Summer13 Tracy

 Interesting find while greasing last night.  S-cam bushing coming off the slack adjuster was loose.  Not a crazy sexy fix but one more thing to look for as I'm inspecting.

 This picture speaks loudly about false confidence in our good buddy thread goop.  Solution?  More goop.

 Until I noticed the machined surfaces around each port.  That machined surface told me that there is a possibility that the ports are not pipe thread sealed.  Interesting to note that the pump has the same machined surfaces around the ports with o-ring boss to pipe thread adapters.  Probably why more goop didn't help.

 The 3rd member ended up having to come out of the 9280 Case after I poked around with a magnet.  The shavings on the blue was the condemning evidence.

   I'm hoping to take a good look at the bearings and race. Should be entertaining.

 Lots and lots and lots of metal coming out of the rear end of the Case tractor.  I probably could have spent all day digging stuff out with the magnet.  Most was magnetized so it looked solid, but there were enough solid considerably sized metal chunks to justify pulling the 3rd member and having a closer look.

 Pulled this valve out of a water truck.  The valve is actuated by mechanical rotation, was leaking out both ends of the body.  Blown rings were the cause.
  Still getting a tough time for being so clean around this kind of stuff, but it won't leak because of it.

Another find that could have resulted in a service call.  Post off the alternator digging into coolant hose.

















Yesterday I was very happy to find and diagnose my first real electrical problem.  The 7-wire bundle that goes through the reach, to the pogo, and then to the trailer kept getting ass-holed up whenever the truck and trailer came together and finally wore through the insulation.  Caused all the functions to the trailer to fail.  I was convinced already that the wires had shorted to ground, but two of the guys checked the fuses and they all checked out ok.  Went straight to the loads and found no voltage.  Next spot was right before the exposed electrical - no voltage.  Just to be thorough in working back I checked the trailer plug really quick and the switch for the pup trailer gate, which were real easy to get to.  No voltage.  Scratched my head trying to see if I could remember any more about the circuit boards.  Go to load, no voltage so move back to positive.  Only thing that made sense was a blown fuse, since I knew the problem was caused way down the line where I was getting no voltage at the reach.  Looked down in the fuse box and got birded out quickly by a relay with a see through case.  RAD!  The side said something like "Hot line must be in-line fuse".  Something like that.  Hmmmmmmm.  Pulled the hot line out from its hiding spot and Voila!  A blown fuse :)  Super stoked about being able to prove to the guys there that light testers blow and multimeters rock.
Important lessons to be learned here are:  Everything is one big light board-simple and don't be afraid to bird out.  The answers might just be in it's beak.

Hours:
Total: 124
Weeks: 40