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Just another day in paradise

OzDozer

OzDozer

Senior Member
Joined
Jan 18, 2007
Messages
2,207
Location
Perth, Western Australia.
Occupation
Semi-Retired ..
Seems like JD are aiming at a get-rich-quick scheme with their current parts pricing. Picked up a couple of new front fenders for a JD Gator at an auction (for $18! :D) - then I find out they're US$360 EACH in the States, and AU$722 locally! Holy Moses! For a chunk of molded plastic?? Of course, you do get a couple of warning decals included in the deal!
 
Mike L

Mike L

Senior Member
Joined
Dec 1, 2010
Messages
1,928
Location
Texas
Occupation
Self employed field mechanic
Work is picking up for me. Spent almost 2 days chasing a broken ecm wire in a prentice Feller buncher this week. Not very picture worthy. Got 3 engines in pieces and I’m waiting for the machine shop on 2 of them and the third is a mess but the owner has spent over a week trying to save a nickel on parts, including looking at a cylinder head that’s been through a fire. My warranty is going to be very short on that job and I’m going to be very clear about that before I start rebuilding it. I know that margins are tight in the logging industry but it never pays to half ass an engine job.
 
J

joe--h

Senior Member
Joined
Jul 22, 2009
Messages
1,259
Location
Utah
Good you're busy, waiting on machine shops to f something up not so good.

They have a knack for it.

Joe H
 
John Shipp

John Shipp

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 5, 2015
Messages
643
Location
England
Occupation
forestry contracting
"chasing a broken ecm wire"...

Where did you start? I wish I had a better grasp on fault finding electrical gremlins, as my wife's car has done only 200 miles between ECU repairs, third time now this year, must be a dodgy wire or component somewhere causing ECU to fail but it's getting expensive trying to find answer.

Good work fixing the Prentice.
 
Mike L

Mike L

Senior Member
Joined
Dec 1, 2010
Messages
1,928
Location
Texas
Occupation
Self employed field mechanic
Basically I had a crank no start condition. Checked my fuses and then plugged cat et into it but didn’t have any connection. The customer had already talked with the dealer and he told them these machines were noted for a chaffed harness by the axle. We checked out power at the ecm and had our 4 battery power wires and 5 grounds but no key switch power to the ecm. Removed the harness thinking that the dealer was right and found nothing wrong. Had continuity through the harness. Experience has taught me that one strand of wire can give you continuity so I stripped open the harness and found nothing wrong. Backed up further and found a broken wire inside the insulation not too far from the fuse panel. Hindsight being what it is I should have chased it from the fuse panel to the ecm but I made the mistake of listening the the dealer rather than just starting from the beginning.
 
John Shipp

John Shipp

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 5, 2015
Messages
643
Location
England
Occupation
forestry contracting
Mike L said:
Backed up further and found a broken wire inside the insulation not too far from the fuse panel
Click to expand...
Thanks for details. How did you actually find the location of the break when it was showing continuity, did you pull hard on each end of the wire first to open up the break? Or strip the wires insulation all the way back?
Cheers. :)
 
Mike L

Mike L

Senior Member
Joined
Dec 1, 2010
Messages
1,928
Location
Texas
Occupation
Self employed field mechanic
I found I had voltage coming out of the fuse panel but it wasn’t getting to the bulkhead connector on the cab. I opened up the harness and did a visual check and then started wiggling the wire until I found it
 
Mike L

Mike L

Senior Member
Joined
Dec 1, 2010
Messages
1,928
Location
Texas
Occupation
Self employed field mechanic
I was pretty relieved. I really don’t like those needle in a haystack jobs. Somebody described it this way. An engine failure may take 5 minutes to diagnose and days to repair. An electrical failure may take 2 days to find and 3 minutes to fix.
 
B

Birken Vogt

Charter Member
Joined
Nov 30, 2003
Messages
5,324
Location
Grass Valley, Ca
Mike L said:
I was pretty relieved. I really don’t like those needle in a haystack jobs. Somebody described it this way. An engine failure may take 5 minutes to diagnose and days to repair. An electrical failure may take 2 days to find and 3 minutes to fix.
Click to expand...

That was Dan Sullivan in the electrical troubleshooting book.
 
colson04

colson04

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 11, 2016
Messages
2,087
Location
Delton, Michigan
Birken Vogt said:
That was Dan Sullivan in the electrical troubleshooting book.
Click to expand...

While we're on the subject of books, are there some good training manuals/books for learning to diagnose electrical and hydraulic system issues that you guys would recommend? I'm always looking to expand my skillset and I know I'm weak on the electrical side of things. I've never had the exposure, and as equipment gets more and more dependent on electrical components, having some knowledge of troubleshooting would be helpful.
 
DMiller

DMiller

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 21, 2010
Messages
16,583
Location
Hermann, Missouri
Occupation
Cheap "old" Geezer
Have had little advanced training or access to for the Digital side of things, I learned the hard way on early Cadillacs with their own ideas of Electronic(Early style CanBus). Then picked up on such iat the Nuke in diagnostics of the electronic control systems we were changing out from Analog to.
 
mekanik

mekanik

Senior Member
Joined
Aug 20, 2015
Messages
960
Location
Canada's Northwest
In the late 1980's I went part time to the local college and took the basic electronics course.
I got half way through the basic course when the instructors both retired and they could not
find anyone to replace them.
I still learned a lot that is of value for what I work on today.
There is a lot of good information on this web page: https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/
 
crane operator

crane operator

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 27, 2009
Messages
8,324
Location
sw missouri
colson04 said:
While we're on the subject of books, are there some good training manuals/books for learning to diagnose electrical and hydraulic system issues that you guys would recommend? I'm always looking to expand my skillset and I know I'm weak on the electrical side of things. I've never had the exposure, and as equipment gets more and more dependent on electrical components, having some knowledge of troubleshooting would be helpful.
Click to expand...

I've heard good things about the Dan Sullivan book, and like you, I'm not great with electrical. I can handle 12 and 24, and on and off, but a lot of the new stuff is into canbus and when I get into boards I'm a little lost.

This is the book they are talking about, and I just ordered one, with the tester, figuring I could read it in my spare time, and give it to my young mechanic. At $80 it only has to save me on one repair to pay for itself.

https://www.amazon.com/Electronic-S...mzn1.fos.006c50ae-5d4c-4777-9bc0-4513d670b6bc
 
DMiller

DMiller

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 21, 2010
Messages
16,583
Location
Hermann, Missouri
Occupation
Cheap "old" Geezer
What I found funny with the Digital Era, the best diagnostics tool was and remains a Analog Oscilloscope. Instantaneous read out unlike the buffered electronic counterparts, reads the square wave as to reference voltage and time duration whether or not stable and consistent.
 
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