Kioti hydro slipping/uneven revs with PTO load

[Overtaxed]

I'm posting this as an FYI/help to others. And some long time members here or those with more experience are going to shake their heads at how stupid this is.. But, here goes.

My NX6010 has been great, but whenever I'm using a PTO driven implement with the PTO on, the tractor feels like it's "lurching" a bit. The hydro just doesn't feel smooth. I changed the fluid/filters, and it did help (quite a bit actually, I posted another thread on this, but the Mobilfluid was a big improvement), but it still felt "off". I was out bushhogging the other day and it was annoying me, not bad enough to be "there's something wrong", just annoying. Like you tapped the clutch for a second on a gear drive tractor, just a tiny decrease/increase in ground speed. Enough to feel "not smooth"...

Well, anyway, that's the problem I've had. Had it since delivery (2 years ago). Went through a few different possible fixes, but it's never gone totally away.. Until this weekend. When I was looking to my right and examining all the little rocker switches and saw one enabled "No Stall" with a picture of a bulldozer. I'm sure I enabled that when I got it, "No Stall" sounds great right? Who wants to stall?? Just leave that on all the darn time..

Except. Like most things, there's a reason there's an on/off switch for it. Here's my theory, when the PTO is engaged and I'm bushhogging, the tractor would see increased load to the engine and think "oh crap, he's pushing into a pile of mulch, speed up the engine and prevent a stall". Now, the "speed up" was imperceptible, I didn't feel the engine hunting, but what I did feel was the impact of that 50-100RPMs (guessing) in the hydro system. So the tractor would lurch forward a bit and then the computer would think "Oh, cool, crisis averted, he's not trying to push over a mountain, return to set RPMs". And then lurch again as the tractor slows. Again, all of this happens so fast that you (or at least I) don't perceive any of it (the increase/decrease in RPMs). It just feels like the tractor is lurching a bit. And will drive you crazy trying to figure it out.

Well, I finally found that switch again and turned it off. And then, magically.. No more lurching at all. Tractor feels smooth as silk when running the hog.

Yes, I am an idiot, feel like the guy who's on here asking "why does my tractor tear up the lawn so bad" and he's always in 4WD. There's a reason that you can turn 4WD off, and that would be it. Same thing here, if "No stall" was the right answer for every situation, there wouldn't be a switch for it. Others can correct me, but I'm going to leave that off for everything but FEL work from now on. Especially anything involving the PTO (still not sure if it should be on or not for ground engaging work). But, either way, it was the end of the problem for my "lurching" tractor. Hey, got some nice new hydro fluid in there, new filters, and a lot of other stuff I'm sure I didn't need to do but didn't hurt!

Hope this helps others and that too many of the long timers aren't banging their heads on the desk at how stupid this was.

 

[CMV]

I used it to play with it and did a quick video pushing into a dirt pile at way to low rpm, pushing in and curling at same time so a lot of strain. Just to demonstrate how it handles that.

Otherwise, I don't use it. I keep the rpm high enough doing loader work and my dirt piles aren't compacted enough that it takes a lot to push in so leave it off. But I *think* the idea is to work hand-in-hand with linked pedal. Lower rpm for all the carrying and repositioning for a lot of loader work, but both systems bumping up the rpms for you as needed. Seems to be smart tech and useful, just not enough for what I do. Plus I'm a little "scared" of the DPF filter lifespan and tend to keep the rpms higher than I need when I could be using linked pedal and no stall and much lower rpm a lot of time. Spend the $ in diesel, spend it replacing the DPF...probably same in the end

But isn't it nice when it's the simple things?

 

[DieselBound]

I'm surprised that I haven't done something like this!

I've used this function when doing loader work, so it's something I'm used to (but one can always accidentally bump/engage and not realize it).

Speaking of linked pedal, I tend to avoid it as I think that it results in running higher RPMs than is necessary (1,800 is plenty fine [though higher is necessary for PTO work]).

 

[JimR]

Thanks for the info. I have never used mine yet.