10 MUST-KNOW TRACTOR HYDRAULIC TIPS! ONE SAVED ME $3800!

folks have rounded up 10 hydraulic tips for you today to make life easier when owning a tractor this stuff can be confusing and frustrating but if you know what you're doing ahead of time well you're going to shorten that learning curve and make life a breeze now I learned something new myself that I thought and maybe it is relatively low probability but it wound up saving me a 3 800 Bill well it cost me like 150 bucks or something but so save me like 3 650 I'm gonna make you wait for that one just a little bit we'll tell you a few other tips and then I'll tell you how that one turned my frown upside down tip number one just making it up on the spot because I am reminded right now that I need to do it on this one here I lost my dust covers I need to get some new dust covers for these two hydraulic couplers they're just sitting there just begging for dirt and dust to get in there and then be a challenge to clean it out or get into my hydraulic system that's just a problem waiting to happen so you can go online and order dust covers just make sure they're fitting the right size couplers that you have on your tractor but how do you know what size couplers you have on your tractor that is a really challenging thing to figure out I tried to find I did some Googling to see if there was hydraulic fitting size chart something that's a visual indicator where you can tell what size couplers you're staring at it's pretty easy to tell if they're male or female but there's Pioneer there's flat face there's 3 8 there's quarter there's half inch there's all this other kind of stuff and it's not unless you really know what you're looking at it's not easy to tell I found a really handy chart over on tractor Mike's website he's another YouTuber in the tractor space as well putting out great videos every week make sure you check him out so we'll put a link to that product page as well I think it's actually in a different listing where he has this chart up there but it's just it's just easy to read easy to understand and concise so take a look at that if you're struggling to figure out what fittings you have on your tractor this one's a big one folks okay it's going to happen to the best of us and well this is one that you go through it once and then you you hopefully remember and don't do it again but before you disconnect your loader or really any Hydraulics that are on your tractor so if you have a grapple connected or you know hydraulic top link and you want to take that off turn the tractor off rotate this around you could hear it maybe you can't see it moving but you're going to relieve the hydraulic pressure that's going through the lines on both sides of those couplers and so that's going to make life so much easier when you go to reconnect them back up if you don't do that and I've done it myself all right you're going to have a lot of pressure on the the loader side of that line when you want to go and hook it back up to your tractor and you're going to have to somehow release that pressure that's on there and it can be dangerous can be a mess because that pressure is built up and so you want to wear the proper safety attire on there and I've been able to sometimes put a rag or a board and push it against you know the loader to a heavy piece of steel or something on the ground like a board on the ground to relieve that or maybe use like a set of channel locks or nipex to pinch that down or sometimes you can even use some wrenches and crack that fitting and just let it slowly leak out just a little bit just to get that pressure out of there otherwise it can be impossible to hook up those Hydraulics again be prepared to get messy if you have to do that because there's hydraulic fluid that's going to fall out somewhere but again it's one of those lessons if you can avoid it fantastic if it happens to you you're not that alone has happened to pretty much just about every tractor owner out there before okay connecting hydraulic couplers seems pretty straightforward but sometimes it's not okay and number one probably the biggest issue that I'm contacted about is on backhoes where they're just not working the Hydraulics are connected just like they're connected here but they're not working there's no response and the reason for that is pretty simple it just looks like it's connected but it actually isn't all right and if You Yank on it really hard you'll pull it apart without you know pulling back the collar and that's going to be a common problem on the Kubota on the John Deere just on hydraulics in general is where it looks like it's just seated in there properly but it's not and sometimes you'll see hydraulic oil flowing out through there too when you go to move a lever because it's kind of sort of seated enough to open up and have some flu some flu some flow going through that direction in the line there but it's not enough to make it work properly so let's take a look at some other hydraulic connections as well so you can see firsthand how to hook them up all right so this style of coupler is called a Pioneer or an AG style coupler pretty easy after you most tractors have these okay the flat face style is another very common one more likely seen on construction equipment sometimes on tractors too so you're going to have a collar and a female on the male side you simply pull back I almost forgot work your joystick or work your lever for the hydraulics in both directions relieve any built up pressure If there is some then you're gonna pull or push back on the male collar and you'll see some little bearings in there and then you can pull right out gonna be a little bit of fluid all right that's just nature of the Beast now to reverse the process here's a good look at that male side if your pressure's built up you got to push you got to detent this little pin that's in the middle here to relieve that pressure or crack the fitting and let some fluid leak out or the proper PPE now to reconnect kind of just seated in there gently you can't push it the whole way you have to get that collar pushed back and then it seats in there give it a little yank to make sure it's seated properly and Away you go okay so now we're looking at flat face couplers again pretend one of these is on the machine side and then one is on the attachment exact same thing going on you need to just pull back on a collar to release and there you go okay now what you see the difference is the fact that these are