Troubleshooting and Repairing Neglected S185 Bobcat Skid Steer

[Applause] ah what's up guys welcome back to the channel on one of the previous videos i said i was having some issues with my old bobcat 185 so today we're gonna try and take care of those issues [Music] so hmm [Music] [Music] oh [Music] so [Music] [Music] so okay all right guys so this is my 2003 bobcat 185 uh pretty good been a pretty good machine for me i've had it for going on seven or eight years now it's the first piece of equipment i've ever bought and it's still the most frequently used piece of equipment i have this thing plays a pretty major role in just about all my projects all my machines are nice to have but if there's one i couldn't ever live without again it's a bobcat i'll never ever not have a bobcat the rest of my life they are hands down the most versatile tool i've ever had i could do that a bulldog sometimes though when i say a bobcat i'm just speaking about a skid steer in general um bobcats kind of like a kleenex and tissue kind of thing going i'm just talking about a skid steer so i would love to get a dedicated track machine with rubber tracks on it they are a lot better for grading and dirt work in general these do have specific advantages but this video isn't about that i've discussed those in previous videos um there's a few things i want to get taken care of today on this machine and hopefully we can do that so here we are inside the cabinet machine hope the camera focus is good enough for you guys to be able to see so my machine does not have a k uh an ignition key like you have for your car you stick an internet this one is all keypad which some people like some people don't i i'm pretty partial to it i like that i can change the passcode on the fly and keep people out of it or have limited operations on certain numbers for people it's pretty handy system okay so i just popped up with the code there and forget what you got to do hold for codes so we got a 2103 code there i don't know if you guys can see that and i'm pretty sure i know what that is because now that i come into the after i pass the passcode screen there you can see this little light down here flashing that is a picture of a glow plug and it's flashing and i do believe that that means the glow plug relay is not functioning and that would also make sense because when i'm starting it now that the weather is getting colder whenever i go to start it it cranks for a little bit longer than it normally would so i'm pretty sure the glow plug relay is down here under this cover but uh we're gonna refer to the manual before i go digging into any of that i'm gonna confirm that that's what that code is and if it is we're going to confirm that's where the glow plug relay is at i've heard stories before of the connectors just coming out of the back of the relays inside of here so that's hopefully what it is because i actually had this problem intermittently last year and intermittent problems are the worst to troubleshoot so i just kind of let it go because it got me by but this year it's uh not going away so we're gonna take care of it before the weather gets cold so the machine's ready to start right now and that will show us the next issue i have with the machine so we'll go ahead and hit the start button and immediately the machine tries to start moving on me you can see the handle shaking a little bit that's because the handle the park brake is engaged yet the drive is trying to pull us backwards so there's issues here with the steering controls and you maybe you saw that when i just took the machine off the trailer i was kind of bouncing around back and forth that's not me it was extremely hard to get this thing down off of there in a straight line because the controls are kind of jumping around on me so i have an idea what could be wrong there i have fixed that issue once before on this machine so we're going to dig into that after we look at the relay situation hopefully it's just an adjustment that we can do to these controls to get it back to centered neutral if not we might have to mortar some parts so there we are the park breaks off right now i'm not touching anything we're just moving all by ourselves so that's not good you don't want that so back in the garage here i dug out the manual for this machine and now we've got to dig through here and try and find the service codes wherever those might be here's service codes after about 20 minutes of looking through this thinking book bouncing back and forth between about six different indexes i finally found our code there's 2103 and i was correct glow plugs error off so now we've got to figure out where in these pages it shows where the glow plug solenoid is because i'm pretty sure that's our issue so i believe i found it and again i believe i was correct it looks like f over here is our glow plugs and that is indeed in the box below the seat so let's go check that out now i may not have to do this to fix our glow plug issue but i'm going to have to have this cab flipped up to fix our steering issue for sure so we'll just go ahead and flip it up now maybe as i said earlier i've owned this machine for going on seven or eight years and i have never had this cover off of here oh wow yeah see how rusty it is that's good they're nice enough to give us a little diagram on the inside so helpful let me get an airline and blow out this rust out of here because that can't be good for anything yeah look at that the whole thing actually comes out of here which i i kind of like that feature easy access to the back side because you can't get to it from this side uh maybe maybe i can get it out of here and the wiring harness is kind of holding it but it's not terrible anyway i can reach around on the backside here and feel the back of this fuse