Zetor 8011 Aristocrat - hydraulics

G'Day all,
This is my first posting of an item on line, not only on this site but anywhere. I have however been a reader of this site for a few months.

I have a zetor 8011 Aristocrat (I think 1975 build because it has "Zetor[/] 80 002 082 1/75 E3 stamped on the left hand side bottom of the engine block)

My wife and I have a small, 102 acre, property in Bredbo NSW between Canberra-Cooma (Cooma side) we are running a small herd of Murray Grey cattle and cultivating about 15 Acres of fodder. We have been on the property for just over 12 months. We both have off farm jobs and our intention is to retire here in about 9 years time.

Now to the tractor which we have had for about 9 months. It has had a very hard life and there is no accurate indication of how many hours it has on it. Most of the instrumentation is shot although we have managed to repair the tempreture guage and taco.

When it is operating the tract0r is very strong (it is fitted with a heavy hydraulic dozer blade) and we have recovered lots of land and repaired lots of erosion with it. When it is bad it is a nightmare.

Since we have had it, it has had an intermitent fault in that the hydraulics simply stop working in the middle of a job for no apparent reason at all (the tractor is in the normal operating temperature). I have to disconnect the discharge pipe from the hydraulic pump and wait for it to discharge before I can re-connect and get on with the job. This is frustrating and extremely messy. I have also removed the pump and cleaned it of gunk.

I suspected the tractor was delivered with the wrong oil so did an oil change. Yesterday I did another one and put 80W oil in as per the operators manual. Surprise Surprise the hydraulics did not work. More of a surprise is that the oil is frothy and looks white. I drained off some of the oil last night and this morning it has separated and the bottom inch of the tank is green engine coolant.

My guess is that at some point the engine coolant is getting into the transmission/hydraulic system.

Question[/]: Does this sound right and at what points do the two systems (Cooling/hydraulic) come together to allow this contamination? How do I get at these points?

By way of additional information on the hydraulic system; I also had an intermitent fault with the 3PL which would simply stop operating for no reason. After many attempts to fix it turned out to be a floating piece of rubber seal which occasionally lodged itself in the distribution manifold but would hide elsewhere when the system was cleaned or stripped.

Thanks for reading this long first e-mail

Hello,

How is the appearance of your tractor ?? i suppose it looks pretty rough ?? ...Aristocrat must have been misread, these tractors were the Crystal range.

As far as i know there is no point where engine coolant can get into the transmission... Maybe there was so much water already in the gear oil, that the previous owner poured some anti-freeze in it, instead of changing the oil ?????



Is your blade connected to the standard remote outlets ??

There is a contractor that faced a similar problem, using a silage tipper.. The return flow would block, leaving no other choice than having all the oil in the tipping cylinder run off into a bucket...
He shouted at his people several times, to make them operate the hydraulics smoother, because he thought it was the hose break safety valve that caused this...

The next season, and many frustrations later, they changed the ISO quick connector on the tractor, and they discovered that, as a lucky side effect, the problem was solved:
It tuned out to be the quick connector anti-leak valve that blocked the oil flow sometimes.



....What do you mean by discharge pipe ?? the pipe that comes directly from the pump, in the front transmission compartment ???

...And you have to take it off and wait for the pump to start spitting out oil, and then reconnect and it is o.k. ????

My 10045 hydraulics stop working for no apparent reason occasionally aswell! What I do is disconnect the drive to the pump(the lever on the gearbox casing near the hydraulic filters with a round locking knob on it) and generally fiddle with all the levers to release the pressure and then re-engage the pump drive.I think it is down to dirt in the system as I regularly clean the strainer filter(the clip on one behind the round cap) and change the replacable one and now the intervals between play ups are getting further and further apart.I think I had a bit of cloth go through the system from a rag when a previous owner fitted a second hand pto pack.

Hi Lindsay (and Renze and Crystalman and other),

Reading your post I had a sense of deja vu! On the old Zetorworld forum, I had posted the exact same problem.

The keyword that you used is intermitent[/]. This is precisely the behaviour that my Crystal 8011 exhibits.

A couple of items from your post:

1. You said that you removed gunk from the pump - this sounds worrying as there should not be any gunk there - the filter should be removing this. The pump is a sensitive component and will not take kindly to gunk (...or grit or dirt) being fed into it.

2. You definitely had water/coolant contamination in the oil if it was white and frothy.

3. If the hydaulic pumps stops working, this is why you have no lift or external hydraulic services. I'm curious to know where you got the piece of rubber in the distribution manifold. What is the distribution manifold and where is it?

