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Dewatering pump kept overheating until I realized the guy before me left the intake strainer full of river gravel from that job in Paducah last summer

Took me three hours and a torn up impeller to figure out why my flow was dropping every 20 minutes like clockwork, and now I always check the strainer before even looking at the engine on any rental unit, anyone else run into hidden maintenance traps from previous operators?
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2 Comments
keith264
keith26417d ago
...and what gets me is that gravel likely sat in there all winter too, just baking and settling while the pump sat in the yard. I had a similar one with a rental skid steer where the previous guy left the hydraulic tank breather cap off and it was filled with dirt dobber nests. Blocked the return line, nearly trashed a brand new hydraulic pump before I caught the temp spike. Makes you wonder how many jobs those units saw before someone finally popped the hood and looked.
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the_jordan
the_jordan17d ago
Man that gravel probably acted like a slow sand filter, just grinding everything down over time. Never thought about what a season of freeze-thaw cycles would do to stuff left caked inside a strainer.
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