CAT 312 questions, I have a few.

UPDATE:
Went to move the tractor to the shop today.
It was about a 15 minute walk from where it was to the trailer so I took this chance to work it lightly along the way and check things out.

It was mid afternoon when I started it up, air temp was in the mid 90's.
Took exactly 15 minutes to reach mid point on the oil temp gauge.
At 30 minutes it was 2 clicks away from the red zone so I shut it down as soon as it reached that level.
Water temp was 1 click away from the 1/2 way point.

Good news, no warning lights came on today, the throttler worked as it should and the machine shut down like it should.

Called my CAT dealer to price all the parts and fluids and they said to use 15-40 engine oil in the hyd system. Now I am really confused. Did a quick google and see that many machines are using it but since I will not be doing a 100% oil change how will the 15-40 mix with the hyd oil that is already in there?

Do you have any idea what's in there now..? Could you maybe find out from the previous owner..?

The dealer recommendation is not uncommon in my experience. a "one man band" operating a single machine - try to keep common fluids wherever possible.

Above are 2 photos.
photo 1 is of the hose that is not connected to anything. It looks like a small vacuum hose.
photo 2 is of a group of wires that have been cut, there are 4 wires in the heat shrink wrapping, it is cut right below the front foot glass.

Both of this items are located under the seat and accessed from the underside of the tractor. both are bundeled along with all the hyd hoses comming from toward the center of the tractor.

Also Nige. The serial number is 7DK02549 and the cat dealer tells me it is a grey iron machine, they are using a 6GK parts book.

On the hyd oil, I think I will just replace what drains out with AW68 hyd oil.

I run delvac 15-40 in all my engines wit the exception of the Harley and the wifes new ford. I would love to use it in the hyd tank too.

As a follow-up to my comments from yesterday you could fill the machine with 10W hydraulic oil and then bleed all the cylinders, travel motors and swing motor one at a time to get the oil out of them. Not a simple process but it would remove probably 95+% of the oil that's in there now. There have been threads posted before on how to do it.

Looks like the windscreen washer line and the green bit is a check valve

THanks, thats kind of what I thought it might be.

on the hyd oil change I think I am going to just pull all he cylinders in amd drain out whatever comes out and refill. Maybe a 80% oil change.

A new update, I discovered my tractor has A/C and it actually works. Not super cold or heavy air movement but its there. NIce for everything but pulling the oil cooler to clean the rad. Looks like before I got the tractor some rats build a nest in the ventalation system and it is kind of blocked up.

Not sure how I missed the fact that I had a A/C system. I have looked in here 100 times.

Nige said:

As a comment regarding Craft's radiator issue and the "electrolysis" reaction with anti-freeze that would entirely depend on the type of anti-freeze/coolant being used in the system. Mixing an old-style D6210 anti-freeze with a "modern" D4985/D5345 organic-acid-based ELC would be a recipe for disaster. An issue that's easily solved - all you have to do is have samples of the collant analyzed every once in a while.

A question for Craft - Do you buy your coolant pre-mixed or concentrated and dilute it with water..?

Generally copper/brass radiators assembled with lead solder pose far less issues than their aluminium-cored equivalents, at least in my experience. Aluminium-cored radiators are extremely sensitive to coolants and their additives.

Click to expand...

This problem began shortly after I bought the machine from Finning DIRECTLY ….. Free, no charge, LOL …… It was one of their own rental units …… the 312 had about 2200 hrs on the clock at the time (it was approx 6yrs old as well) ……. So the service was performed by the CAT dealer directly …… as I posted previously the only time it became an issue was when the ambient air temp was over 25*C/77*F ….. it progressively became worse and more frequent …..

Alls I know is without creating a pissing match over what/where the issues came from ….. AFTER the system neutralizing Flush and the installation of the Brand-New Rad from CAT, combined with the Longlife HD Diesel Antifreeze …. the Machine runs a perfectly normal operating Temps Year-round, even @ -35*C/-31*F or when as now @+45*C/114*F in the shade with the rad screen partially full of fluff …...

I Buy ALL of my anti-freeze full strength (most of the time it was Prestone branded product) ….. as a matter of fact the current Barney Purple stuff is Prestone HD Diesel anti-freeze, which I purchase by the case, and is used in my newer Bcat and the Cummins in my Dodge as well as the VW Diesel in my Sawmill ….. Nige if you were thinking that possibly that the tap water I use (from my own deep well) has a high PPM of hardness indicating a higher than normal calcium level in the water ??? …. according to the Experts of Radiators even if this were true (as they put it) Do you know how much Hard Water you would of had to use to create a build-up of calcium deposit within the rad to create Blockage ????…. Hundreds of gallons of Pure water was their response !!! …… the tube size within these industrial Rads are very large (not like in Automotive industry Rads) …. I was in no position to argue with the guys that knew …... WE where I live CANNOT run pure Water because of our Climate Temps Year round …….

Ps. Nige I have no idea what those numbers of the anti-freeze types you listed are ??? are those CAT part numbers ???

Interesting comments. The numbers I quoted are ASTM specifications. All coolant/antifreeze whatever you want to call it, must meet one or more of them. D6210 is the lowest spec, normally reserved for "old-style" DEAC antifreeze (concentrate or premixed). D5345/D4985 are for organic acid-based coolants (Extended Life Coolant or ELC if you will), which one of the two they meet depends on whether the fluid is concentrate or premixed. What can be confusing is that you will often find on the label of an ELC that it meets D6210. It will in fact far exceed the requirements of D6210 but the manufacturers put it on there just to make themselves look good - IMHO anyway.