relay seems like it's pretty well seated in there but look at that look at how nasty those contacts are made in canada you guys see how corroded those are so i'm gonna pull one of these other relays here and see if we can swap a couple see if that takes care of our issue might just be dirty contacts or this relay may be bad after looking at this chart here too i see that the front headlights are on here um i've had intermittent troubles with those two so i'm kind of wondering if we just had moisture in here and kind of corrode up a bunch of these terminals so we're going to pull those clean them all up and see what we can figure out i'm betting all these relays are probably the same so we should be able to swift switch them around see if that solves our issues same exact relay as i'm thinking they all are yes so this one here is the same too so we can't screw these up so far yeah there's a lot of corrosion on some of these we're going to go ahead and pull them all out of here i think clean up all the contacts and then we're going to go ahead and put some dielectric grease on the contacts and stick them all back in here and see what happens all right i got all of these relays here terminals cleaned up and dielectric greased so in no particular order i'm going to stick them back in here and we'll go ahead and try it and see what kind of issues come up because if we have a bad relay i've probably just moved it somewhere else so that might carry our issue with it that's not a hole stupid i did find one fuse over here that was melted down i gotta toss a new one in but it was for the attachment for the auxiliary attachment and i don't ever use that anyway so that's probably why i've never noticed it was blown all right moment of truth here i don't see a uh i don't see a light come on for the glow plugs so that's a good sign [Music] i got no codes showing up over here cool it seems as though we've taken care of our glow plug issue just by cleaning up those relays and stuff there i'm going to go ahead and slap the cover back on we still have our headlight issue but i'm not too concerned about that at the moment i don't have time to mess with it and i really don't use the headlights too often but it is nice to have them it's nice to just get in a machine that everything works on that that's something kind of rare for me there's always something broken [Music] now we can move on to our steering issues so here we are starting to troubleshoot on our steering issue here or drive control issue whatever you want to call these you know each side controls each side of the machine so this labor forward and backward here controls this side of the tracks forward and backward you push them both forward the whole machine goes forward you push them both backwards the whole machine goes backwards you know and vice versa it's pretty self-explanatory so i said i've repaired this before and i have um but i have no formal training at the time i didn't even have a service manual so what basically what i did is i just kind of look at things and think about how they should be designed or would be designed or if they should have slop in them like the very first thing i'm noticing here when i'm looking at this so this lever goes down connects to a rod right here that it connects to this rod right here which pushes and pulls this whole big rod running across the machine here running into that plate up there so when you pull this lever forward and backward seems to me there's a pretty good amount of play in that versus the other side that doesn't have a whole lot now that play is in multiple places it looks like some of the play is in this whole plate here the plate as a whole is wobbling back and forth and it also looks like these arms here that are on top of this drive pump it looks like they have some slop in them as well and i also see signs that there has been hydraulic oil leaking under here pretty good it is very greasy very dirty but it's also almost cleaned off in places like hot hydraulic oil has been flowing over it and that will actually remove grease so i would love to steam clean this whole thing off and check it out thoroughly but unfortunately my steam cleaner is out of the farm and i'm trying to get this thing fixed here today or at least get parts ordered and then i could steam clean it before i put it back together if i have to order parts which i'm pretty sure i will also all this grease did not come from those drive pumps i've also had some hydraulic lines blow inside here and which just pretty much sprays every square inch of this inside here with hydraulical and you know their field fixes so you don't have time to clean everything off before you put it back together you're just trying to hurry up and get it back up and running to finish the job off so what i did last time to fix this is remove this top plate here and there are cam follower bushings down here which is what that shiny thing is in front of my finger and what it is is they wear out and get slop in them so it's looking like we might have to do that repair again and that was not that long ago but i'm trying to remember if i replaced all of them or just half of them so the way this system is designed underneath that that plate with the cam follower bearings you'll see it better in a minute when i disassemble it but it kind of creates a center detent to keep both levers at the same pace and if you keep both levers at the same pace right now the drives are not even it'll pull to the lead it'll pull to the left so pretty sure we lost the cam follower bearing in there or bushings going bad somewhere else let's get that plate off of there and uh see what's so this is an incredibly tight area to work in i'm going to try to keep you guys in the frame but it's tough anyway all you have to do to