was odd enough to have his service guys check the pressure. When they checked it was on the high side of normal. Keep in mind that this really tells one nothing, since normal operation could have returned while the tractor was being moved into the shop, and when things are operating normally, one would expect the pressures to be in the normal range. This is the story of intermittent problems; they can be most frustrating and most difficult to fix. This is decades of experience speaking here.
It will be very hard to diagnose [with any certainty] an intermittent problem until it hangs around long enough for the service people to see it happening while they make their measurements. I doubt your dealer would want to follow the change-one-piece-at-a-time-until-the-problem-goes-away approach.
Personally, I think your tractor should, under the same circumstances, operate the same for you consistently. Its operation should be repeatable.
<font color="blue"> And so it sounds like it is just a quirk of the HST</font>
If it were a quirk of the HST the dealer should have told you that and would have had no reason to send it in for pressure checks right away. From you description of the problem I would not be too quick to accept it as a quirk. My non-blue HST doesn’t seem to act like that.
After reading again what you reported in this thread, my gut is telling me you have an intermittent problem with your tractor. The strongest clue is the dealer being surprised by what he saw, after not being surprised by what he saw earlier in the day (when things were working right).
Call this a guess and take it with a grain of salt, naturally.
