Hi guys
I have a customer who's forklift has been giving him problems for some time now
It's an FD30 T8 Komatsu, serial number VO135
Transmission numbers that I can find are 3BE-15-18510
He is loosing drive in forward (only forward) sometimes it works ok but most of the time he has to sit the reving it and letting it decide when it wants to pop into drive
When you start forklift and select forward if you are on a slope downhill it selects and drives in forward perfectly
If you are facing uphill slightly you sit there for ages reving the forklift then it sort of just pops into drive and then drives as strong as it would have off the showroom floor
I can go forward and backwards with good drive which tells me that the packs and pump and torque converter are ok
I've changed then trans oil and filter so oil is now clean
The strange thing I cannot understand is when I have put my hydraulic gauge into forward and reverse ports on top of transmission, stand by pressure is 90 psi at idle and that's what you get to the reverse pack but the forward pack only gets 68psi.
Now when it all of a sudden jumps or pops into drive that pressure does not change.
This transmission has a manually controlled (lever actuated) spool, and I have removed linkage and moved spool manually. Pressures stay the same
I have had that top cover off and checked and cleaned everything in that top cover but to the best of my understanding I think this is where the problem must be... or in some valve???
Now for the best/saddest part of the story
Before I took on this job a backyard mechanic tried to fix it... he fully removed and stripped the entire transmission, rebuilt all of the packs, new pump and clutch packs etc, reconditioned torque converter... cost the poor owner 7k so he wants it fixed on a bit of a budget lol
I cannot find any information on the transmission whatsoever and am running out of ideas as I'm just going off rough pressure ideas etc...
Please help lol if anyone has any ideas I would love to hear them!