remove this plate is remove this bolt here that is tensioned with a spring unfortunately we can't get an impact or anything on it [Music] there we go there's our nut remove this carefully so we don't drop anything and then put the nut back on so that it can't come apart and there you go now this plate if memory serves should just slide over this direction yep don't wiggle up off of here okay now that i'm in here i do remember i replaced all of these cam follower bearings which is what these are right here and they still seem pretty tight uh on both sides here so there's two more over here they still seem pretty good they're rolling smooth now what i am noticing in here that i think is a lot of our issue is if you look at this side i wiggle this thing up and down it's tight it's clamped this piece here is clamped onto this square shaft coming up out of the pump and that's adjusted by that bolt there it's clamped down nice and tight but if we look over there at that side got a lot of slop in that that thing's moving around quite a bit and that could definitely uh be the slop that we have in our drive so we're going to go ahead and see if we can't tighten that bolt up hopefully we can get it to clamp back down there the real problem with this is that there's not a whole lot of room to get in here to put any leverage on it oh okay we did get some some turn out of it though so that's a good sign hopefully we can get a couple more and be fixed right up here oh yeah my other fear is that we just strip out this piece because i believe it's cast aluminum but say a little prayer that that doesn't happen that's pretty tight yeah look at that she tightened up nice for us maybe put another little turn on it call that good yeah i think we're good there [Music] i'm going to go ahead and put a drop of uh oil on all these can follower bearings and then we'll be good to put our plate back on so in order to adjust this thing for neutral it really helps for me anyways to understand how this thing works and it's kind of a little bit to wrap your head around especially probably on camera so this is the plate that goes over top of these cam rollers now i have it upside down so you can see what i'm talking about here there's these two two plates here that are adjustable and what they do is they ride up against the cam followers and they keep both sides here because this is your left drive and this is your right drive on this side and they both have the same exact setup as what you're looking at here it's just harder to show that one on camera anywho so this plate i don't know what you'd call this maybe a swashplate or something this plate spring-loaded so it always wants to return over to this side and that's centered and that should keep both drives in the neutral position so if you have say this drive over here is wanting to creep and the other side is fine you've got to adjust this block in here i'm going to loosen these bolts and adjust this block so that this side also remains in center while that side is if that makes sense there it's a pain in the butt i'm not going to lie i think that this system probably could be simplified by a better engineer than me but it just kind of seems overly complicated but maybe it's not uh anyway it helps a lot to lift the machine up off the ground so you don't have to worry about it taking off on you while you're up underneath here trying to work on it but the only way to really center this thing and do this correctly is in my opinion anyway is for the machine to be running so that you can see if you're moving the wheels or not now in our case today just tightening up that uh this arm on top of the drive control might have done a good bit for us as far as getting this thing back to neutral because it was in neutral previous to that uh coming loose i do believe so that alone might have fixed this up but i'm gonna go ahead and put the plate back together correctly and go ahead and get the machine up off the ground and we will make sure that it is indeed in neutral now you just gotta crank this thing back down i also noticed the uh seat cushion here falling apart a little bit on me so i pulled it off to look underneath of it and see if i could re-staple it but uh look at the plastic man it's just completely disintegrated broke in about 20 different places so i think we're gonna have to order a new one of those but it'll still hold me up off of that metal for now still not getting the uh the glow plug sign so that's a good i'm good indicator i'm thinking we actually got that fixed so be careful when you start this now since you just messed with all these adjustments there's a good chance well not a good chance but there is a chance that uh you know something could be way out of whack and this thing could behave real erratic so just be prepared for that make sure your park breaks on so it can't take off until you're ready and we'll go ahead and start it up and see if it's winding right on the startup whoa what's that a 1403 i'm not sure what code that is it does not like something here yeah we got that 1403 again let's uh let's check and see what that is well if it ain't one thing it's another i just pulled that code and it says that it's a fuel solenoid error so i'm thinking one of these relays in this box is in fact bad or just has that bad of connections on it and we have transferred it to the fuel solenoid which one is the fuel cylinder in here so that is this guy right here we'll go ahead and swap that swap that back to the glow plugs and see if that brings our glow plug error back if that's the case then we'll have to get a new one of these all right so after moving some more relays around i did get the traction control working again so i've got to pick up a couple relays but this is how i go about adjusting neutral on