Tractor Mike's video: The Most Ignored and Most Used Tractor Control-Have You Serviced Yours

It's a component of a tractor that I use almost every time I get on it, you're supposed to service it occasionally, and I never have. I'm doing it today because a lot of people have contacted me this year complaining that theirs has stopped working. It's the joystick, the mechanism that controls your loader. For more of us, as long as it makes the front-end loader go up and down and the bucket tilt and curl, we never think anything about it. This video was prompted by a question from Alex. He has a Kubota LA525 loader and the owner's manual says to lubricate the control valve every ten hours. It doesn't tell you what that is, where it is, or where to lubricate it, or what to lubricate it with. We'll cover all of those questions today. The control valve is actually better known as the joystick. Move it forward and back and the loader boom arms move up and down. Move it from side to side and the bucket tilts and curls. I pulled the cover off my joystick today for a good cleaning with my sponsor's products, WD-40 Specialist Cleaner and Degreaser and a good lubrication with WD-40 Specialist Gel Lube. If you'd like to purchase these products, WD-40 Specialist Gel Lube is available at Tractor Supply: https://bit.ly/3ocNxcQ. WD-40 Specialist Cleaner & Degreaser is available on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2LGHM8N. Joysticks generally have a triangular (or disc shaped) plate with a pivot point in the middle. When you move the lever forward it pushed a rod down in a valve that activates the flow of hydraulic oil to move the loader boom down. Pull it back and it lifts the rod to change the flow of oil to the other end of the cylinders on the front end loader, which lifts the mainframe. Same with the side-to-side movement, move the stick to the right and a rod is pushed down, making the loader bucket tilt forward, move it to the left and it pulls the rod up, curling the bucket back. It's a quite ingenious invention that sure made farming and construction work much easier. Joysticks can be on top of the valve, or they can control a cable that goes to a valve. They can be mounted on the tractor or the loader. However they're configured, they need the pivot points to be lubricated, after every ten hours use if you have an LA525 like Alex has. 10 hours of loader use is a lot, unless you're moving dirt. It probably takes me half a year to put ten hours of actual use on my joystick, so I figure you should lube the moving parts a couple of times a year. I use WD-40 Specialist Gel Lube because it stays where you spray it, and it prevents rust for up to a year. Good stuff. I've had a lot of questions this year from folks who have a joystick that has quit working and this video is for them. If one of these pivot points goes out, or a cable fails, you can order parts and repair it yourself. If something goes wrong inside a valve, that's not a fix-it project for a novice. I'd let the loader down (do this anytime you work on it) and remove the valve and take it to a repair shop that specializes in hydraulics and they'd be able to fix it. I suspect a lot of the failures this year have happened in areas that get a lot of rain. If so, a lot of these breakdowns might have been prevented by doing what I did in the video. If that's not the case, it's possible that manufacturers are putting really cheap joysticks on their tractors now and they're failing faster than any before. Let's hope that's not the case. Pulling the rubber boot off the joystick a couple of times a year and squirting WD-40 Specilist Gel Lube in there takes about two minutes and it might save a time-consuming and expensive failure on down the road. LINKS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT... The Tractor Fun Store: https://asktractormike.com/products-for-sale/ Support the Tractor Mike Channel: https://www.patreon.com/TractorMike Visit the Tractor Mike website: http://asktractormike.com/ Visit Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/Ask-Tractor-Mike-312112962245304/ Copyright 2021 Tractor Mike LLC