digger242j
Administrator
I've operated a number of different skid steers, but I must admit, I've never read the owner's manual for any of them. There are a lot of experienced people here, both operators and those who are more involved in the technical aspects. I'd like a clarification...
There are a couple of guys on the job who say that you should run a skid steer with the engine wide open--that to do otherwise is bad for the machine. One mentioned that is was supposedly hard on the hydraulic pumps to be run at less than full throttle. I can't see that being true.
Certainly, the engines are desigend, and governed, to run at some maximun RPM setting. If you're running a long distance, or digging into hard material, go ahead and run it at full throttle. It's desigened to do it, and in the case of working the machine hard, it's better than lugging the engine down and stalling it out. However, if you're handling loose material, like sand or gravel, and putting a quarter of a bucket here, and another quarter of a bucket five feet away, or doing fine work like handling material on pallets with forks, my personal opinion is that it's unnecessarily abusive to the machine to have the engine screaming away at max RPMs. All that expensive stuff inside there has a finite life span, and the more times it goes around, the closer it is to its final revolution. Throttle back to some setting that still allows you sufficient power and speed, but that's easier on the equipment.
Yes, you can run it wide open, but there's ne reason you must run it wide open.
This came up agian today. One operator was moving pallets of concrete block. The other guy commented that he should be faster, "and he's going to hurt the machine too".
I'm open minded enough to know that I don't know it all. I could be wrong about this too. Anybody got an opinion? And can you cite from an owner's manual, or share the opinion of a professional equipment engineer or mechanic?
There are a couple of guys on the job who say that you should run a skid steer with the engine wide open--that to do otherwise is bad for the machine. One mentioned that is was supposedly hard on the hydraulic pumps to be run at less than full throttle. I can't see that being true.
Certainly, the engines are desigend, and governed, to run at some maximun RPM setting. If you're running a long distance, or digging into hard material, go ahead and run it at full throttle. It's desigened to do it, and in the case of working the machine hard, it's better than lugging the engine down and stalling it out. However, if you're handling loose material, like sand or gravel, and putting a quarter of a bucket here, and another quarter of a bucket five feet away, or doing fine work like handling material on pallets with forks, my personal opinion is that it's unnecessarily abusive to the machine to have the engine screaming away at max RPMs. All that expensive stuff inside there has a finite life span, and the more times it goes around, the closer it is to its final revolution. Throttle back to some setting that still allows you sufficient power and speed, but that's easier on the equipment.
Yes, you can run it wide open, but there's ne reason you must run it wide open.
This came up agian today. One operator was moving pallets of concrete block. The other guy commented that he should be faster, "and he's going to hurt the machine too".
I'm open minded enough to know that I don't know it all. I could be wrong about this too. Anybody got an opinion? And can you cite from an owner's manual, or share the opinion of a professional equipment engineer or mechanic?
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