TomZ
Tom

Wow. Thanks Steernboster and Crystalman for your replies.

The appearance of the tractor is rough but with the well faded original paint not in too bad condition. The full cab, which may be aftermarket and may have been fitted in Victoria Australia, is the bit with the most rust although this is mostly surface rust.

Zetor 8011 Aristocrat is written in large letters on both sides of the engine cover, looks like a factory job?. Thanks for the good piece of information that it is probably from the Crystal range. I have been reading the comments about them in this forum and wondered if their was any relationship. I also had a close look at the photocopy of the operators manual I have and can make out that the 8011 drawing in it which looks like my tractor has Crystal written on it where mine has Aristocrat.

Interesting thought on what the previous owner may have done. Gives me something else to think about. I saw a previous message about using a diesel flush to get rid of the froth so I did one last night. Not so much water in it today perhaps only one quarter of what was in it originally.

I am draining through two plugs. One on the centre line directly under the cab and one further back in front of the real axel on the right hand side. Seems like I put in about 18 Ltrs of diesel and got about 15 ltrs back. I think I will do another flush, run the pump for a while and see what comes out. I will then flush with 80 W oil, drain and refill. If this does not fix I will think again.

The blade is connected to controls mounted inside the right hand side of the cab and connected to the manifold with the screw down (stay up?) fitting immediatly behind the seat. There are two controls, one for the blade and one for the two remotes fitted at the back of the tractor.

The discharge pipe I have been disconnecting to release pressure is the one at the top of the pump in the front transmission compartment. Interestingly when I tried this during the diesel flush the flow was VERY strong. I now think that the froth has been causing an air lock in the pump. I think the pump must be OK, it looked OK when I removed it and when it is working it has no problems lifting the blade quckly and it can easily lift a very heavy carry all loaded with large rocks.

Crystalman, thanks for your observations. At least by the time I have done all these flushes, dirt, bits of rag and bits of old seal should not be a problem. Expensive business but not as expensive as having the tractor trucked to a workshop.

I will do some more work and let you know how I go. When I get this fixed I will tell you about another problem I am having caused I think by the tractor having been treated as a bulldozer.

Thanks again. I appreciate it

TomZ,

Gunk I removed from the pump was almost totally a thick white froth with just some thin bits of selastic like material, probably "liquid gasket". There was a lot of grit in both sets of filters and both the magnet in the top of the filter full of round mesh disks and the top of both sump gaskets were covered in fine metal particals. The two mesh "bucket" type filters (on mine they are not disposable paper elements but are made of copper) had a lot more of the selastic material in them.

The "distribution manifold" is refered to in my workshop manual as the "hydraulic power lift housing". It is located directly behind the seat and is the metal block that the hydraulic pipes connect to. At the top of it is the screw down "needle" which is refered to as the "throttle valve assembly". I have been told that this needle is a stay-up or lock-up mechanism which will stop the flow of return oil from the 3PL and therefore stop any item on it from lowering.

Thanks for your reply.

AAHH Yes the Instant Gasket men have struck again! That stuff cost me a 500 exchange turbo a few years back.Now most of our Zetors are not that complicated compared to say a modern JD but it makes you wonder about the quality of the servicing you get when a mechanic can't even keep rubbish out of the hydraulic system when they are working on it-this doesn't apply to any particular make -it seems to apply to all makes and cars aswell.The quality of service certainly doesn't seem to be worth the high hourly rate you have to pay for the privilege.
I changed the oil in our MF 135 scraper tractor's transmission last week-the first time for about 15 years! That oil was white due to water getting in through the gearstick rubbers.I have now fitted new ones so it should be good for a few more years.Next job is new wheels as the slurry is eating them away!!

I changed the oil in our MF 135 scraper tractor's transmission last week-the first time for about 15 years! That oil was white due to water getting in through the gearstick rubbers.I have now fitted new ones so it should be good for a few more years.Next job is new wheels as the slurry is eating them away!!

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Sounds like our 135! I also changed the oil and shifter boots about a month ago, mine was also white! as well as the front tires. Mine had almost no rubber left at all. When they got a puncture i gave up with them!

Bloke that fitted the new tires said they have had the most use out of them that hes ever seen! Nice tractors though. most reliable ive ever had anyway.

Maybe there was so much water already in the gear oil, that the previous owner poured some anti-freeze in it, instead of changing the oil ?????

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Now why didnt i think of that!

You didnt say you were going to run the hydraulics with diesel in them did you? Bad idea, bang!