Loader Frozen Loader Control Valve

Areeves08 · Dec 27, 2017

Anyone else experience a frozen loader control valve on cold starts in the winter? We're experiencing a good cold snap and I went to prep the tractor for plowing duty and had to wait forever for the valve to warm up and unstick. Are there trouble spots where I should be looking for water or condensation? Any points to lube to prevent this? Anything above freezing and the loader behaves properly. I can put all my weight into the control and get nothing until it warms up. Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

I saw this article and it will probably be the first thing I try:
http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/parts-repairs/333419-how-repair-frozen-loader-control.html

VictorW · Dec 27, 2017

That's a Kubota but very similar. It happened to my CK30hst the second Winter. After fixing, good for ten years so far. My loader control valve is under the right floorboard. On the front of the valve, you should see two silver aluminum cups attached to the block of the valve. My cups were about two inches long and one inch around each held on to the block with two allen head screws. Moisture gets into these cups and freezes up maybe due to no sealer used when mounted to the valve block. I had a little corrosion to clean out and then packed them almost full with a lightweight grease. To help the cups seal better to the valve block, I put a thin coat of permatex orange silicone seal on the mating surface and reinstalled. I haven't seen an RX but imagine a similar set up. Other members had the same problem and only a few had to clean the actual cables coming from the joystick. I tried to find the Kioti posts on this but had no luck.

Almost forgot, when you remove the cups, no parts to drop out. The cup for up-down which has the float detent, should have three metal balls secured in the end of the cup and they shouldn't fall out unless damaged from corrosion. The other cup, for the bucket curl, doesn't use/have these balls so make sure you reinstall each cup from the position they came from.