Without looking it up your antifreeze sounds like DEAC. Do you test your fluid and if so how often..?

Southern Man said:

View attachment 121548

Not sure how I missed the fact that I had a A/C system. I have looked in here 100 times.

Click to expand...

You'll find the hydraulic cooler mounted to the other side of the radiator. Maybe I'm missing something but I don't see how that radiator assembly swings out.

Nige, I know where everything is, all 3 components are sandwiched together and it looks like none of them are going to come out easily.

I really do not want to have to break the seal on the A/C system.

Perhaps I will see if I can remove the fan shroud and wash the main radiator from the fan side and the oil cooler from this side washing around the A/C coil.
Inspection from the upper side does not show a lot of builtup between the components. As stated before the water temp is normal.

What other problems could be causing the oil overheating?

Sorry if I confused you. I could have sworn you said somewhere that the assembly swung out .........old age catching up with me...!

To do the cleaning refer to post #10 on Page 1 for the words of someone who's actually done one. He managed to unbolt the a/c evaporator and the oil cooler and move them far enough away from the radiator to be able to inspect and/or clean it.

Until you can definitely eliminate the radiator/oil cooler package as the root cause of the problem you can't continue clutching at straws that it might be something else IMHO. You have to tick the "it's not that" box before you can move forward.

I think I found my problem today.
When I removed the fan shroud you could turn the fan on the belts with you hand.
They were also so cracked that they were going to break at any moment.

The fan had to spinning at about 1/2 speed.
I'm still going to change to coolant and the hyd oil and filters and pressure wash all the coils

BUT

I feel good that the belts was the main problem.

Got all my parts up today to give the machine an update of missing and bent parts.

I picked up a couple thousand dollars of parts from the local heavy equipment grave yard for $250.
Both rear doors, toolbox & lid, 3 underside inspection covers,battery hold down clamp/cover, muffler support brackets, muffler top U bolt clamps, Bucket Pins, Radiator screen, a gallon of CAT bolts, 6' section of outer frame rail.
If anyone is needing anything they ship and are great folks to deal with. I will be happy to pass their number along.

Southern Man : Have you had a chance to run the machine to find if the belt was the overheating issue ??? …….

Craft. not replaced the belts yet, they just came in yesterday. It will be a few days until I get all the other stuff done to it and it gets back in the field to really check it. I'll keep you all posted.

Got caught up enough today to get the belts back on. Got the bucket reattached and all the slop is gone. Changed the A/C fittings over from R-12 to 134. blows cold but the evaporator seems to need cleaning.

Can someone tell me how to access the evaporator for cleaning?

When I get a chance I'll post photos of my budget muffler and how I got by for less than $150 for a new system.

Here is my budget muffler project.
Before buying my tractor the previous owner had just built a straight pipe in lieu of putting it back the correct way. They also removed and threw away the support saddles and top clamps.

The muffler is a Caterpillar "Classic" part and was $128.00 The regular Cat part would have been 389.00
The turbo to muffler transition here was made with 2 small exhaust adapters and pipe clamps bought at auto zone for less than $15.
One welded to the flange, one sliding into the muffler, and both slidding into one another. The 2 CAT part would have cost $148.00

I also used the true CAT metal gasket for $13 and 2 CAT studs that was missing for $11.

The saddle brackets and top clamps cost me $20 at the junk yard and would have cost me $420 if I would have bought them at the CAT store.

Here is what the straight pipe looked like that I took off. My new steup is much quiter.

The bucket had 1" of space between the pin boss's and the stick so I had the machine shop cut 2 1/2" spacers out of AR400 and we welded them beside the old bosses with the main pin holding them in place. Now there is 0 I said 0 play up and down, front to back and side to side.

I stopped by the dealership today and had them print me off the work steps to clean the evaporator, Step #1 open door, step #2 remove cab.
did not see that coming.

Here is an update for everyone that was so much help to me.

(1) it seems that my main overheating hyd oil problem was the worn out fan belts.
Since replacing them the tractor has not ran hot but it still gets within 2 clicks of the red zone on 90deg+ days.
Water temp stays about 1/2 way, no where close to the red zone.

(2) While the seat of out and I was cleaning out the A/C ventilation system I bought a new seat cover off eBay for $68 shipped and replaced it. I removed the arm rest and lever handles and took the time to lace it on really tight and it looks great.

(3) Replaced the broken glass on the front, top and bottom, and the slider on the top part of the door.
the front pieces was cut at the local glass shop at a cost of $290 installed. The factory slider was a different story $480 for the window and $140 for the rubber gasket. SO, $1,000 for 3 pieces of glass.

(4) Had a thumb built and installed. $1,000

(5) Had the bottom side rail replaced, for some reason the previous owner had cut it out and there was just a big long hole in the side of the tractor. Perhaps he swung in into something hard and bent it up.

All in all I spent about $4,000 on the tractor this summer but it is the very first money I have put into it since I have had it.

Positive things
I have A/C now, I can see out of the front glass, its much quieter with the muffler,the thumb made this tractor a trash burning machine.