PT1445 20 hrs, Lost steering!

[J_J]

PT1445Farmer,

That looks like cast steel, is there any rust at the break? There may have been a crack in the swivel joint and it just broke because of some maneuver you did. It looks like the cylinder did gouge down the side of the frame, but it probably did not do a lot of damage . Perhaps the swivel was not functioning correctly. It looks like you are in an open field, were you?

 

[toy]

pt1445farmer I hope it is an easy fix and all goes well. Watch out for pinch points. Having the extra cylinders would be nice, now you can imagine all the things that you can build using them.

 

[PT1445Farmer]

J_J,
I noted that it seemed like there was rust at the joint as well. Considering how wet it has been lately - 7+ inches of rain so far this month - I can see rust becoming an issue.

It is in an open field. I am going to place a tarp down, bring flashlights, a full complement of tools, a radio for sanity, and plan on slowing working through the obvious malfunction, and determining what if anything else went wrong as a result of the primary issue. Number 1 on that list is finding out how much oil is left in the hydraulic system. Wanting to find at least a few gallons...or this gets ugly fast.

 

[ponytug]

PT1445Farmer: Thanks for the photos!

Given that the eye of the cylinder fractured, your 'ramming' speed would have had to have been pulling the cylinder by torqueing the tractor, which seems improbable. Bad castings happen, and I hope that this is what the cause was, and hope that it is your last.

Can I offer an alternative way to fill the 4N1 bucket? (If you only the standard bucket, skip this...)
I find that the smoothest loading is by opening the bucket, tilting it to maximize the opening, dropping it into the material, and then backing up to fill the bucket with cut material, and then closing the bucket with downpressure. Even with really loose material, e.g. pea gravel, it is not much slower, and I always seem to get a full bucket, something that I don't always achieve with the bucket push technique. (Kudos to those of you with the skill or the materials to do this reliably!) With anything that has structure, e.g. earth/gravel mixes, hard clay, it is much faster to do this than pushing into the material. (At least in my hands, and I freely admit to not being a heavy equipment expert.)

Woodlandfarms: Carl, you are right, you don't have to go all the way up to the steering box; there is a hydraulic splitter that routes the two halves of both cylinders together. (FR to LR and FL to RR) The four hoses on the hydrasteer are fluid in, return, left, and right. Still, there isn't a lot of space in the tunnel and knee area; I would do the top ends first and then pull the hose down to the cylinder, where you have some space.

I can also highly recommend thread on caps for the hoses and cylinders, which let you have them out in the dusty/dirty world and not fill them with gunk while handling them.

Don't forget the brake cleaner to clean threads and fittings...

All the best,

Peter

 

[woodlandfarms]

Peter, did you have to dig into your steering? I don't remember that repair on your list, so wondering how you know about the splitter? Not questioning it, just wondering if you scored a schematic or...

I looked back at the photo that was posted and JJ hit on something with that rust. Looks like my roll over connectors when they start to stretch.

I now wonder if what happened is that either bad weld, or an old injury stretched those eyes and then it justbroke. And when it broke it caught the hoses and cut them.

Well, I think 1445 is in the sticks today. Wishing him the best and hope it isn't the pump...

 

[ponytug]

Dear Carl,

Knock on wood, I haven't had to repair the steering.

I noticed the splitter block when I first received the tractor and spent a few, OK many, hours going over all the hoses and wrapping the hoses with spiral wrap to keep the hoses from wearing where they cross sharp edges. I tried to follow all the lines. On my 1445, the splitter block for the steering is about a foot down from the hydrosteer control unit. It conveniently has a bolt hole through the middle, but is left free hanging in the tunnel. I used some hard polyethlyene pipe foam insulation to wedge it in place, largely to keep it from rubbing on the supply/return lines to the steering.

Rust showing inside a broken piece of metal is indicative of a long, slow, failure mode, usually due to a defective casting, or manufacturing. Even a layer of blackness can often mean a casting defect, with a vein of carbonaceous material in the metal weakening it, and predisposing it toward failure. Nice clean metal at a fracture- usually a sign of just plain overload.

I hope this helps.

I am interested to hear the end of PT1445Farmer's story. His machine was no small distance away from whatever pile he was working on, which leads me to be curious about the failure cause.

All the best,

Peter

Peter, did you have to dig into your steering? I don't remember that repair on your list, so wondering how you know about the splitter? Not questioning it, just wondering if you scored a schematic or...

I looked back at the photo that was posted and JJ hit on something with that rust. Looks like my roll over connectors when they start to stretch.

I now wonder if what happened is that either bad weld, or an old injury stretched those eyes and then it justbroke. And when it broke it caught the hoses and cut them.

Well, I think 1445 is in the sticks today. Wishing him the best and hope it isn't the pump...

 

[ernemats]

Saturday my wife and I were mowing , me with the 422 power trac and her with the 1845 power trac . We were about half done and I noticed she had stopped and was acting sort of strange. She motioned me to come up to where she was and she proceeded to tell me something was wrong as she was covered with oil. It was the hose to the left steering cylinder that was leaking. It appears to have been pinched , took it off and went to NAPA and had a new one made, put it on tested it out, no more leak and we finished mowing after she took a bath and I cleaned some of the oil off the power trac.

 

[SnowRidge]

.........We were about half done and I noticed she had stopped and was acting sort of strange..............

That could be taken so out of context.

 

[ponytug]

Dear Ernie,

Did you(do you) have the slack in the steering hoses bundled up in any way?

Put another way, how did it get pinched?

All the best,

Peter

Saturday my wife and I were mowing , me with the 422 power trac and her with the 1845 power trac . We were about half done and I noticed she had stopped and was acting sort of strange. She motioned me to come up to where she was and she proceeded to tell me something was wrong as she was covered with oil. It was the hose to the left steering cylinder that was leaking. It appears to have been pinched , took it off and went to NAPA and had a new one made, put it on tested it out, no more leak and we finished mowing after she took a bath and I cleaned some of the oil off the power trac.

 

[PT1445Farmer]

Went from bad news to worse news..
Did not spend Monday working on the tractor as planned because I had some other business to finish up. Today however, I dug into the PT1445.
Using all of the advice from this forum, I checked the oil level first - and got the bad news right away. Not a drop of oil remained. Thanks WF for recommending a flashlight otherwise I would not have been able to see in.

So I am ordering replacement pumps, valves, hoses, the works because the parts are cooked. Going to work on it again next week. Went from a 3 hour estimated repair, to at least 8 hours, and a lot more money.
Now I have to come up with a way to prevent this catastrophic failure from occuring again.

This has been a painful lesson in a lot of ways. Will post photos from the repair surgery.