Weekend...
Well, I ran the DOT over the weekend to cleanup some tree mess from our recent ice storm. After about 15 minutes of run time, it started dumping oil. I started troubleshooting, and found a hose that these yahoo's had only finger-tightened. I put a wrench to it, and that fixed that problem (after probably 1/2 gallon of oil!). Then I just happen to notice that the hour meter showed 105 hours. Strange since it showed 30 hours when I picked it up from the repair shop. (I know what you're going to say. The original hour meter wasn't working, so I replaced it, that's why the hours are so low.../w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif). Anyway, these boneheads wired the hour-meter directly to the battery lead. The hour meter runs while the machine is on or off! (And drains the battery, incidentally.) I unplugged it for now, but I can rewire it easy enough. The hose I could understand easily overlooking, but I was a bit unpleasantly surprised that they wired the hour meter incorrectly, especially since they replaced the wiring harness and knew exactly where every wire went. Duh. Needless to say, I called the repair shop this morning and gave the supervisor some calm but firm "constructive feedback".
The good news is that, after this troubleshooting, it ran well with no mishaps until I ran it completely out of gas!
Dave
