Strangest cause of a malfunction you've seen???

Ok, what's the most strange, unusual, or whatever you want to call it problem you've ever run into that was causing a tractor, or other machine, to act up? Reason I ask is I've had a few weeks full of odd problems.

First customer called that his 555 Ford backhoe had died. Suggested he change the filters first as I've seen alot of machines dead here lately from a simple clogged fuel filter. In fact had just been out on a call for another 555 about a week before with that exact problem. So, he changed the filters, but still it wouldn't run. Being three hours away he got another machine to help load it and brought it to me. First thing I noticed a leak on the first filter in line and ask the customer about it since he had just replaced both filters. Said not enough new gaskets in with the filters so he had to use one of the old ones where the leak was. This thing has the CAV filters with the glass bowl on the bottom of one, and the metal bowl on the bottom of the other. The filter brand he used, in my experience, always comes with all of the gaskets, and usually a few extra. Still, given the current state of parts packaging I didn't think that much about it, and just used extra's I keep on the truck to replace the old, hard gasket and got the leak fixed. Then tried bleeding the system but could't get fuel through the two filters. Had fuel into and out of the first one, but no fuel coming out of the second one. Finally pulled the filter and handed it to the customer. Noticed when I pulled it there was a little fuel on the top, but none in the filter itself. Checked flow with no filter, and everything appeared to be OK. As my customer handed me back the filter I happened to notice a black band around the top of the filter. As I took it I told him I had just found the problem. Seems he had used the 'missing' gasket on that filter. Since it didn't belong there, instead of going in the groove cut out for it, it had gotten pused down and seated itself in the hole around the OD of the filter where the fuel was supposed to enter it. Removed the ring, and put everything back together, properly, and it bled out just like it was supposed to. Still had to change the fuel solenoid, which was burned out and the root cause of the problem, but what a headache that seal ring caused to start with.

Had another the other day on an L8000 Ford dump. Electrical issue with the running, signal, and brake lights acting strange, like they wre all tied together. Checked everything front and rear and other than repairing a few rubbed wires, etc. I couldn't find anything wrong, but it was still having the same problems. I finally found where the customer had put three sheetmetal screws through the wiring harnness where it runs under the floor of the cab. With the screws making and breaking circuits, intermittently, between the three wires they had cut into, it made it alot of 'fun' to figure out the problem.

Had another today on a New Holland skid steer. It had shut down on the guy on the job. He only got it running by rigging a fuel tank for it to draw out of to get it on the trailer and get it to me. Checked the filter first thing and it was NASTY and had alot of water in it, even though it had maybe 100 or so hours on it. Basically no reason for the filter to be that nasty unless there was bad fuel...which there was cause to suspect given what I had been told....So, I started draining the tank and found very, very little free water in the tank. So, I suspected trash clogging the pickup and attempted to remove it. It wouldn't turn because it was hitting the side of the tank. Looked in the tank and the tube was bent which was causing it to hit the sides...in other words there was no way it was screwed in with that bend on it. So, straightened it enough to get it out and removed it. Checked tank depth and compared it to the tube with it being bent. Even with the bend I had taken out of it it was still coming up almost 4 inches shy of the tank bottom, so before I bent it to get it out it had to be at least 6 inchs off the bottom. Got it straightened out and put bakc in, changed the filter, primed the fuel system, and she fired right up. Neigher I nor the customer has any idea how a steel tube, inside a tank like that, could have gotten bend as bad as it was. No way it could have been removed and reinstalled bent like it was bcause it wouldn't turn inside the tank......We're both stumped as to how it could have been bent as even someone trying to steal fuel wouldn't have cause it to bend like it was....In the end it's just a mystery.....but now that the tube is straight he's not out of fuel when the guage read a half a tank....

The cause in each case- someone being careless. That drives me nuts. It usually doesn't take much longer to do it right the first time.
I have three engines with those very common little "CAV" filters. Two of them only have one filter. Diesel pump people told me NOT to use the pleated paper version of those. The originals are solid packed. So at least on the two- one filter engines, I make sure that's what I do.

