Cat track loader purchase

[ippielb]

I have installed a few of the diesel burning espar coolant heaters on 3306 engines and I either tap into the primary fuel filter or go right to the tank for fuel supply. As far as coolant hookup goes the 3306 is one of the hardest engines to get good ports for flow on. With the espar it has enough pump flow of coolant that you can tap into the heater hoses and it will heat the engine.
I would recommend you look into the espar or webasto coolant heater for your machine and then use that egr cooler with hot coolant pumped through it from the espar to create hot air to blow on the trans/ hydraulic area.
Another suggestion is if you are starting that hydrostat at -25 you should probably be putting arctic hydraulic oil in it.

The heater i have is actually an Air heater, and I'm just trying to scavenge the waste heat from the exhaust to heat coolant as well. I have two, one permanently mounted units that i'm putting in the machine and then one of those self contained ones in the red tin can. And using that one the exhaust seems to put out more heat then the hot air.

I have noticed that there is not any larger coolant plugs on the injection pump side, which i was hoping there was going to be since its more open then the oil cooler side. Right now i want to stick with the cheap Chinese one because it only cost $220 and want to see if blowing warm air at the pumps, and then at the block will even help. The less electricity and power drain one has on the batteries in the cold the better. I have a constant drain on the batteries that i already can't track down, i have a feeling its the alternator itself. So i just turn off the master every night.

I run the cold weather 0w-40 in the engine oil, and then hydo 10 for the hydrostatic and hydraulic.

 

[Nige]

I run the cold weather 0w-40 in the engine oil, and then hydo 10 for the hydrostatic and hydraulic.

It appears as though you have the engine covered but you might probably be better switching to the 0W/20 TO-4 for the hystat & hydraulic systems for improved cold weather starting.

 

[CM1995]

FWIW we run 10 WT hydro in our 953C and it takes a minute to let the system warm up when it's cold down here. Cold I mean 20-30 degrees F.

 

[kshansen]

FWIW we run 10 WT hydro in our 953C and it takes a minute to let the system warm up when it's cold down here. Cold I mean 20-30 degrees F.

At 30ºF ippielb is probably just thinking about putting on a long sleeve shirt!

 

[CM1995]

At 30ºF ippielb is probably just thinking about putting on a long sleeve shirt!

That was the point of my post...

 

[ippielb]

It appears as though you have the engine covered but you might probably be better switching to the 0W/20 TO-4 for the hystat & hydraulic systems for improved cold weather starting.

Would that be okay for summertime use as well when the highs are sometimes up to 40 degrees Celsius? I'm hoping having the warm air from this heater hitting the pumps it will keep that oil nice and warm and loose so the engine can spin over faster initially and get that first pop.

FWIW we run 10 WT hydro in our 953C and it takes a minute to let the system warm up when it's cold down here. Cold I mean 20-30 degrees F.

When it's -20c up here the pumps sure make a different noise comparatively to when they're warm. Our temperatures are at or colder then your cold for 5 months of the year. I still wonder why my ancestors stopped where they did. And why we've stayed here haha

At 30ºF ippielb is probably just thinking about putting on a long sleeve shirt!

When its that warm in spring time i'm wearing a t shirt and shorts almost. In fall early winter when its that cold i'm wearing a sweater and sweating underneath it lol

 

[ippielb]

Well, I decided to just hook up the coolant lines so the EGR cooler I have is directly in line. Put a temporary water bottle filled with diesel as the fuel source.

The kit came with two extendable hoses for the hot air output. I have one pointed at each hydrostatic pump, the other two are just left open for now because that’s all they gave was 2 pieces of pipe. The air that comes out isn’t even really that hot.

The exhaust that comes out is WAY hotter than the hot air. The EGR cooler gets very hot, and the water in the hose going up to the heater core may burn you if you got it on you for too long.

Seems weird that the water going into the heater core is that hot, but the return line for the heater core is still cold. Do you think the heater core would dissipate the heat that much that the water leaving wouldn’t even be warm at all?

