The Importance of Maintenance for Heavy Machinery such as Wheel Loaders

It can be tempting to ignore small problems, especially when the hassle of solving them seems like it isn’t worth the effort; but small problems can quickly become big problems, when left unattended. Even if your Hyundai wheel loader parts are tough and durable, nothing is unbreakable. In fact, all the Hyundai construction equipment parts used in the process of construction can break in ways you might not expect if you’re not intimately familiar with your machine.

But what’s the worst that can happen if they do? Here, we go through the hazards of not maintaining your machines, as well as the best practices for maintaining your Hyundai loader parts to avoid them.

Downtime

The first and most obvious concern when it comes to maintenance is downtime. Why should I cease the use of my machine for maintenance and lose good money when there isn’t anything obviously wrong with it? The reason is that a bit of time for maintenance today means a lot of time saved for repair in the future. And not only that, downtime for maintenance is done at a time that fits your schedule as best as it can. When a machine breaks, it doesn’t have to give you advanced warning. It can break right at the most critical time for it to be functional.

Repair is often more costly than maintenance as well. Parts that break often cause collateral damage to the rest of the machine. If a pin keeping your bucket secured to a boom arm breaks while you’re carrying a load, you can bet the other pins are going to bear the brunt of it and might even snap off as well. It’s a lot easier to replace just one pin rather than all the others and be worried about bent boom arms on top of it all.

Maybe you’re still not convinced because you know how hardy these machines are and reckon a catastrophic failure one day in the distant future is better than the hundreds or thousands of maintenance checks and downtimes until then. There are two concerns that might sway your opinion. The first is what you’re going to do when the machine breaks. Do you happen to have a spare to fill in for it? How are you going to move the machine in the meantime, if it’s completely defunct and operable? The second is the next major concern — the possibility of serious injury to operators.

Injury

Employers have a duty of care for their employees; so, if your machine causes an injury because you failed to maintain it, that injury may be deemed to be your fault. Regardless of the financial and legal repercussions of this, consider the guilt you would feel if a lax attitude to maintenance ended up with your wheel loader operator losing a limb or, in the absolute worst case, their life.

Maintenance is not just about the literal nuts and bolts of a machine, but the safety equipment as well, such as the ladders, seatbelts and roll over protections. Hopefully, if you were not convinced of the importance of maintenance before you started reading, you will be now. The next step is to ask, what does one do to properly maintain their machine?

Safety and Maintenance Checklist

Firstly, whether you carry out maintenance on your machine yourself or not, all operators can complete a maintenance check on your wheel loaders or other construction equipment. This process is usually a visual check to make sure nothing is obviously, visibly wrong with the machine and is guided by a checklist. These checklists detail all of the things to inspect, such as hydraulic fluid level gauges, and are usually split up by four sections: ground level inspection, engine inspection, outside of the cab, and inside of the cab.

Ground Level Inspection

For loader parts, it’s important to inspect the components which take the brunt of the force during operation. These include the bucket and lifting arms, including hydraulic cylinders and linkages, such as the z-bar linkage which tips the bucket. If your bucket has teeth, check to see if these are worn down. These teeth are designed to take any damage, instead of the bucket, so that they can be replaced at a cheaper cost than replacing or repairing the entire bucket.

Other than these sorts of inspections in the ground level inspection, the other ones are more general, such as checking for any leaks or puddles which could indicate leaks. There’s a lot of oil, grease, and hydraulic fluid that go into keeping a wheel loader operating smoothly and any serious leaks can wreak serious havoc with your machine.

The other components checked in this inspection include the wheels, the hitch, and all the hydraulic cylinders (those on the z-bar linkage, the booms, and the hitch). Also, grease nipples and grease lines need to be checked, such as those on the wheels which feed grease into the final drives. The final drive is a planetary gearbox which increases torque right at the wheel and if this breaks your machine is stuck.

Where to Get Your Checklist

Your machine dealer will almost certainly already have safety and maintenance checklists which cover all of the inspections you need to make each time the machine is used. These will also be specific to your machine in case it has any components in particular that differ from the norm. Also, this dealer who sold you your equipment will serve as the best source of information for information, advice, and help with maintaining your machine.

Outside the Cab, Engine, and Inside the Cab

The other inspection sections are fairly self-explanatory and easy to assume what they involve. The inspection of ‘outside the cab’ is a catch-all term which covers the things that might not be included in the ground level inspection. For instance, this section might include inspecting machine access, such as ladders up to the cab, and perhaps the cab door itself. It depends on how it’s been compiled by the manufacturers.

The engine inspection is like any engine inspection, including checking for leaks, oil levels, coolant levels, and any blocks or leaks in intake and exhausts. If you are comfortable with inspecting engines, then this should be familiar territory. If you are unfamiliar with engines, the checklist is a good stopgap but should be bolstered with regular check-ups from a qualified mechanic.

Inside the cab is fairly straightforward to inspect, including seatbelts, lights, any gauges, and any controls. It also includes inspecting air filtration systems as well as comfort issues such as seat adjustments which may be broken and can cause unnecessary physical strain on operators over extended periods of use.

Summary

A safety and maintenance checklist is an easy way to forestall any serious machine breakdowns and therefore avoid lost time, money, and even avoid injury. If you plan on carrying out your own maintenance, you have to make sure that you understand what you’re doing, or else you could cause more problems than you fix. If you go to your Hyundai construction equipment parts dealer to get one of these checklists specific to your machine, also make sure to inquire about the best practices for maintenance and seek out their advice on how to get the right training to look after your machine yourself. Maintenance will save you headaches in the long run and is eminently worthwhile.