Use to drive a concrete mixer truck, one day a another driver was have trouble with his water supply on his mixer. Sometimes he had water press. sometimes not. Well he had to put up with it all day being we were busy as al ell and running our butts off. at the end of the day they got to work fixing it and found a 2' black snake in the water tank! seems it crawed up the 3" water line we used to fill the water tanks with then got flushed into the water tank when he filled his tank for the 1st load for the day. It would float around in the tank till it got stuck to the outlet port then shut off the water.

Sold my brother a 79 C-60 Chev. Year later he went to pull his hay trailer and the lights were missed up. He calls me about it and I tell him the light were working good when I sold it to him. After about three days trying to get things to work I traced the wires in the frame to the rear and seen where he took it to a shop to have new mufflers put on. They had burnt the wires in the frame with a cutting torch.

My combine has what we call field tracker on it.This tips the head side to side so that on uneven sideways ground the head will tip more than the combine. It started acting up last year.

Last year I did find one connection that was loose and thought that would fix it. The head wanted to tip all the way to one side when I lifted on the end after the "fix" but worked fine across the field, which was acting up before the fix. So I just shut the Field Tracker off on the ends while turning and flipped back on when cutting beans.Finished the year this way last year.

I bought a newer head for this year and had the same problems. There are three switches on the tracker to sense the ground to keep the head tipped how it belongs.

Figured the two switches on the ends of the head had to be okay cause it worked great in the cutting mode. So it had to be the switch that shuts it all off when in the raised position.

This new head also had lights on the ends and the lights would not work. I got to digging around with the wire connections again where they plug together at the feeder house for switching heads to find a wire to plug the lights in.

I happened to notice the light plug and the centering plug for the field tracker were the same 3 prong plugs. I switched the two around.

Guess what the lights now worked and so did the centering switch.

What engineneer decided to use the same plug for both without any marking to keep this from happening.

When I replugged the plugs last year I must have grabbed the wrong plug when it went back together and didn"t realize in the pile of wires where they all come together at the feeder house that there even was another plug until I went to plug in the lights this year. Old head never had lights.

Felt like an idiot.

Gary

Much simpler problem but weird.....Customers commercial garage door making lots of noise when opening or closing. The solenoid was buzzing. Got into it and solenoid was chock full of stink bugs and would not close. Those things are nasty!

Had my mate phone me one night , he is a New Holland mechanic but had been called out to a track digger with a Perkins 6.354 that had just stopped for no reason. He had replaced the filters as a matter of course and had fought with the thing for 2 hours and could not get it to fire. He knows I work on Masseys and have experience with Perkins engines..so he talked me through the symptoms and what he had done...everything OK and by the book but as he was talking I remembered an old mechanic telling me about a problem he had one time with a David Brown(same CAV filters) He had used the new sealing washers on top of the filter but one was slightly twisted and acting like a valve...it would let air in but not let diesel out. I told my mate to try that and a few minutes later he phoned back with the engine noise in the background! The filters were in a tight spot and difficult to reach and he had made the same mistake!
Remember this!!!!!
Sam

Years ago, I traded for a Ford Galaxy with a 302 which had a burned valve. Prior to this I had done a valve job on a set of 302 heads and stored them in the barn. when I cleaned the heads, I did the manifold too. painted it and the heads up with nice new Ford blue. They were on a shelf and covered with plastic.

Pulled them down and replaced the ones with bad valves.

Car ran great. Except. When running over about 55 it would overheat. No coolant lose, just hot. Checked thermostat, water pump, radiator flow etc. Finally decided to change the thermostat. This time I didn't drain the coolant down before removing the thermostat housing.

When I popped it off, off course the coolant came pouring out....along with the source of the problem. One slightly rodent-gnawed pecan.

Apparently one of the varmits had stored nuts in the heads or manifold and it had been blocking flow under the thermostat.

Dad Had a 70 ford tandem dump truck the Cat motor went bad and I put a 671 Detroit in it. after a year or so it would run good sometimes not. After along time of changing fuel system parts finally found that the hose from the tank was coming apart inside and sucking shut.
Ron

Not sure why; but back yard machanic installed a V-8 engine in a truck. When started, the engine raced like peddal was to the floor. I thought it was going to blow! I turned the ignition key off; it kept racing. I yanked the coil wire completely off the coil/distributor cap; It kept on racing. I was expecting it to blow apart any second. Pulling the hand choke shut things down. To this day, I'm puzzled as to how that engine ran without a coil wire. Had to be back feeding from somewhere. "TRUE STORY"

Much simpler problem but weird.....Customers commercial garage door making lots of noise when opening or closing. The solenoid was buzzing. Got into it and solenoid was chock full of stink bugs and would not close. Those things are nasty!

