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Mud pump gave out on a big slab pour yesterday
I was finishing a 30x40 garage floor in Greenville yesterday and about halfway through the pour my mud pump just quit. It made this grinding noise then nothing. I had a truck of concrete sitting there and five guys waiting on me. I ended up having to hand mix the rest of the job which added like 3 hours to the day. The pump is a 2018 model and I've been slacking on the maintenance. I changed the oil after it died but the damage was already done. Has anyone else had a pump fail mid-pour and what did you do to get through it?
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rodriguez.diana1mo ago
Did you have any spare parts on hand for the pump (like a backup oil filter or seals), or were you just running it until it died? I've seen guys keep a rebuild kit in their truck for these things (it's a lifesaver sometimes). Hand mixing 3 hours extra on a big slab like that sounds brutal, I bet your arms were toast the next day. What kind of oil were you running in the pump before it went out, conventional or synthetic? I wonder if the wrong viscosity could've helped cause that grinding. Also, did you check the pump's drive belt or coupler before you blamed the motor? Sometimes those are the real culprit (not the pump itself) and way cheaper to fix.
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nina_johnson861mo ago
I read somewhere that those 2018 models are notorious for eating themselves if you don't change the oil every 50 hours religiously. A buddy of mine had a similar thing happen on a 2019 mud pump and he traced it back to running 30 weight conventional instead of the synthetic 15w40 the manual called for, which made it sludge up faster in the heat. Hand mixing 3 hours on a 30x40 sounds like a nightmare, I think I'd have just called around for a rental pump honestly. But hey, at least you finished the job and didn't have to send that concrete back, that would've been a whole different kind of disaster.
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