Just some work pics

Trusses on a shop/ living space building. They green sawed the inside concrete, but it had a new apron and sidewalk all the way around the outside, not a saw mark on it and it had some ugly cracks in it.

Customer needed a truck to move a screen onto a transport trailer. I had a spare hour this morning so I said sure. I spent all day.

Needed a ramp built, because instead of getting a stretch RGN, lets try to put it up on a stepdeck. Ramp was built too short, so they proceeded to put another 2' of wet clay on the ramp. I told them it wouldn't hold up, and it didn't . Then he spent another hour trying to put rock on top of the soaking wet clay, and of course that didn't help either.


He kept asking what he should do - "dig all the wet clay out that I told you not to put in there and build it up with rock". Then he would say "it will firm up", and keep on working it up. nope - sorry but it isn't going to firm up no matter how often you drive your tracked skid loader over it buddy.

I was on the hourly clock, so I shouldn't care, but I was ticked by the end. I had a bunch of other stuff scheduled for the day, and this was a mess. DON"T ask me for advice, if you don't want to listen and just do whatever you want.

We did end up getting it loaded, and not through the clay. I finally got him to cut another ramp into a existing rock pile he had. It was a little sketchy with all the mud and backing it onto the trailer. Driver was overheight also.

Liebherr sent me a little something also. About got all the accessory/ sensors mounted up at the shop. Just have to swap motor mounts and spin the oil fill hole yet.

Hopefully we can at least get it over to where the crane is tomorrow and set in the hole.

I may be out of order here, but are better quality filters than Wix available in your area, especially based on the $ value of what's sitting on that stand..?

They ask your opinion hoping you agree. That way if it doesn’t work they can blame you

Nige said:

I may be out of order here, but are better quality filters than Wix available in your area, especially based on the $ value of what's sitting on that stand..?

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I can order anything, including liebherr branded ones if I want. The best I can get local is wix. I don't know who builds liebherr's filters. What's everyone's favorite? Baldwin, donaldson, napa, fleetguard?

We did get it in the hole today. Starter and rear driveline, alternator, motor mounts hooked up. Still need a belt for the front, put front driveline on to the main pump, another hyd. pump that mounts to the engine, then wiring. Then radiator and hyd. cooler and air to air and all those connections. Weather is supposed to turn to sleet and cold tomorrow though, so I don't think we'll get much done.

We were talking about start up, I thought about not hooking up fuel, and just cranking starter first to build up some oil pressure, before putting fuel to it. I did have engine oil come out of the oil cooler lines, so I think its been run on a dyno after rebuilding. It was shipped with no oil in the pan. Should I just put regular engine oil in, or some kind of "break in" oil. '

I was surprised that liebherr didn't send a "start up" procedure with the motor. They probably have one, but its a "tech" only application.

As a suggestion to protect your investment initially - OEM filters if you can get them. If anything goes t1ts-up nobody can point a finger at you for trying to save a few cents, or simply using what you could get locally.

Out of your list above I’d personally pick Donaldson. No experience with Baldwin, never been impressed with Fleetguard and I wouldn’t put Parts house filters in my pickup, let alone something with that price tag in it.

Pre-start. Make sure the turbo has plenty oil in it and if you can crank it over with the fuel off until you see about 5psi or so on a mechanical pressure gauge plumbed into the main oil gallery would also be a good idea.

I’m sure others will chime in with suggestions.

Plumbing a pressure gauge into the oil gallery is probably not going to happen. If I find a place to tap in, it will probably be some super strange thread size or fitting connection. I think I'll just watch the oil pressure gauge in the cab. I spent two days trying to get two bolts that would fit in two large tapped holes in the top of the block to lift the engine by. I don't know what kind of threads or size they are, but they aren't metric fine or metric coarse thread (and not SAE fine or coarse either). I gave up and made different lifting brackets that attached in a different place.

I really like this crane, but it is kind of a pain simply because of how liebherr builds some of their stuff. I read somone's post a while back about getting a C9 for a grader, and it was a $55,000, motor from the cat store. I was thinking "I can find all kinds of C9 cats, for 8-15,000, aint no way I would give that kind of $ to the CAT man". But you can find CAT, detroit, cummins engines all over in the U.S. With this being liebherr, its only going to come from liebherr. I even looked pretty hard for a John Deere dozer engine block (a liebherr in john deere colors) as a base for rebuilding my engine, and it just wasn't feasible, $ or time wise.

I kind of half looked at repowering, but the way they drive different pumps directly off the engine (kind of like a old detroit rear gear set up) makes it about impossible. They gear drive air compressor and one hyd. pump off the rear of the engine, and another one off a gear drive on the front. Then drive the large hydro pumps from a driveline off the front crank. Trying to attach up all that stuff was just going to be too far out of the box.

Built Proprietary so nothing else can be modded easily into it. Typical of what I have seen of Liebherr ANY machine. Looks and sounds good so far, I too have lost much appreciation for WIX as well a number of other makes filters. Fleetrite from Corn Queen USED to be decent as was Fleetguard from Cummins but times have changed, I have to use Baldwin on the old Allis as no one produces the obsolete filters for it any longer, are will fits from WIX and NAPA(Also WIX) yet I do not use those.

As far as the Concrete, Excessive Calcium to get it to rock up in the cold will cause to shrink too fast where produce shrinkage cracks much as the one in the photo, cracks to weakest point(corners).

Well, I'm gaining slowly, but it seems like two steps forward and one step back right now.