But I probably don’t have my heater control set to maximum hot in the cab. So that valve inside the climate control area is probably barely cracked open. Hence the really hot EGR cooler, and the heater hose pre heater core.

I also took off my fuel return line and was going to tie into it for a feed line for the heater but I don’t have the proper fittings or hose. The return line hose is absolutely garbage cracking and deteriorated so I’m going to get a new one made. It’s a JIC fitting with a 90° fitting. But in the hose itself just before the fitting there seems to be a blockage. The air compressor barely blows through it. Is this by design to have a restriction on the return line?

Edit:
Having problems finding the actual return line itself, but i found the part the line gets attached to.

3J-7352

Edit 2:
Found it 166-1725

 

[Nige]

Would that be okay for summertime use as well when the highs are sometimes up to 40 degrees Celsius?

Yes it would. You are only using a 10W now so when it’s hot outside you would have the additional benefit of a 20 oil to withstand the higher ambient temperature. On top of that you would be going down from a 10W to a 5W at the cold end of the scale that would help with your cold starts in winter. Win-win.

 

[ippielb]

Yes it would. You are only using a 10W now so when it’s hot outside you would have the additional benefit of a 20 oil to withstand the higher ambient temperature. On top of that you would be going down from a 10W to a 5W at the cold end of the scale that would help with your cold starts in winter. Win-win.

If the diesel heater/coolant heater doesn't help aid in starting as much as i'd hoped. Then my next oil change will be with the TDTO TMS oil.

Today i went into the city and grabbed some fittings to replace the fuel return line since cat has indirectly replaced it. I'll get that made up and hook the fuel up to my diesel heater. Looking at the parts diagram the fuel return line goes into the tank well lower then the fuel pickup enters. So even if the return goes straight in and doesn't have a tube lowering it to the bottom of the tank. I fill up my machine every night when i'm done. It will have plenty of fuel to feed into the diesel heater with its built in pump.

There's no reason for that old fuel return to have such a restriction on it, so i just went and bought the 1/4" JIC 90 degree fitting that you're suppose to crimp onto a hydraulic hose. I'm going to cut the sleeve that you're suppose to crimp off. And just run a hose clamp and a chunk of 1/4" fuel line. I also got a 1/4" brass T so i can run the fuel line up to my fuel pump and fuel heater. I'm curious if the fuel return being restricted was forcing excess fuel through the injectors and causing my fuel consumption in increase. This is just speculation of course.

My next course of action is to figure out how to power the heater. I'm probably going to have to just bring a battery with me every day to leave at the machine. I don't really feel comfortable draining one of the two batteries on the machine to run the heater since its a 12v diesel heater, and im too cheap to spend $200 on a 24v step down to 12v box thing.

I have a job lined up for the machine i could take it to tomorrow but i haven't quite finished buttoning up the heater install.

Farmer hired a company to do some land clearing on a quarter section. There was only 110 cultivated acres on that field, the rest was slough and bush. So they ended up pushing around 30 acres of bush with mixed slough in it as well. Took him 2 week he said. But they did it with a dozer with a root rake in either the end of november or beginning of december. They want me to come in and clean up the mess thats left. They burnt some of the piles from last year, there's not much dirt in them which is good. But the piles were not piled and stacked. Just bunched together, and i can tell just from walking around, through the snow i can see tons of smaller stumps and branches and limbs left everywhere. Not ideal situation for them, they couldn't even farm 90% of what was cleared.

I'll go in with my excavator and my track loader and bring all the left overs together and then dig a nice deep hole to bury everything in. All of my jobs i've done clearing the farmers have seeded everything that was dry the very next year. I'm curious to see what they got charged.

 

[Nige]

If the diesel heater/coolant heater doesn't help aid in starting as much as i'd hoped. Then my next oil change will be with the TDTO TMS oil.

TDTO-TMS IS A 10W/40, so no better at the cold end of the scale than the straight 10W that you are using now. If you go with a Cat product you would need Arctic TDTO synthetic that is an 0W/20. Commercial oils from companies such as Chevron generally appear to be 5W/20 but there may be other 0W/20 TO-4 options out there. TBH I didn’t look.

