Typhon Terror XVII with cab.

[MattB4]

Drained and replaced the hydraulic fluid. There is a 6mm Allen plug under the tank on the bottom side of excavator. By turning the deck so that this plug sits over the rear center of tracks I could place a 5 gallon bucket underneath to catch the oil. Filling back up with the cab in the way however is near impossible if you intend to pour in oil. My solution was to use a battery powered fuel transfer pump that I had bought off Amazon last week for ~$20. I had bought it to pump diesel into the Excavators fuel tank which it worked great doing.

To see if it could pump hydraulic oil I placed it in the 5 gal bucket of waste oil and turned it on. It works! Though very slow pump rate due to the heavier oil. By using the pump it was about 10 minutes of pump some oil, go check site glass, and pump some more. From the factory they had overfilled the hydraulic oil so for my purpose I only placed back enough to be about 2/3 of sight glass level. Roughly 3 gallons.

I am glad I decide to do this right off the bat and only wished I did not have to do that 1 hour of run time getting the excavator home. The factory oil looked hideous and there was debris in it. Some looked like small pieces of hose rubber.

One other item I found was that the windshield wiper had the splines for the arm stripped so that it would not drive the blade back and forth. Not seeing a great need for it anyway I simply unbolted the arm and removed it.

Doing some operation after the oil change to work all the hydraulic cylinders I also decided to test the machine by pulling 4 7-8ft pines out of the dry ground. No problem and no feeling of about to tip over that my old 1-ton would have with doing that. Do have to watch while in crushed rock that the tracks can bind if you get gravel in them.

 

[2manyrocks]

Pretty amazed that you could even get air condtioning on this size machine and even more amazed it was available at the price you paid.

 

[MattB4]

Incidentally finding the battery and how to access it took me a fair amount of effort. I first thought it might behind the vertical metal plate ( 6-13mm bolts to remove) below the seat where the battery cutoff switch is. It's not. Though the battery switch might be a quick place to jump or put a wire for a maintainer. The battery itself sits under the floor boards on the front left side and the access appears to be a metal plate on the front of the excavator where the turntable grease fittings are at.

Did not take it off yet but it seems you have to pop out two rubber hole covers and use an Allen wrench to remove bolts to loosen cover.

Edit 6/29: Well it is worse than I thought. 3 6mm Allen screws and some prying and the plate comes off but the battery is behind welded bars. It seems the left side panel (blue) would also need to come off and to do that it looks like the cab has to be pulled off first. At some point in the future I expect to modify the left side panel so that access to battery would be possible without lifting cab off first. Likely cut off the metal portion next to the fuel sight gauge and maybe hinge it for opening.

 

[MattB4]

A question for anyone that has a cab with 12vDC Aircon/heater. The temperature settings do not make any sense to me. It is not in degrees C or F but it is numerical starting at 3P as lowest and going up by 1P (4P, 5P and I gave up once it reached above 10P) with each up arrow press and back down to the lowest of 3P with each down arrow press. Since it seems to operate all the time with it being 92F outdoors it baffles me how to set a temperature corresponding to a degree for cycling the unit.

One thing I notice is it seems to draw plenty of current from the charging system. To avoid exceeding the 40A rated alternator and drain the battery it will take some testing. The excavators display on the right hand joystick armrest gives battery voltage both as a number and a bar graph of SOC. BTW the LCD display only gives readout for engine temperature, battery voltage, hours and SOC. There is no other indications.

 

[HayFarmer]

Your pix remind me of my disc mower conditioner delivery. Driver calls in the evening while I'm out of town. Won't fit in my yard. Agrees to stay overnight. I have him park at the neighbor's big dirt lot. We unload in the dark next morning, him using a flashlight to watch my tires as I pull it off with the tractor.

BYW, nice machine! Wish I could afford one. Have a lot of trenching to do.

 

[MattB4]

Operated the TT-17 this morning for about an hour and a half digging up some stumps with a ripper tooth. It had poured down rain yesterday afternoon and the storm front had dropped the temperature this morning into the low 70's (humid as all get out but hey..). Got about 3/4 of an inch of rain so I though it might soften up the ground.

One 6 inch stump was fairly easy to pop out after a few minutes digging the rocks and roots around it. The excavator is quite stable feeling and does not tip easily like the 1 ton did when pulling all out on a root or rock. Though it could be that the hydraulics need a bit more pressure to give more oomph.

Another one (had suckers sprouting from it and also about 6-8 inch diameter) was a major job to dig around and bust out the boulders and roots. This one took me most of an hour to dig to the point of finally pulling it free. It was a case of who was more stubborn me or the stump. How I hate all the boulders my ground consists of.

The final stump was about 12 inch at the base that I had left about 6 ft high when I cut it 2 years back. After digging up the roots around it for a bit the excavator engine suddenly surges and almost dies. A quick look at the fuel sight gauge and it was just about empty. This thing has a really small fuel capacity. It sips fuel but I am not sure it even has a gallon tank. So leaving it to cool I grabbed my skid steer and push this stump over. I had tried to push it out before with the skid steer with no success but digging up the roots made a large difference.

 

[2manyrocks]

I was wondering if the compressor for the air conditioner is mechanically driven by a belt off the engine or is driven by an electric inverter motor?

 

[MattB4]

I was wondering if the compressor for the air conditioner is mechanically driven by a belt off the engine or is driven by an electric inverter motor?

It is 12vDC. There are many of these units being sold to RV'ers, truckers, farmers for enclosed cab tractors and such. They are the same concept as a mini split home Aircon with a unit outside that has the compressor and radiator than an indoor mounted head attached with hoses. you see a ton of them for sale on Ebay, Amazon and the like for people willing to connect up and add the refrigerant to them.

Problem with it being 12vDC is the amount of amperage it draws. people buying the excavators that have the gas engines without alternaters lack the amp capacity to run one of these without draining the battery. if you look around the 'net there are some interesting mods some folks are doing to add a belt driven alternator to the gas mini ex's.

 

[MattB4]

Couple of modifications this morning. The floor plate above the valve body is a pain to remove due to having to pull off all the floor pedals. Some work with a plasma cutter and the plate is now in two pieces and more accessible. One floor bolt per side and the little cover plate on the left side also acts as a brace.

Not sure if there is anything that can be done to get at the battery short of abandoning it when it goes bad and installing a new one in the engine compartment. One thing I found out is the battery switch interrupts the negative. That means the positive going to the starter from the battery allows me to wire at the starter a 10awg connection to SAE plug and to the switch side of the battery cutout. This will be used as easily accessible charging point.

I ended up removing the seats head rest as it was a concern about it busting the back window. Especially after I found out that the seats recliner adjustment did not hold if I pushed back to hard while seated. The ergonomics of this cab unit would make it great if I was 5'-6" tall and weighed 135lbs. Not so good at 6'-3' and 210lbs.

 

[dfkrug]

Not sure if there is anything that can be done to get at the battery short of abandoning it when it goes bad and installing a new one in the engine compartment.

I plan to go with a different smaller battery, too, but my 7yo original is still going strong. I plan to use a smaller U1 riding mower battery, and I will have to change terminals, too.