I'm having an issue with my skidsteer. It is a 2005 287B. I was using it to haul some pretty heavy bucketfulls of sand and was transporting them a good distance and I started noticing the hydraulics were not at full strength anymore. I have a throttle on the floor and I was having to give it full throttle to get the arm to lift with a load, same with the bucket tilt. When its just idling with no load and I try to raise the arm it does not lift it all. It does not have the bucket float feature. Hopefully I can at least get a direction of where to start looking for the problem from here.
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CAT 287B weak hydraulics
- Thread starter pjwewerka
- Start date
Nige
Senior Member
Assuming you've done the basics like checking hydraulic oil level, the first thing I'd suggest is to replace the filter on the hydraulic system. Cut the old filter open and look for any sort of debris in the bottom of the filter material pleats. If you've never done it before there are lots of "how to" videos on YouTube.
We were debating on doing that today and definitely would be the easiest thing to try for starters. I will get it cut open and get back to here with the findings. Thanks for your response man! If that checks out where would be your next direction?
Hey Nige I changed the hydraulic filter and still the same result. Very weak lifting and dumping ability. Are there check valves or something I can test to see if the pump is working correctly?
Nige
Senior Member
Did you cut the old filter and inspect it for particles..?
If not, you should do that as the next step before moving forward.
There is no point getting into how to pressure-test the system until you confirm that the inside of the filter element is not full of all sorts of nasty "sparklies"...….
If not, you should do that as the next step before moving forward.
There is no point getting into how to pressure-test the system until you confirm that the inside of the filter element is not full of all sorts of nasty "sparklies"...….
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I cut the filter open and there is slight traces of metal in that one section I cut out. Wondering if that’s normal amount or is there something wrong here. I ordered a service manual so I can dig deeper into it when that shows up. Thanks for the help!
Nige
Senior Member
Well if the pump had shat itself I'd have expected more in the way of particles TBH although looking real close at the first photo there are a lot of really small particles on it - or certainly what looks like particles. See the snip below.
Are the dark particles in the photo magnetic..?
A system pressure test is the next step now.
Are the dark particles in the photo magnetic..?
A system pressure test is the next step now.
Nige
Senior Member
Another thought. Try folding that section of filter up again and squeeze it in a vice to get the oil out. It may be that the oil in the filter media is somewhat masking the particles.
Looking close at that photo above I think there are a lot more particles in that filter than are immediately apparent, getting the oil out would allow them to show up more clearly.
Looking close at that photo above I think there are a lot more particles in that filter than are immediately apparent, getting the oil out would allow them to show up more clearly.
The blackness is just the oil saturated in the filter I think. There are some small sparklies throughout the filter which I’m not sure how much if any is supposed to be in there after a couple hundred hours or so of use. To me it really doesn’t seem that out of the ordinary but I could definitely be wrong I’m no expert but I have seen a lot of oil filters out of powersports motors that typically never have metal in them unless a part has failed so it’s hard for me to know what they typically look like
Nige
Senior Member
Squeeze the filter really hard in a vice and get more of the oil out of it. Then we’ll be able to see better what you’ve got.
Compare your filter cut to this one that we did earlier today. There's almost no oil at all left in the media and you can more easily see the contamination in the bottom of the pleats.
Compare your filter cut to this one that we did earlier today. There's almost no oil at all left in the media and you can more easily see the contamination in the bottom of the pleats.
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I took 3 different pictures of the filter element but couldn’t get all the oil out. I think you can see it pretty clearly though what’s in there. There definitely is some metal but not sure if that amount is normal. And I don’t know when this filter was last changed
Nige
Senior Member
That's full of fine very sparkly material although you never mentioned if it was metallic or non-metallic, it's a big difference. Two options going forward as I see it:-
1. Stick a pressure gauge on the hydraulic system test port and see what pressure you're getting. That would be a clincher. The specified pressure is 3336+/-145psi. DON'T go trying to adjust it, simply do the test as it is written and report back what pressure you measure.
2. Pull the implement system pump off, open it up, and take a look inside.
1. Stick a pressure gauge on the hydraulic system test port and see what pressure you're getting. That would be a clincher. The specified pressure is 3336+/-145psi. DON'T go trying to adjust it, simply do the test as it is written and report back what pressure you measure.
2. Pull the implement system pump off, open it up, and take a look inside.