Scraper fire!

[precision dirt]

I almost lost a good machine Saturday due to a hose rupture. My 615 was a short lived but large fire ball. A large line from pump to block on neck for the elevator blew in a perfect direction to spray the turbo resulting in an immediate flash fire. Once shut down and oil stopped spraying all over the place I got fire out with extinguisher. I've been changing hoses in question for some time but this one was a complete surprise. Luckily I had it put out quick enough that machine seems unhurt other than one wire loom somewhat melted and black soot everywhere.
Seeing how all oil had to be drained now looks like a good time to change every hose that's in the area....lucky me... was a scary day.

 

[Junkyard]

Yikes. Looks like you dodged a bullet there!

 

[old-iron-habit]

You did get lucky. After my slasher burned a couple years ago from pressure sprayed oil our state fire marshall told me that sprayed hydraulic oil is as flammable as gasoline but does not evaporate so stays violate much longer.

 

[Tinkerer]

WOW !! PC,
You were very lucky. I was on job years ago and we had a fleet of 631C's. I ate lunch with one of the scraper operators and after lunch as soon as he was out of my sight I saw huge cloud of black. The operator wasn't as lucky as you. He was sprayed and severely burnt. He was in the hospital for many,many weeks.
The RH fender is part of the hydraulic tank on them. It was found on some of the other machines that the hose clamps can get loose enough to allow the hose to creep on the fittings. The hoses on some of the other machines were found to moving. To make things worse, is that I saw dozens of scraper fenders get damaged when loading next to a vertical wall in a borrow pit. That causes the hydraulic hose to become stressed and more often than not it will be tooo short due to the fender drooping.

 

[StanRUS]

WOW !! PC,
You were very lucky. I was on job years ago and we had a fleet of 631C's. I ate lunch with one of the scraper operators and after lunch as soon as he was out of my sight I saw huge cloud of black. The operator wasn't as lucky as you. He was sprayed and severely burnt. He was in the hospital for many,many weeks.
The RH fender is part of the hydraulic tank on them. It was found on some of the other machines that the hose clamps can get loose enough to allow the hose to creep on the fittings. The hoses on some of the other machines were found to moving. To make things worse, is that I saw dozens of scraper fenders get damaged when loading next to a vertical wall in a borrow pit. That causes the hydraulic hose to become stressed and more often than not it will be tooo short due to the fender drooping.

Tinkerer,
RH fender IS NOT part of the hydraulic tank on 631,637,633 C-series Scrapers. Hydraulic tank is mounted with 1ea support bracket bolted to scraper-tractor rear frame...early serial suction pipe had 1 hose with clamps, later serial used 2 hoses with clamps. You can completely remove the RH fender and the machine's hydraulics are totally separate and usable.
Typical for the hyd tank support bracket mounting bolts to loosen or RH fender support bracket bolts to loosen and 'fix it with welder' types weld the bracket to frame instead of removing broken bolts during repairs. Best fix is replace broken or missing mounting bolts and run a weld beads.

 

[Tinkerer]

StanRus ; Thanks for clarifying the tank position and mounting method. You jogged my memory.
It has been over 30 years since I pumped hundreds of gallons of hydraulic oil in those old kidney buckets. I spent seven years on what we call in my area a grease truck. A couple of years after that fire I quit running a grease truck and ran dozers until I retired.

 

[StanRUS]

StanRus ; Thanks for clarifying the tank position and mounting method. You jogged my memory.
It has been over 30 years since I pumped hundreds of gallons of hydraulic oil in those old kidney buckets. I spent seven years on what we call in my area a grease truck. A couple of years after that fire I quit running a grease truck and ran dozers until I retired.

Our memories do become a fussy overtime, maybe we would actually like to forget!
In S.Cal grease truck is called lube truck; always pays to have a mechanical type guy on that job...mechanics' 'eyes'.

C-series Scrapers bit easier to work on hydraulic system 'tank-lines', but the pumps are a grin. D-series still has fender bracket loosening issues and hydraulic tank cracking @ mounting brackets plus fuel tank cracking. Ditto 51-57s; maybe Cats' new plastic fender will be an improvement?

Take care

 

[Hobbytime]

Good save ...that just reinforces that I spent good money putting a decent size fire extinguisher on every piece of equipment I have, because when your out in the woods far away from anyone else, no one is going to help you and the small investment saved you big $$$ in the end..

 

[precision dirt]

Yeah I would say by the grace of GOD i got it out and dodged a huge loss. It's and older machine but a very sound and solid runner, for a small outfit like me it would have been a big hit. There are very few "real" scrapers in my area to choose from if I needed to find another quick. Mainly pull pans running around and they just don't handle this Texas clay near as efficient. Pans are just too wide in my opinion.... (no offense pan guys) they have their place.

 

[Dozerboy]

What's crazy is in my dumber days we've had equipment that sprayed oil and diesel fuel on hot turbos and we never had one start a fire. We always thought we would just bail out if it caught fire. Actually hoping one day it would just watch those pieces of junk burned to the ground. Just one of those instances of dumb luck.