here and i'm sure a lot of you are going to say that this is dangerous but i don't know i don't think it's that bad so i've got the back end of the machine supported here and obviously the front's just jacked up with the bucket we'll go ahead and lift the cab and climb under there and while it's running we can uh adjust for neutral it's definitely an improvement over what it was before but we still got some drifting going on so we need to get that squared away but this side's beautiful it's not even trying all right we're about to climb underneath here i have no idea if you're going to be able to hear me once we're underneath there but basically what we're going to do is uh loosen up those adjustments on top of that swashplate or whatever you call that thing and we're going to tap them around with a hammer until we get that thing to where nothing's moving so let's get to it this is okay with a lot of off camera cursing and tapping with a hammer and tightening and loosening and adjusting and adjusting finally got both sides sitting here not trying to move on me so that's good now we just have to uh make sure all our adjusters are tight and what i did i also loosened up the rods that run back to those control arms so that the handles weren't playing into effect at all i was simply adjusting just that uh bracket on top there so i'm gonna tighten that up back up and we should be good well i got it all buttoned back up here let's fire it up and see if we got the issues resolved here nice and responsive no pump one he's not trying to pull me while i'm sitting next [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so all right as i said the other day i found my seat pan was pretty well destroyed so i uh called the dealership up yesterday and told him i needed one so they said oh we'll order it it's gonna probably take a week today they called me and said it's in no i'm not a big fan of that dealer but it's hard to argue with that turnaround time so let's get that installed and uh put a new relay on it button our box cover up and i believe she's gonna be ready to go back into the field yup yeah that looks better looks like you got these sticky springs on the new guy well now that was a little dirty in there so you put these hair pins across the uh holes in the bottom here that holds the seat on okay last thing i got to do i went out and bought a new relay here for the fuse box so i had a couple bad ones in there uh they didn't have to they ordered me another one so when the other one comes in i'll have to toss it in over here this is for the headlights and that should hopefully fix that up uh the reason everything was so corroded in here is this this cover had a pinhole rusted through it and i didn't see it so uh that was up before so that was letting the water get in there and hold it in there so i'm just gonna put it on upside down and now it's drain hole see look at that gotta be smart people [Music] yeah oh yeah baby we are in business all right with the uh new relay in there let's see if i can't show you how the glow plugs are supposed to work no but the lights out over here and the glow plugs lights staying out but uh if it's cold enough for the glow plugs to work i don't know what the temperature threshold is probably 40 degrees 50 degrees something like that the screen will count down over here how long it's running the globe plugs if it's really cold i've seen it go as long as 45 seconds for the glow plugs and it'll just say glow 45 and then count down to zero and then you start it so appears that everything's working now though glad to see that and we can get back to work i know one thing this new seat is super comfortable i didn't realize how bad the other one was this is exciting down in the comments below drop a comment if you want to see me make a video that's uh all about purchasing a used skid steer i've done a video sort of like that for bulldozers and excavators so it's kind of like a general what to look for and anything that's machine specific for skid steers you want to pay attention to so if you want to see one of those drop it down in the comments maybe i'll do one of those next uh meatball where'd you go all right well that's about finish it up guys i'd like to get this thing painted one of these days it deserves a better paint job than it's got but you know time is money and i never seem to find the time for uh cosmetics but uh anyway that should get it cleaned up for now i do want to definitely get it bathed here soon running it through the woods and doing all that bush hogging that i was doing during the summer really just smeared grease everywhere so it's a mess but uh that's rust preventative there's a few other issues that need to get worked out on it but that's all i'm going to worry about for right now winter time i'm going to take off that cylinder and a couple other ones and repack those and i think these lower bushings on these cylinders also need redone so always something but if you like the video don't forget to hit the thumbs up and i'll catch you guys on the next one thanks for watching later [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Diesel Creek

Views: 423,961

Keywords: autocar, vintage, old, heavy, equipment, iron, bobcat, skid, steer, loader, caterpillar, gravel, stone, rock, dump, truck, construction, excavation, international, 4900, dt466, eaton, s185, grouser, tracks, business, side job, diesel, kubota, farm, gopro, hero, black, dji, mavic, drone, saw, pipe, repair, komatsu, clearing, forestry, excavator, hydraulic, homestead, trucking, d41a, d41, d-41, bulldozer, crawler, tractor, mechanics, shipping, container, seabox, conex, high, cube, shed, pad, grading, towing, case, 75xt

Id: 2kwouPTATPY

Length: 35min 2sec (2102 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 10 2020