How To Know When Your Excavator Needs Repair

No matter what kind of large-scale construction project your company is about to undertake, there’s a good chance that you’ll need an excavator at some point to dig a hole or move debris around. While these machines are well built, the time will come when one breaks down on you. Fortunately, we’re here to tell you how to know when your excavator needs repair. That way, you can stop a problem before it gets any worse.

Warning Lights or Alarms Going Off

While modern advancements haven’t found a way to stop most complications from occurring, they have helped us develop tools to warn us when something inside of a heavy piece of machinery or equipment is no longer working. That’s why you need to take it seriously when a warning light or alarm goes off in your excavator.

Obviously, false alarms do happen occasionally, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. Once an alarm has activated, you need to shut the excavator down and figure out what has caused the issue.

Low Fluid Levels

Whether it’s oil for the engine or fluid for the hydraulic system, when these levels become low, more significant problems might arise. This is why regular fluid checks should be mandatory. For example, if the hydraulics’ fluid level is abnormally low, especially shortly after refilling it, that could mean there’s a leak around the filter. Buying a new hydraulic oil filter is an easy fix for this issue, but there could always be a worse reason for the low fluid levels.

Strange Noises

Understandably, if you ever hear an abnormal grinding, screeching, or hissing noise coming from your excavator, that’s a clear sign that something internally is wrong. However, these giant construction vehicles are quite loud, so hearing these things isn’t always easy. If you do pick up on the strange sound, though, you should try to trace it to its source unless you think it might be endangering the machine to keep it running. Either way, hearing those noises tells you how to know when your excavator needs repair.

Something Stops Working

Probably the most obvious sign that something has gone wrong is when it stops working altogether. If this does happen, that doesn’t necessarily mean the entire machine is broken. Another malfunctioning part may have caused another one to stop working. It could even be something more minor, like a stalled engine. Regardless of what has ceased to work on your excavator, running diagnostics on it should help you figure out what went wrong.