The Forestry Forum

Recently I've had a few "minor" problems with my LT40HD, some self-inflicted, that I thought I would pass along in hopes of helping others to avoid them.  Many of you more experienced LT40 owners may already know this stuff but for those that don't...


1.  On a recent long-distant mobile job, late in the day my SimpleSet failed, preventing the head from moving (this turned out to be a problem of my own doing that I'll get into on a future thread), so I decided to bypass the SS to finish the job.  It's a relatively simple task to connect the UP/DN motor leads directly to the drum switch but here's a few things to watch out for:

       --If your SimpleSet fails you will also lose manual control of the head.  If you do a lot of long-distance mobile jobs as I do, it might be a good idea to add "motor connection" pig-tails to the UP/DN drum switch so you can quickly by-pass the SS if the need ever arises.  Wrestling two 10AWG wires onto a single drum-switch terminal while your customer is watching is no fun smiley_sweat_drop.

       --On my mill, the yellow motor wire connects to the purple shunt wire terminal on the drum switch and the purple motor wire connects to the yellow shunt wire terminal.  If you match the colors, your head UP/DN will be reversed  :-[.

       --The lever of the drum switch acts a mechanical rotation limit.  If you remove the retainer screw from the handle and rotate the switch, the handle may slip past the stops allowing the switch to over-rotate, putting it into a detent configuration (vs. the normal non-detent configuration) (4x4American, this may be the cause of the problem you mentioned in another thread).


2.  The circuit breakers that have the reset button on the outside of the control box are fairly fragile.  The threaded bushing that mounts the breaker in the panel is sandwiched between the two plastic halves of the breaker assembly.  The plastic is rather brittle and can be broken if you push sideways on the breaker (say, while your futzing around with a drum switch for example ::)), leaving the breaker hanging on the pop-out shaft but not obviously broken.  This can create an intermittent connection within the breaker which will drive you nuts trying to find.

3.  If your drive-side blade guard cover is askew or if a chunk of wood bends the sawdust inlet chute out, the bottom of the chute can hang up on the rear-most track roller cover thumb screw when you lower the head into park position.  Not only will this further bend the chute but it can also do a number on the thumb screw.

Feel free to add any peculiar "gotcha's" that you have experienced with your mill.








   

Don't leave us hanging, what caused the SS to fail

I was messin' around under the hood and left a connection a little loose.