 

[Nige]

For your location Petro Canada "Produro TO-4 XL Synthetic Blend Lo-Temp 0W/20" (what a mouthful...!!) would also appear to be an option. https://petrocanadalubricants.com/en-ca/brand/produro-to-4-plus-xl-synthetic-blend-lo-temp

 

[ippielb]

For your location Petro Canada "Produro TO-4 XL Synthetic Blend Lo-Temp 0W/20" (what a mouthful...!!) would also appear to be an option. https://petrocanadalubricants.com/en-ca/brand/produro-to-4-plus-xl-synthetic-blend-lo-temp

Petro Canada is where i get all my oils for my other equipment, so i'm not afraid to run it. Good supplier for me, they probably wouldn't have it in stock so next oil change i'll look into cost comparison between the hydo 10, and the mouthful Produro TO-4 XL Synthetic Blend Lo-Temp 0W/20. The only thing i'll have to be aware of is the 40c amibent. Does that include humidity? It gets over 40 with humidity, and rarely over 40 without.

 

[Welder Dave]

It should be fine. Petro Canada is known for hydro-treating their oils and are very popular with large commercial and mining contractors. After a little research I used Petro Canada oil when I replaced a wheel motor in the skid steer. Price was around the same as other name brands. It also comes in 20L pails instead of 18.9L pails (which is 5 US gallons) so you get a little more bang for your buck. I needed 2 pails and that extra 2 litres is just what I needed to get the proper level in the tank.

 

[ippielb]

Forgot to post a little update on the diesel heater thing. I made up a new fuel return line, and put in a T to try and run the diesel heater off the return seeing that the return line goes into the side of the tank, not the top i thought it would be far enough down that i could get fuel for the heater. I guess my fuel level isn't high enough at 3/4 of a tank. The heater ran for 15 minutes before the pump stopped pumping fuel to the heater. So tomorrow morning i'm going to try and fill up the tank all the way and try again. Maybe i'll need to have a full tank for it to siphon out.

And still didn't get the coolant to flow from the EGR cooler. But after doing some digging i found that the parts diagram shows that i have the EGR cooler HOT line going to the wrong pipe for the heater core. I have it on the return line. I'm not sure if the valve on the heater core to select your heat range is a check valve as well. But when the heater is going the line going to the valve is extremely hot, and then the other line is cold.

Turns out i have the lines hooked up backwards. I attached the COLD side to the heater from the line just above the water pump. And the hot side to the valve on the heater core. I should've hooked up the COLD side of the heater to the line from the oil cooler, and then the HOT side to the heater core coil line. Which is the way the water flows through the heater core. I had thought it it backwards.

So tomorrow i'll have to cut a new line to fit to the oil cooler, but it should suck water from the oil cooler, heat the water, put it up through the heater core, then it will fall down to the water pump housing and it will hopefully go through the block trying to get back to the oil cooler. The bright side with putting them onto the heater core lines is that they already have taps on them. So if something on the EGR cooler or the lines i put on do leak. I can just turn off the valves and not lose all my coolant.

It should be fine. Petro Canada is known for hydro-treating their oils and are very popular with large commercial and mining contractors. After a little research I used Petro Canada oil when I replaced a wheel motor in the skid steer. Price was around the same as other name brands. It also comes in 20L pails instead of 18.9L pails (which is 5 US gallons) so you get a little more bang for your buck. I needed 2 pails and that extra 2 litres is just what I needed to get the proper level in the tank.

I used petro for all the fluids in my excavator. engine, complete hydraulic drain and fill, cleaned out the tank even. Both final drives and the swing gear were all from petro.

My grader i cheaped out a little bit. The hydraulic tank was so low that all i did was just changed the filter and topped it up with a couple pails of fluid. I still have to replace the moldboard slide cylinder and rebuild one of the vertical blade lift cylinders before i go crazy and drain everything completely, if oil can get out. Dirt can get in, i don't want to contaminate a full new oil change. But i did drain the transmission completely, and the engine and put new oils in. Still have to do the diff, and the tandems after i change those wheel seals.

