Cold weather causing me equipment woes

AmericanArborist

AmericanArborist

Participating member
Location
Omaha, NE
So the weather is starting to turn here in Nebraska (9 degrees this morning) and each year the cold causes me problems with my equipment. I do not have indoor storage and I do not have electricity at my lot. Any productive, helpful advice would be sincerely appreciated. My problems are as follows:

Vermeer s600tx: I have the 25 horse diesel kubota motor. The thing is so cold blooded i need to jump it every cold day in order to get it to start. I have heard this is a notorious problem for the motor. I wish I could put a yanmar in it.

Vermeer sc372: My throttle cable freezes up. It acts almost like a ptrap and collects water in the low point. It is stored outside so this problem seems inherent. I talked to the vermeer engineers at tcia but they had no advice. Right now we have to bend the cable around to get the ice broke up and then it moves.

GMC 7500 bucket truck: The pto has a similar problem as the stump grinder. It gets water in the pto line and freezes.

Unfortunately a building for a shop is not in the near future so I need to work out these kinks with my situation as is. Thanks tree buzzers.
 

Attachments

  • 376482-IMG_2147.webp
    376482-IMG_2147.webp
    234.3 KB · Views: 78
Cable lines are a pain! I had that same thing happen on my Waldon front end loader. I removed the throttle cable and fabricated a rod with a latch.

There are a couple of things to change with the throttle and PTO cables. Go to a hydraulic repair shop. They can fabricate a control cable that has and end with a rod in a tube with o-rings to seal the unit. If you don't want to do that you might be able to shorten the cable so that there isn't a belly to catch water. You're going to have to remove the cable, pull it apart, run lots of deruster solution, PB Blaster or Kroil are good choices. Then as you slip the cable back into the sleeve spray in a LOT of grease of some sort. The grease should displace water in the sleeve.

When I ran my company in MN every work day in the winter involved about an hour of setup and teardown for heaters. I had electric tank/block heaters in the engines. A web of heavy duty extension cords connected them all to a hard wired timer. This is one that you could use for a water heater NOT one that you plug an extension cord into.

YOu said that you didn't have power. YOu might be able to run a generator to keep the heaters going. YOu'll have to do the math to figure out the current draw and gas consumption. At one time I parked by trucks at a buddies farm so I didn't have to worry about he genset being stolen. In order to have enough fuel for overnight running I used a five gallon fishing boat gas tank. It took a little plumbing and you do have to prime the line because the genset motor doesn't have a fuel pump, they're gravity fed.

One of these
heaters

will provide a LOT of heat. YOu'll need either a genset or 12/120v invertor to run it.

A buddy who worked in Fairbanks in the winter shared a clever setup for warming engines. The end of my kerosene heater matched up with an 8" round duct so I got an 8" to 6" reducer. From there I used a combination of elbows and stove pipe to duct the heat exactly where it was needed. If you want heat to go under the machine you need to make a manifold. Find some rectangular air duct mine came from a construction dumpster, block both ends. Now fit in one of these adapters into the top side of the duct and cut a hole in the same place on the other end. Now you can connect your heater to stove pipe to manifold and slip it right under the engine. Within a few minutes the crankcase will be warm. A few more minutes and the block is warm.

It was SOP to bring this manifold/duct, heater and genset along on cold days. Just in case something wouldn't start later on.

I wished for Thursday all of the time. Thursday was Ski Club!
 
[ QUOTE ]
So the weather is starting to turn here in Nebraska (9 degrees this morning) and each year the cold causes me problems with my equipment. I do not have indoor storage and I do not have electricity at my lot. Any productive, helpful advice would be sincerely appreciated. My problems are as follows:

Vermeer s600tx: I have the 25 horse diesel kubota motor. The thing is so cold blooded i need to jump it every cold day in order to get it to start. I have heard this is a notorious problem for the motor. I wish I could put a yanmar in it.

Vermeer sc372: My throttle cable freezes up. It acts almost like a ptrap and collects water in the low point. It is stored outside so this problem seems inherent. I talked to the vermeer engineers at tcia but they had no advice. Right now we have to bend the cable around to get the ice broke up and then it moves.

GMC 7500 bucket truck: The pto has a similar problem as the stump grinder. It gets water in the pto line and freezes.





Open up the front hood of your s600tx, should be a plug coiled up for the block heater, plug it in overnight( I just edited as I saw you didn't have electricity) is there a neighbour you can run an extension cord from to it? or if you have a timer set it to start around 5 am, also if you read your manual ( I didn't ) but turn the key to the right, hold your glow plug button for 30 seconds, keeping holding it as you start, throttle at half and it should start easy! It's -15 here and mine started no problems yesterday in this weather doing those steps! I plug in my chipper also she fires up nicely after being plugged in at night.
 
Maybe invest in a temporary power supply. Attached to a pole or shed.
 

Attachments

  • 376535-image.webp
    376535-image.webp
    80.2 KB · Views: 59
I've brought the 600tx home and plugged it in overnight. I can brush the snow off of it and it starts right up. I just wish it would start cold like the other motors I have. Looks like I might have to invest in a gas generator or something to allow myself to heat up the equip first.

Also, does anyone use a heater on the hydraulic tank for the boom truck? Mine is pretty sluggish until the oil gets pumped and warmed up for a bit. I am a little afraid that if I don't warm oil first the seals could blow.

Thanks for the advice my cold weather friends.
 
If i didn't have electricity to plug in block heaters for the trucks and chippers I'd be screwed. We keep the smaller equipment without block heaters inside but the rest we plug in if the night time temps go close to -20C.

It seems like i'm constantly buying new batteries too!

You've probably figured it out by now but an investment you make in a generator or some other sort of electricity supply will pay off. It's really hard on the motors to try and start them cold.

Vince
 
Heat magnets work OK. Frost plug or water jacket heaters are the most effective though. It only takes about two hours of plug-in time to get the engine block as warm as necessary. I'd use heat magnets in conjunction with block heaters on the oil pan just to be sure of morning starts.
 
If you were going to go with external heat for a water cooled engine its not difficult to rig up a transfusion system. Tee into the heater hoses and use hydraulic quick connects for jumper hoses. You need to make sure the flow is right so that it does circulate.

I did that with my van and grapple truck. Idling the van for about 15 minutes was enough to warm the 500 cu in diesel. It fired up like summer.
 
[ QUOTE ]
You should be able to rig up a solar heat system. Connect a big solar charger to a series of batteries and a 12v heater.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is what I was picturing, with a switch and/or plug involved. The cable lube thing posted earlier should take care of that end of things, this should be able to run some magnetic oil pan heaters or plug-in manifold/block heaters.

-Tom
 
Converting solar electricity to heat via batteries is terribly inefficient.

Before you go down that path be sure to do some math and see what current draws you will expect.

My guess is that it would be a lot cheaper to talk with the electric utility and have them setup a temporary power panel.
 
[ QUOTE ]
If you were going to go with external heat for a water cooled engine its not difficult to rig up a transfusion system. Tee into the heater hoses and use hydraulic quick connects for jumper hoses. You need to make sure the flow is right so that it does circulate.

I did that with my van and grapple truck. Idling the van for about 15 minutes was enough to warm the 500 cu in diesel. It fired up like summer.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah thats what i was thinking too, we had a system like that for our timberjack 350, i wasnt sure if he would want to mix coolants like that, but i doubt that would really matter in the big picture.

that would probably be the cheapest, easiest solution.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

New threads New posts

Back
Top Bottom