Engine is in the liebherr, got it running Monday, and home to shop. Ran good on the way home. I've got a issue with the oil pressure sending unit, I'm actually thinking the sender is fine, but that we've pinched a wire.

I've got a manual gauge plumbed in, and making great oil pressure. So we got the crane set up, and it won't telescope boom. All question marks on the gauges. Called tech, they walked me through it all, and I had a proximity sensor in the boom go bad. New sensor showed up this morning. Installed, called tech and got it "confirmed" in the computer. Boom scopes in and out.

Ran crane for a while after putting in switch, and it starts losing power while running hydraulics, I was thinking its just cold, but it got worse. Shut it down and everything looks good, just low on power. Pulled fuel filters, and the primary looked really dirty, they were new filters when engine installed. Thinking in setting for a month and a half through the monsoon season we've been having, plus I have fought slime before in the crane.

New filters installed, tank is drained of fuel and fresh fuel in it, and then batteries didn't have enough left to crank it over enough to get it going. We had done a bunch of cranking to get it going back on monday and saturday, and had to recharge them several times, so I'm guessing one of them isn't much good. New batteries are showing up in the morning, and I guess tomorrow we will see what happens.

At least its at my shop.

While it isn't right at least you have it back to your shop, it will be much easier to work on it there. Hopefully you get the things ironed out and it starts making money for you soon.

Damn cannot catch a break on this
That sucks
At least is home and can negotiate at the shop

I'm the project manager for the design and construction of a 120 foot long replica Brown Truss timber covered bridge. It's a 2nd in a lifetime. I was PM for a replica 100 foot long Brown Truss in Ada Mi back in 1980. Wiki is wrong, it has a 25 foot steel beam approach span on the west end. I'll post photos this weekend of the cranes and trusses. I have some neat lift photos for posting later. I forgot to say we set the 2 trusses in place today.
https://www.facebook.com/RebuildWhitesBridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Covered_Bridge
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Spent yesterday and this morning early, beating my head against the liebherr, and hallelujah- it went out and made a little $ today. 1,000lbs unit, 140' radius. Only another 40 or so jobs, and I'll have the motor paid for.

Second picture is the top side of the telescope cylinder, it has prox switches where every boom section sits, and for locking and unlocking pins. The lower left hand side one was bad, one of 8 in this area. I think there are 12 prox switches total, that control boom telescope function.

We have enough stuff around now that's metric, I decided to break down and get a metric tap and die set. Found a nice looking Vermont American set on Zoro, web site said made in Germany, a little over $100. m3 to m12

Well it showed up today, opened the box and the stuff didn't look too good. Looked at the box. Hecho de China.

Well I got news for Zoro. If I had wanted a Chinese set, I could have got a Tekton off Amazon for about $40. Return UPS slip is already printed, its going back.

I recently started buying drill bits bolts taps and hardware from a little mom and pop place about 5 minutes from our yard it's been there forever but the local nut and bolt supply chain is 1200 feet from the gate but I have learned the 5 minute drive gets me a better tool at about or little cheaper rate

The small hardware store is independent of any brand and pretty much everything they sell for tools is American made

On another note harbor freight is about 10 minutes away and when I need things that are to be disposable it fits the bill

crane operator said:

Spent yesterday and this morning early, beating my head against the liebherr, and hallelujah- it went out and made a little $ today. 1,000lbs unit, 140' radius. Only another 40 or so jobs, and I'll have the motor paid for.

Second picture is the top side of the telescope cylinder, it has prox switches where every boom section sits, and for locking and unlocking pins. The lower left hand side one was bad, one of 8 in this area. I think there are 12 prox switches total, that control boom telescope function.View attachment 209761 View attachment 209762

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At least it's making money again, that's something.
Those scope cylinders can be a nightmare when they play up. I had a locking pin seize recently in a GMK6220L, took 2 days for the dealer tech to be able to access it to unstick it..... Pin was jammed in T2 and the cylinder won't unlock until the section is locked to the next one. Luckily I only had 3 50% sections out.
Have you noticed a drop in power with the new motor?

crane operator said:

Second picture is the top side of the telescope cylinder, it has prox switches where every boom section sits, and for locking and unlocking pins. The lower left hand side one was bad, one of 8 in this area. I think there are 12 prox switches total, that control boom telescope function.

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It may be just me, but is the cover plate supposed to be sealed to prevent water getting into it.? Looks in the photo as though there are traces of silicone around it.
With that much value in the crane and all the electrical/electronic connections your Liebherr would seem to be a prime candidate for the application of Senson grease & protection tape to electrical connectors (at least the ones associated with the LMI and the boom telescoping function) to prevent the possibility of condensation in connectors causing you headaches. I know it works, we use it on all our kit that gets rained on heavily 365 days a year.

Nige said:

It may be just me, but is the cover plate supposed to be sealed to prevent water getting into it.?

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There are remnants of silicone on it. The cover plates have huge slots in the bolt holes, and one of the lock pins attaches in the cover. There's no way to seal the end of the boom either, so water is getting in there no matter what. I think if you siliconed the lid, it would just get moved by the pin locking and unlocking in it. I think the silicone isn't factory, but later in its life. I think if you really wanted to try to seal it, a cork type gasket would handle the slight movement better. I've used dielectric grease before

Kiwi-truckwit said:

Have you noticed a drop in power with the new motor?

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Runs great so far. "New" motor is a liebherr reman. New engine data plate said 2005, so its a quite a bit newer block, my crane is a 1999/2000.