Decrease start-up time with winter maintenance

[/media-credit] Twin Val­ley Equip­ment in Eaton works on every­thing from lawn trac­tors to com­bines to bull­doz­ers. Accord­ing to Ser­vice Man­ager Joel Unger, win­ter­time is the best time to pre­pare for the spring plant­ing sea­son. (Michael Zim­mer­man photo)

By Michael Zim­mer­man
mzimmerman@registerherald.com

After a long sea­son of work­ing in the fields, it could be tempt­ing to just park all that equip­ment inside and lock the doors. But doing some pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance now and peri­od­i­cally through the win­ter will help min­i­mize main­te­nance time in the spring, leav­ing more time for plant­ing.
Joel Unger, Ser­vice Man­ager at Twin Val­ley Equip­ment in Eaton, pro­vided some basic point­ers for end-of-season farm equip­ment main­te­nance. Many of the tips can go toward a vari­ety of vehi­cles that are put away for the cold months, includ­ing lawn trac­tors, motor­cy­cles, and cars.
“Down­time in the win­ter is uptime in the spring,” Unger said. “In the spring, you only have a small win­dow to get it planted. If you’re down for a week or two, you might have lost the prime time.”
In addi­tion to cut­ting the spring start-up time to a min­i­mum, proper main­te­nance will also extend the life of equip­ment and keep resale value high.
First and fore­most, Unger rec­om­mended giv­ing all equip­ment a good clean­ing. “The basic thing is to clean every­thing up,” he said. “As you’re clean­ing, you can inspect all the hard­ware and check any wear points.”
Clean all planters, drills, seed­ers, and com­bines, accord­ing to a release from Utah State Uni­ver­sity Exten­sion on win­ter main­te­nance. Mak­ing sure the equip­ment is free of any grain and plant mate­r­ial will reduce rust­ing and make the equip­ment and its stor­age area less attrac­tive to pests.
“Trapped grain attracts rodents, who often make a meal of elec­tri­cal wiring, lead­ing to short cir­cuits or other elec­tri­cal prob­lems,” the USU release states.
The same goes for balers and trac­tors, as any plant mate­r­ial, dust, or soil retains mois­ture, which can lead to rusty equip­ment. Using a power washer is a good way to clean equip­ment, but be sure to avoid con­tact with seals if using a high pow­ered washer, accord­ing to the USU release.
After using the pres­sure washer, or instead of, com­pressed air can be used to reach any hard-to-reach places.
Accord­ing to Unger, a rust pre­ven­ta­tive coat­ing could be ben­e­fi­cial after clean­ing.
“There’s a few peo­ple that will lightly coat the equip­ment with diesel fuel mixed with a lit­tle oil,” he said. “They’ll spray the machin­ery down to put a light film down to keep it from rust­ing. That kind of pre­serves the paint and it keeps the metal from rust­ing.”
In var­i­ous Inter­net forums, the ratio of diesel to oil ranges from 2-to-1 to 4-to-1. For a less flam­ma­ble solu­tion, there are sev­eral rust inhibitor prod­ucts on the mar­ket.
Unger also rec­om­mended chang­ing engine oil as well as fuel and oil fil­ters in the win­ter.
“A lot of guys like to change the oil now. Some don’t, but I like to change the oil as I grease every­thing and check hoses and belts for cracks,” he said. “Fuel fil­ter and oil fil­ters are a yearly main­te­nance item, espe­cially on newer equip­ment. On newer equip­ment, you want the keep the fil­ters changed. It’s cheap com­pared to what injec­tors cost.”
All hoses and belts should be checked before stor­age, but Unger rec­om­mended chang­ing hoses and belts every four years regard­less of their appear­ance.
Before stor­age, it’s a good idea to check the freez­ing point of your coolant with a sim­ple antifreeze tester avail­able at any hard­ware or auto parts store. Unger rec­om­mended chang­ing coolant every two years. Now is also a good time to lubri­cate any grease points on equip­ment. Each owner’s man­ual gives instruc­tions on where the spe­cific points are located.
As for trans­mis­sion fluid, Unger rec­om­mended it should be changed every 1,000 hours or three years. Unger also rec­om­mended check­ing hydraulic sys­tems before win­ter stor­age.
“With hydraulic sys­tems, you want to oper­ate them and make sure they’re lift­ing your equip­ment prop­erly,” he said.
Hydraulic lines should also be checked at this time, as a lit­tle bit of dirt or soil in a hydraulic sys­tem can cause some expen­sive dam­age. With engines and hydraulic sys­tems, a train­ing bul­letin on Fleetguard.com rec­om­mends peri­od­i­cally warm­ing up both engines and hydraulic sys­tems dur­ing peri­ods of non-usage. Hydraulic cylin­ders should not be stored fully extended, because if tem­per­a­tures increase, the oil will expand and could cause dam­age to the sys­tem.
Tires should also be checked for proper infla­tion before stor­age to reduce dam­age to side­walls.
Unger said that the win­ter is the best time to check for the fit of any new equip­ment as well.
“If you’re updat­ing your equip­ment, for instance buy­ing a new planter and you want to put it to your old trac­tor, you want to check your spec­i­fi­ca­tions of your trac­tor and planter to make sure they’re com­pat­i­ble,” he said. “We’ve run into a lot of that recently. New planters take so much more oil flow, and you need a trac­tor to oper­ate that.”
As for bat­ter­ies, some remove them prior to stor­age. Accord­ing to USU, a small drain on cur­rent could dis­charge the bat­ter­ies and cause them to freeze in cold weather. There are sev­eral bat­tery main­tainer on the mar­ket to keep bat­ter­ies charged through times of non-usage.
The most valu­able tool for main­te­nance, Unger said, is the owner’s man­ual. Each man­ual gives instruc­tion for reg­u­lar ser­vice inter­vals, either by years or by hours.
Twin Val­ley Equip­ment pro­vides ser­vice to farm equip­ment, includ­ing har­vest equip­ment, hay and for­age equip­ment, plant­ing equip­ment, and trac­tors. Unger also has sev­eral lawn mow­ers in from cus­tomers for win­ter ser­vic­ing. Twin Val­ley Equip­ment can be con­tacted at (937) 456‑6281 or online at www.twinvalleyequip.com.

Michael Zim­mer­man is a staff writer at The Register-Herald in Eaton.

Posted by Ashley Fritz on Dec 5 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.