A plea to manufacturers: provide good schematics to equipment buyers

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Good logic and good luck are often needed when owners and service personnel face those inevitable service or operational problems, but good schematics can be a great asset

by RALPH WINFIELD

In my youth, I was always interested in how things mechanical and electrical worked. As a farm boy, I jumped at the opportunity to work in a local general repair garage, working primarily on tractors under the supervision of a truly old-school mechanic. He could fix anything that came his way – even magnetos.

This background led to the desire to become an engineer, ensuring that equipment such as tractors and combines were designed correctly to guarantee a long, trouble-free life and be easily serviceable.

After graduation, I entered the real world of production engineering. I soon found that the old guard, and especially the bean counters, did not want to listen to a young know-it-all engineering graduate.

So I entered by the back door. I really started my professional career as an instructor, hopefully making many young farm boys (and girls) more aware of the technical aspects of machinery and what this should do for them. Fast-forward 10 years. I returned to farming and started buying my own lineup of tractors, planters and combines.

That is when I again got a jolt from reality. New machinery is not always, if ever, trouble-free. Most equipment has design shortcomings or assembly flaws. This is especially true as the equipment becomes more sophisticated and incorporates emission control devices that may or may not operate correctly to begin with.

Every owner of advanced equipment must have good logical skills or hire that capability in a staff person. It often takes a time lag for dealer technicians to be advised of inherent or likely problem causes. Examples:

I bought a new tractor and it worked very well until it had operated for about an hour. Then it would lose power. It took me some time, frustration and consultation to establish that, if you loosened the fuel cap, the power would be regained immediately. Guess what, the special valve to prevent fuel leakage from the tank in the event of a rollover was faulty. The actual correction was a $20 valve supplied by the dealer.

Then there was the big new lawn mower with hydrostatic drive and hydraulic lift of the mower deck. After 15 minutes of operation, the deck would not lift. Consultation and pressure testing determined that the available hydraulic pressure dropped to half when the fluid got hot.

Negotiations brought about a complete rebuild of the hydrostatic/hydraulic system. It became evident to me that the system had obviously been contaminated prior to or during the assembly process. The warranty cost to the manufacturer probably exceeded the initial assembled cost of the unit when new.

A phone call from the manufacturers' warranty department to determine if the unit was working properly was not unexpected – and did occur.

Later in my career, I had the opportunity to write operator and service manuals for large forestry harvesting equipment, an enjoyable experience. During the same period, I got the chance to teach hydraulics to the assemblers as part of the ISO requirements. That was doubly rewarding. I obtained hydraulic components that had failed in the field because of contaminants (very fine particles) that had entered the hydraulic system(s) during the assembly process due to lack of proper capping.

And now for a serious request to all you machinery owners and operators. Will you support me in requesting – or should that be demanding – that equipment manufacturers be required to supply hydraulic and electrical system schematics in some form, on paper or electronically, to equipment owners? This would allow many technically oriented owners or their service personnel to troubleshoot, or at least predict, where those little gremlins might be hiding in the system!

As electrical and hydraulic systems become more complex, it becomes increasingly difficult to determine the causes or possible locations of technical glitches.

Pollution control equipment, for example, is necessary, but technical glitches with some components as simple as a sensor can put equipment out of service. That can mean really big dollar costs to equipment owners and operators who, in some cases, have to have back-up units sitting at the ready for critical-use operations.

I don't know how many of you have had owners standing over you while you attempted to get a machine up and running. The pressure is tremendous. I can recall two such memorable events.

First, the owner/operator of a large gravel loader had inadvertently gotten the mechanical transmission into two gears – one forward and one reverse. This totally locked up the machine. He and all the truck drivers were sitting and waiting impatiently while we worked on his loader. The torque loading which had to be released was very significant and a difficult task. Long pry bars and a sledgehammer were the required tools!

Secondly, another owner had a diesel truck engine rebuilt and reinstalled in a highway tractor. It idled very well but at 30 m.p.h. you could not sit on the seat or hold onto the steering wheel! This was the only highway tractor he owned that had a PCV license to travel to the United States. The trailer was already loaded with 20 tons of carrots from the Holland Marsh.

Can you imagine the pressure my brother and I went through during an all-night work effort? The owner's plea was right upfront. "If you can't fix it, boys, how many carrots can you eat?"

Both of these crises were resolved very successfully but, trust me, neither one of the solutions was available in the service manual of either machine!

During my time writing service manuals, I realized that it is not possible to cover every conceivable problem that may occur with a sophisticated piece of machinery. Two examples come to mind. Both have to do with the lack of fuel intake screens in the fuel tanks on machines.

The first one involved a spider getting into a small fuel tank and partially plugging the outlet. The second was more dramatic. A fabricator had left a leather gauntlet in a large new fuel tank. The gauntlet would float in the diesel fuel and on occasion get over the pickup tube and kill the engine. It would float away while the fuel system was being bled, only to return again at its leisure.

Good logic and good luck are often requirements for owners and service personnel when they face unique service or operational problems, but good schematics can be a great asset.

By the way, we did not have to eat any of those carrots. The repair, a minor adjustment error by the engine rebuilder, took only a few minutes after we got the right clue. BF

Agricultural engineer Ralph Winfield farms at Belmont in Elgin County.