 

[Nige]

The only thing i'll have to be aware of is the 40c amibent. Does that include humidity? It gets over 40 with humidity, and rarely over 40 without.

The 40 ambient is not a hard & fast limit, like if it gets to 41 you have to stop working humidity or not.

Depending on how big your local distributor is I would be surprised if they didn’t have it.

Right now you are using a 10W. A switch to an 0W/20 would give you the benefits of the 20 over the 10 when the temperature gets hot, and in the opposite direction the benefit of the 0W over the 10 for cold starts in conditions that really no same person would want to live in. As I mentioned before, win-win.

 

[ippielb]

The 40 ambient is not a hard & fast limit, like if it gets to 41 you have to stop working humidity or not.

Depending on how big your local distributor is I would be surprised if they didn’t have it.

Right now you are using a 10W. A switch to an 0W/20 would give you the benefits of the 20 over the 10 when the temperature gets hot, and in the opposite direction the benefit of the 0W over the 10 for cold starts in conditions that really no same person would want to live in. As I mentioned before, win-win.

The end of this post got a chuckle out of me. I never claimed to be sane. haha

If anyone finds this thread looking to put a coolant heater on their 3306, after trying to make the circulatory heater on the heater core lines in both directions, the heater core won’t let the coolant go through. Im assuming the heater valve only gets water through under pressure. There was no reason for it not to go through.

I had to get a few different adaptors to hook my lines up like the picture above. There’s no room to work so I couldn’t get the lower hose hooked up to the larger port that they used. Instead I used the slightly smaller port beside it which I had an adapter for. Then a 90° hose to angle it down and took the heater hose below the engine to the other side to hook it up to my EGR cooler that’s being used as the coolant heater. The hot line goes overtop of the engine along the two heater core lines and then goes into the head at the larger 1/2” NPT plug.

Initially there was an air pocket in the hot line but after bleeding it out the coolant started flowing quite well for the size of the fittings. Shouldn’t take very long to heat the block up. Now to try it when temperatures drop again, I’m just glad I was able to get the main install done while the temperature rose this week.

And for the fueling, i topped up my tank on the machine with my slip tank. Then after playing around with the heater lines all morning I let the heater run for an hour and a half and it kept going. The first time it started sucking air in less then 20 minutes. So i think having the full tank keeps the return line under the fuel level and it can run on that. The only downside is the only way the heater will work is if the machine has a full tank which isn't ideal. But for this winter it will have to do i don't know any other way to get fuel that isn't from the suction side of the fuel system and i dont want to tap into that for fear of reliability.

 

[ippielb]

 

[ippielb]

 

[Georgia Iron]

I found you another 73

2003 973 Caterpillar - heavy equipment - by owner - sale - craigslist

2003 973 Caterpillar loader. runs and operates excellent, 80% on the undercarriage. new batteries, fully serviced, has two warning lights on the dash. first light is the fuel gauge, however the tank...

atlanta.craigslist.org

only a claimed 26,000 hours for a cool $70,000.00

 

[ippielb]

Merry Christmas Everyone

I think the next 973 i buy will be at least a D model, i really miss the controls being attached to the seat and the operator comfort. Not to mention a tilting cab would be ideal for repairs and yearly washing. Seeing the prices of track loaders at auctions makes me feel pretty dang good for what i paid for mine back in 2015. It's funny how all those people who were trying to talk me out of buying it, and all the doubt are no where to be found now.

I've done a few jobs since i last posted. And also did a few smaller ones. Most of my fall was spent getting the pad ready for our new heated shop, for the builders not to show up.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2rt0B7ATPKXzGgvHXO-g4h6upHmpNc1K

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2rt0B7ATPKXAW99j2G_gz8cGCNiObqgh

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2rt0B7ATPKUvbUXFPKvDExZWGL8WeQT9