How to Safely Maintain Your Backhoe Loader?

Backhoe Loaders (BHL) are essential to every construction site as they are highly versatile equipment and can perform a variety of tasks. This also means that they are more exposed to wear and tear than you would usually expect from any equipment. Hence, it is very important to maintain your BHL so as to get the most from your investment and see the machine utilised to its maximum capacity.

Here are six tips that can make maintaining your equipment simpler and easier…

How to safely maintain your backhoe loader?

1. Follow a maintenance schedule: In order to keep a tap on the maintenance requirement of the equipment, you need to create and follow a maintenance schedule which would have notations on how often each part of the machinery should be inspected for problems, repairs and general maintenance. You need to be consistent with the maintenance schedule and inspect the equipment thoroughly.

2. Ensure proper cleaning of BHL: This is necessary to ensure that the dirt and debris do not damage the delicate parts of the BHL and result in costly repairs. For this, after you are done with the day’s work, clean the parts that made the most contact with the soil and debris. Also, ensure that the engine oil and hydraulic fluid system stays clean. The mantra is the cleaner you keep your BHL, the better it will perform.

3. Always keep the BHL properly greased and lubricated: Proper greasing of all moving parts of the equipment is also absolutely necessary in order to save them from failing to work and creating excess friction leading to severe wear and tear of the machinery, frequent breakdowns and shorter life span. If you hear noise coming from the system pins, bushings, bearing joints etc., you need to grease those parts. There can be several joints that require daily or weekly greasing schedule, so you need to take care of that. Further, too little as well as too much lubrication can be harmful for the machine. So, you need to lubricate the equipment wisely with the recommended grade of grease.

4. Regularly check the tyres of BHL: Another step for safely maintaining your BHL is making sure that each tyre has the right pressure as this can help in lessening tyre wear, improve stability and reduce the fatigue of the operator. Also, you need to check for any cuts and replace the tyres when needed.

5. Pay proper attention to wear and tear: You also need to watch out for signs of wear and tear as they can cause machinery to malfunction or result in costly repairs or component replacements before your regular inspection. Particularly, check all the components that make contact with the ground for wear and tear. These may include bucket pins and bolts, swing pins and backhoe hoses. Some common signs of wear and tear are vibration, heat, belt shape and leaks. Fix these wear and tear issues as soon as possible.

6. Give proper training to the operators of BHL: Last but not the least, one of the important ways to protect the equipment is to make sure that operators have all the required skills to operate the BHL. Without proper training, operators can damage the machinery or even injure themselves or others.

The above mentioned few tips for maintenance of BHL may seem like a lot of work but it is sure that these extra efforts will pay off well in future as well-maintained equipment can deliver more uptime and efficiency.