flat faces all right and so putting them together is really easy you're just gonna take the male side and just push it in to the female side okay there's no collar that you have to push back or pull back on you just simply push it in there and it locks in place you can hear that snap hopefully now for a lack of a better term you have a DOT and a slot okay and if you have that not aligned you can't pull back on this collar to release it it's kind of a I don't know maybe a safety mechanism of some of some sort if you align that just right like this that's when you can push back on that and everything releases just fine and so if you if you can't get the the coupler released from there maybe it is a pressure issue where you have to relieve the pressure or maybe you just have to align that slot properly and one of the things that I actually like a lot about flat face couplers besides the ease of connecting them is the fact that they're flat faces all right and unlike the Pioneer the AG style when we showed you on the first one around there's that big cavity there that they're not all upright like this but no matter what direction they are there's look there's space for debris to get trapped in where there's not really any space for debris to get trapped here you can just brush off the top flat surface pretty easily and hook them up a little bit different you don't need dust covers on these versus the Pioneers here is a good example of why you want these dust covers on here it is like a it's like the Dust Bowl around here lately so this tractor we were doing some tilling it's just absolutely disgusting but I want to show you this last type of hydraulic coupler kind of hard to see and this is on the back of a Kubota and I don't know what it's called I don't know anybody else that has this style but I think it's super stinking cool you don't have to pull back in any collar it's not a flat face though it's still some sort of pioneer rag style coupler just trying to get all the debris away from there so I don't clog it up and so all I'm going to do and I don't know how honestly I don't know how this works I really don't but you just yank them out and you push them back in there's no collar of any kind it's not again a flat face I I don't know the the sorcery behind it but I like it and then you could slap this dust cover down right on it like that really nice pop that back open and you're back in place that was it that's it we're proud to be sponsored by rim guard 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attachment too but I Loop these together so that that flow is going through both ways and it's not locked in here at you know behind the fitting on on each side that can make it a super hard challenge to hook up to your tractor actually with these forks I didn't do this I forgot to do this last year when we were shooting a pallet Fork video I wanted to hook it up to my skid steer and show you guys how they worked how they went in and out and I couldn't we were in the middle of nowhere I didn't have the tools with me to relieve the hydraulic pressure and we couldn't get the fittings onto the the skid steer itself so if you do this though then you simply disconnect them like that you can see how easy they disconnected when they're sitting outside I know it's good to keep your attachments inside if you can but when they're sitting outside especially with temperature changes when they're in the baking sun well that pressure is going to build up in there even more and want to expand and make this even more of a problem so do this if you had the opportunity to do so but there is a solution if you don't and that would be the hose end chamber which is designed specifically for applications like this when your attachments are sitting outside and it could be your backhoe it could be a flex-wing mower anything that's going to have hydraulic lines on it maybe that are going to sit for a long period of time in the exposed Sun situations where you'll have these huge temperature variations at number one can make it challenging to then hook up to your tractor or your skid steer whatever it is when you need to use it but number two think about those pressure variations that are occurring and going on that's causing damage albeit most likely slowly to the hoses to the fittings perhaps to Motors anything else that's on the equipment as well and so if you want to avoid a situation like that well there's a hose end chamber that you can purchase plug it into your fittings that are on there it is basically going to be like a little extra Reservoir so that fluid can go in and out of there freely instead of causing damage to the rest of your hydraulic components okay there's a big one here again it really did it saved me 38 3650 dollars and all it was was a hydraulic filter I I'm not kidding you we had the tech out to our shop to look at the John Deere 4720 the rear three-point um the the rear Hydraulics none of that was working and he had gone through a bunch of different things troubleshooting all this and that and basically came down to we needed to replace a big hydraulic cylinder block that's back there and it was to take it out put it back in and everything else gonna be 3 800 bucks and I was like that's not cool and uh I was I was pretty I was really frustrated at that point because that's just a ridiculous amount of money to make your Hydraulics work and the weird thing is is that a year ago maybe more we reported in a video of a similar problem with the 4720 where everything went from working fine to just not working they got it into the shop and took a look at everything and couldn't figure it out and it just was working fine for them so it was this crazy kind of ghost problem that we weren't sure what was happening long story short this this on-site technician said hey you know what this could be a just a Hydraulics issue maybe your hydraulic flow is is just too low uh hydraulic filter hasn't been changed in a while let's swap that out and see what happens and lo and behold swapping out that hydraulic filter with a brand new one got us right back in Action right back in the game and everything is working perfectly I almost still can't believe it but that's all it took you're looking here at some DIY Hydraulics all right a lot of tractors are not going to come out with the grapple hydraulics on the front and the rear remote on the back the stuff you need to use the attachments you want like a grapple like a rear hydraulic top link that