I have just purchased a 73 C500-50 automatic trans. It's my first forklift, I've never worked on any forklift so this is new territory for me.
here are the issues it has;
1. It barely moves, takes a moment to go into gear.
It would not drive up the tilt deck low boy trailer I have.
Trans fluid level is good, fluid does not smell burnt.
Engine oil kinda looks like water contamination, but coolant looks fine.
2. When the inching pedal is depressed trans does not go into neutral.
I'm wondering if the inching valve is stuck partially putting the trans into neutral, causing it to slip. I tried disconnecting the line going to the inching valve, it would not go into gear when I did that. Reconnected the line and it goes into gear.
3. It hardly runs, occasionally backfires out the intake.
Will not rev up much.
I'm giving it a tuneup now to see if that helps.
4. Service brakes do not work, only the parking brake works.


Update; changed plugs, cap, rotor and I'm letting it run until it gets to operating temp. When I try to hold it at higher rpm's it is still backfiring. Wants to die at idle despite turning up idle speed by 1/4 turn in the stop screw. Seems the longer I have it running it is slowly running better at idle. After idling for 20 minutes it died and will not start.
Trying to find the point gap before changing points.
Did a compression test. All were between 80-95 dry, all improved by 5-10 when wet.

Any helpful ideas are appreciated.