I rented a 2670 case one spring and it would run good but at intermittent intervals it would die like it was starving for fuel. I changed the filters but still it would sometimes run a couple of hours then shut down or sometimes only a few minutes. Had good fuel flow at pump, cleaned the screen in the sediment bowl still had problems. Finally decided to change the charge pump. When I got it off I turned it over and found the problem. A bee had gotten down the line to the entrance to the pump, but couldn't get around the corner into the pump. Took the bee out and no more problems.

What made me finally decide to dig til I found the problem was a trip my friend, who was driving for me, and I took because the engine died. I had a farm that had 2 fields, one on top of the hill and another below the hill in some river bottoms. When you went from one to the other you could take a short cut and drop down a steep hill. It wasn't long, maybe 200 yards, but was VERY steep. you would have a hard time stopping a tractor once you started down. We decided to go that way, but just as the tractor went over the lip the engine died, so down we went without brakes or steering. The crab steer went to one side so we went down side ways. Gotta say we were a little panicked. Didn't dawn on me til I was down in the field and slowed a bit to just drop the disc to stop. LOL I never did take that short cut again.

While stationed in Korea we were very short of mechanics. One of our officers and I had served together before and knew I was a fair wrench. I was sent to HHC (headquarters company) on temp duty as a wheeled vehicle mechanic. First thing I was assigned to work on was a 5 ton truck that would not run up to rated RPMs (2100). I went out and looked the truck over (support maint had tried turning up the pump and said run it till it blows) and then went and pull the trucks records. I found that it had not had new fuel filters in over 2 years because of availability. Went to PLL and found that filters had come in just no one installed em. Put the new filters in, old one were covered with a white creamy substance, fire the truck up. Hit the gas pedal and backed off when the tach hit 2600.

Rick

A friend had a tractor that was having all kinds of weird problems and brought it over to me to look at. Sure enough, wouldn't start, everything goofy was what I saw when took a quick look at the end of the day. Shut the building lights off to lock up the place and noticed a glowing coming from over in the corner where his tractor was parked, so went to take a look. Climbed up and all the meters on the dash were lit real dim, but there was no key in the ignition, switches were off, so no reason for the dash lights to be lit. Strange, very strange so I went at it first thing in the morning. Battery ground was loose at the engine block, but for whatever reason, there was a No.18 ground from the negative battery terminal to the ground on the dash, and a No.18 from that ground back to the engine ground. That No.18 wasn't a big enough ground, so lots of stuff was trying to use the dash meter bulbs as ground to dissapate voltage as ground. Corrected the No.2 ground from the battery to the engine block, removed the No.18 from the battery to the dash, but replaced the No.18 from the dash to the engine block with a No.10, no more loop, no more too small of a gauge, problem solved.

No or bad ground can cause a world of problems no matter the application and should be one of the first things checked has been my experience, and when it comes to ground, bigger is better.

Mark

AMC 6cyl in a Scout, it would only run on four cyl and it did not make any difference which plug wires you pulled it would only run on 4 cylinders. After some head scratching and I noticed there were points, but no condenser. runs fine now.

Had 77 ford van long time, never ran really good. One day decided to sell to neighbor. Sliding door was always falling off hinges. He asked me to weld it shut. When I struck an arc, I heard a loud crack, like electricity going somewhere. That sucker started running so good, I tried to get out of selling it. Bad ground maybe somewhere. Dave

Had 77 ford van long time, never ran really good. One day decided to sell to neighbor. Sliding door was always falling off hinges. He asked me to weld it shut. When I struck an arc, I heard a loud crack, like electricity going somewhere. That sucker started running so good, I tried to get out of selling it. Bad ground maybe somewhere. Dave

The bent tube on the skid steer sounds like someone checked the fuel level by dipping the tank with something heavy like a pipe or crow bar and hit the tube.