Boy Do I Feel Stupid

[dail_h]

   Y'all remember a coupla weeks ago ,I had a bad hydraulicleak on "Spud" my ancient old Clark forklift? Well I want to thank everybody for the responses. I wound up using gas tank patch epoxy stuff,and it fixed that leak.Problem was,I kept losing fluid,and didn't see any inprovement in the hydraulics whrn I added oil. That should'a been a sign. Anyway,I finished moving those tree service logs,and brought Spud home.
   I got another tree service job tommorow,so I decided to see if I could figure this out. My buddy Don was helping me with another project ,so he stayed to help.
   Removed cover over hydraulic tank,didn't see nothing but oily gunk. Crawled under to take a look. Nothong here but the oily belly of an old forklift. Shoot this ain't looking good. Maybe it's a leakig hose,should be easy enough to find.Thought about it a few minuets ,must be the return line,cause it was dripping ,not squirting. Look for where suction line goes from tank to punp,now that's odd ,don't seem to come from the tank.Now Spud hadn't had the best of care over the years,so I suspected some cobblin. Followed the suction line from the pumpback to the tank. Hey! this ain't the tank.what the heck? Don,see my hand? Yeah. well what's it on(I'm under the lift) ? Some sorta fitting thingy. I crawl out to take a look topside. Yep,connects to a fitting,on the bottom of that box thingy right there.Wait a minuet, is that the tank ? Well maybe,there's the breather. Where is the filler?and why is the breather so high?Oh the breather must be the fill cap.
   Ok geniuseif this is the hydraulic tank,all the lines are going into it like they're suposed toWHAT HAVE YOU BEEN POURING THE HYDRAULIC OIL IN?
   It seems that I have been pouring oil into the now unused old fuel tank to the tune of about sixty bucks worth.Well that would explain that gas tank on thr running board. The gas tank started leaking,so instead of fixing it ,they just abandoned it.
   Boy I feel stupid. Now all I got to do is figure out how to get thje oil out before it leaks out.

[J_T]

Hey I though I was the only one to do things like that ???

[DanG]

Sounds like Spud is a lot like the Hootiemobile. :D :D  I was having a problem with the transmission...the pore old thing would hardly move. I was told the xmission used fluid from the hydraulic system. NOT!  It has it's own dipstick/filler neck secreted waaaaay down in there. Had to put a piece of hose on a funnel to add 3 qts of ATF. Pulls just fine, now. :D

I had to remove about a bushel of old leaves and pine straw to find it. :

[Jeff]

Well, at least you didnt mistake the engine oil fill for the coolant fill!  That woulda been worse!

[james]

our company runns a lot of freightliners two plastic bottles on the firewall- one for coolant one for washerfluid   year ago a rooky truckdriver couldent figure why his washers just made a dirty windshield worse ;D ;D

[spokeshave]

OK, as long as we are coming clean...

I had to put a new water pump in my tractor. To do this, I had to drain the coolant and remove the radiator. After reassembling everything, I filled the radiator with coolant *and* filled what I was sure was a coolant reserve tank. After all, it looked just like the coolant reserve tank in my truck.

Turned out to be the fluid reservoir for the steering pump. Took some effort to drain the steering hydraulic system and get all of the water out  :(

[karl]

Don't be too hard on yourself.

Once upon a time a fellow told me
"The guy that does'nt make mistakes isn't doing anything".

 I try to live by that axiom- there are days that I do lots  :

[sprucebunny]

I put brake fluid in the brake resivour on my 580K. Who'd a thought it took hydraulic fluid??

[dail_h]

   Now I feel better. Learned two important things today
   1  You can't siphon hydraulic fluid out of a forklift,had to use one of them little kerosene pumps.
   2  Hydraulic fluid tastes AWFUL

[Jeff]

 :D

[Percy]

 :D :D :D :D :DGood story(s) :D :D :D :D :D

[Bro. Noble]

Man,
I'm having a hard time refraining from telling about the problem that confused Canadian Mountie had :

[Corley5]

Twice I've had haying help put gas in the radiators on my old Farmalls instead of the gas tank.  Just figured everybody knew that the radiator was in front and the gas tank in back : ;D

[Timber_Framer]

Back when we were doing clean up work for the Corps of Engineers one of my boys filled the Kubota with gas instead of diesel she got a wee bit hot!

[etat]

On my old John Deere diesel the fuel tank is in the front, and the radiator in the back.  Tell ya the truth, it's caused confusion, 'more than once'.

Once with my dad when I was putting some new blades on a disc type hay cutter, and once with a guy working for me

Both times water was added to the fuel tank.

Tractor does not run very long at all with water in diesel.

Afterwards it takes a long time to get it straightened back out.

[sigidi]

Driving trucks for the Army, we halted at a service station while on convoy and a young lass had just put diesel in her hatchback tank.......


So we decided we had to do our military duty (co-driver and I), helped her out for the next 3 hours taking the tank off and draining it......




Had absolutely nothing to do with how pretty she was :D ;D

[Gilman]

Upgraded my forklift to a Clark 5,500 #'er, manual transmission.  


When it was delivered, the brakes froze up.  We drug it up and down the street with the brakes on, but they wouldn't break free.  We loaded it back up and the repairman hauled it back to their shop.  They ended up putting new brakes on it for me for a great price and brought it back out.  It runs great and the breaks work great now too.

Yesterday I went to start it and just got a "click".  "Great, another bad starter or solenoid," I thought.  Put the charger on the battery and the battery had a full charge.  I then called the repairman and told him the problem.  He had me describe the problem and then told me to put the truck in neutral and try again.  Vaaarooom, fired right up. He could hear it running over the phone and simply said, "I'll send you the bill."

Dail,
I told the repairman about you putting hydraulic oil in the gas tank and he told me that I have hydraulic fluid in mine.  He said that when they convert a forlkift over to propane they empty the gas tank and add hydraulic fluid to keep it from leaking and add some more weight.  You were just ahead of you time.