we talk about a lot the power beyond that's on here to run that backhoe is not the same thing we'll get into that in just a minute and the challenges is that adding OEM Hydraulics after the fact man that's an expensive game to do and so you can get do-it-yourself Solutions like what you see here from Summit Hydraulics you save five percent with code GWT takes a couple hours of your time but you save hundreds of dollars it's hard to beat that and there's a lot of terminology in this video we've done a whole in-depth video focusing on the difference in various kinds of hydraulics okay and so this is actually on the Kubota a third function an aftermarket third function but there's another kind that's called a diverter like what's on the summit tractor and we installed on the John Deere 1025r just a a difference in how it works in my opinion it's split hairs on smaller machines they don't have a lot of hydraulic flow anyway so they sort of work the same once you get the bigger tractors it's more of a difference then you have power beyond you oops you'll have a couple of remotes or a couple of ports on the back side sometimes three ports depending on the size of the equipment power beyond does not have a lever anywhere on the tractor to control whatever is plugged into those Hydraulics you have to have a lever on whatever's plugged in like how the backhoe has two levers there to move it around so that's different from a regular rear remote okay which will have a hydraulic lever on the tractor somewhere so if you have a hydraulic top link there's a lever on the tractor when you have it plugged in to extend that top link out or retract it back in and then lastly hydraulic multipliers and I absolutely love hydraulic multipliers they're one of the best values that are out there you can add on up to additional an additional five ports for like like probably twenty percent of the cost if you were able to do that through the OEM it's just a crazy amount of savings and again another Summit Hydraulics product that's there but I have one on uh the Kubota M4 we put one on the John Deere 4066 that I had I'm also going to put one on very soon on the summit tx25 it comes standard with one rear remote which is pretty awesome but we're using that on the hydraulic top link right now I am fully expecting to need more remotes next winter for my snow blower if I want to hook up any other hydraulic attachment on the back side and use it in conjunction with the hydraulic top link well you need to have more remotes to do so and that's where a hydraulic multiplier comes in handy now speaking of hydraulic top links super handy item again you can see this is a John Deere 2038r it's got two rear remotes you see four ports there that's two remotes all right two couplers make one hydraulic circuit or one remote you have to have flow going this way and then flow going back the other way all right this machine here has a hydraulic top and tilt kit very handy we've shown you these on other tractors as well working on getting you a complete kit that you can add to your tractor that's going to be sometime in the future we'll get you more information on that for now you can buy those hydraulic top links on Amazon we have a bunch of links there where we've bought some that have worked for us and so you just want to basically get the shortest length of your top link and then unscrew it to get the longest length and let that kind of serve as your guide and try to find a hydraulic top link that's matches about those same dimensions but it's staring me in the face and perhaps I should have thought about this earlier we talked about those dust covers but some other ways to protect your Hydraulics from exposure or from getting pinched or from bending and kinking and all that kind of stuff and just looking cool maybe even identifying them Outback wrap pretty good stuff this this helps keep these hoses kind of connected together and sandwiched together and up out of the way it's a really cheap thing to add onto your tractor as well and if you're not sure which hoses go where you color coat them with different colors that are on here and also we did the video talking about long-term storage we are going to park our backhoe all winter and you get some concerns about pitting on these exposed cylinder rods that are there and you can wrap it in this real it's kind of a nasty tape but it's not that bad but it's going to completely protect your your exposed rods from from corroding or from pitting over the winter from long-term exposures to the elements it sounds like that's used a lot in Marine applications too it was kind of pricey but potentially compared to the cost of getting a cylinder rebuilt it could be worth it really quick one for you and honestly I don't see this one I've never seen it on a tractor definitely could be on there at some point but this is a relief valve all right and so you can pull that to relieve the pressure the built up pressure in there if you're if your Hydraulics happen to have a little handy pull tab like that give it a yank when you're trying to disconnect things or plug things back in and it could relieve that built up pressure and make life a lot easier something I wish all Hydraulics had that's going to wrap it up for us today folks hopefully you learned something new it shortens your learning curves it saves you some frustration or maybe solves a problem that you're you're facing right now but that's what we do here folks we show you new products give you the tips to hopefully help you out make your life easier show you projects in action all around the farm so make sure you check out those other videos too and I want to remind you if you are in the market for retractor attachment something for the front end loader or the three-point hitch we'd love to earn your business we sell and ship all over the country every day of the week check out our website goodworkstrractors.com I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to stop by and until next time stay safe we'll see you soon [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Good Works Tractors

Views: 41,572

Keywords: john deere, kubota, good works tractors, goodworkstractors, ttwt, tractor time with tim, gwt, michigan, kalamazoo, john deere dealer, kubota dealer, hydraulics, hose end chamber, outback wrap, summit hydraulics, 3rd function, multiplier, pioneer, flat face

Id: v9FYY6dCUoo

Length: 18min 1sec (1081 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 15 2023