A little over a month ago we updated our sprayer. We bought a used 4440 Case ih. I knew the previous owners very well and even though it had 2000 hours on it, it looked very clean.
Long story short, I filled the tank with fungicide and headed out. Ended up under applying by roughly 12 percent. I was very baffled. So the dealer sent out a tech and installed a new flow meter. Set the meter cal number in both monitors, headed out with another tank full. Halfway through the tank I could see it was still under applying. So I upped the rate. I decided to call the previous owners. Turns out for the last 2 years he had it, same problem under application. He also replaced the flow meter and it didn’t fix it. The dealers tech guy suggested increasing the meter cal number. So I did subsequent loads increasing the cal number. Finally at 1480 it began to over apply. I thought ahh, maybe we are getting there. Then as I was doing one of my last jobs, I folded up the booms and hopped out to add some wild oat spray to do the last job. Hopped back in and the pump wouldn’t run. Wtf? So I head home to try and figure this out. I put the booms out and down to check the wiring, voila, the pump runs! Hmm, so I lift the main carrier up and down, pump would quit at exactly halfway every time. So I call the dealer, they send out a tech. He looks at the wiring, no visible issues. There are 5 wiring harnesses from the boom to the sprayer. He starts flexing each one with the pump turned on. Well what do you know flexing the one group of wires would turn the pump on and off. We cut off the protective covering(which looked perfect), inside he discovered 5 wires that were kinked and you could stretch them easily because the wire inside was broke. They were obviously kinked during manufacture. Everything works fine now but I haven’t field tested it yet as I have had nothing to spray. The crazy part is if the pump hadn’t quit when the boom was raised the problem with application would still exist. One of the wires was hooked to the pressure sensor, not sure what the other 4 did. It amazes though how one or two wires or a sensor can stop todays equipment in its tracks.
Long story short, I filled the tank with fungicide and headed out. Ended up under applying by roughly 12 percent. I was very baffled. So the dealer sent out a tech and installed a new flow meter. Set the meter cal number in both monitors, headed out with another tank full. Halfway through the tank I could see it was still under applying. So I upped the rate. I decided to call the previous owners. Turns out for the last 2 years he had it, same problem under application. He also replaced the flow meter and it didn’t fix it. The dealers tech guy suggested increasing the meter cal number. So I did subsequent loads increasing the cal number. Finally at 1480 it began to over apply. I thought ahh, maybe we are getting there. Then as I was doing one of my last jobs, I folded up the booms and hopped out to add some wild oat spray to do the last job. Hopped back in and the pump wouldn’t run. Wtf? So I head home to try and figure this out. I put the booms out and down to check the wiring, voila, the pump runs! Hmm, so I lift the main carrier up and down, pump would quit at exactly halfway every time. So I call the dealer, they send out a tech. He looks at the wiring, no visible issues. There are 5 wiring harnesses from the boom to the sprayer. He starts flexing each one with the pump turned on. Well what do you know flexing the one group of wires would turn the pump on and off. We cut off the protective covering(which looked perfect), inside he discovered 5 wires that were kinked and you could stretch them easily because the wire inside was broke. They were obviously kinked during manufacture. Everything works fine now but I haven’t field tested it yet as I have had nothing to spray. The crazy part is if the pump hadn’t quit when the boom was raised the problem with application would still exist. One of the wires was hooked to the pressure sensor, not sure what the other 4 did. It amazes though how one or two wires or a sensor can stop todays equipment in its tracks.
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