It’s sunny, warm, and your chore list is already fairly long. Why not put off the maintenance on your heavy farm equipment? Unfortunately, ignoring routine maintenance and care of your heavy equipment—especially those hard-to-clean places—can lead to a much bigger problem down the road.
Neglecting Maintenance Can Lead to a Frozen Nightmare
Anything that requires lubrication attracts contaminants. Greasy attachment plates, component joints, and engine bays are magnets for dirt and other soils. Many of these areas are in hard-to-clean places on your equipment. Instead of taking the time to remove excess grease before relubricating these areas, some equipment owners just add more grease on top of the contaminants to keep their equipment working.
But in colder climates, you’re taking a risk with this bad habit. The grease and contaminants you allow to build up on your equipment will eventually harden and freeze once temperatures drop. Frozen grease and contaminants are nearly impossible to remove, as degreasers do not work in freezing conditions. This puts your machinery out of work until the weather heats up, and even then, you’ll have to clean the equipment off to use it.
A Little Regular Maintenance Goes a Long Way
You can avoid this frozen nightmare by investing in a little maintenance throughout the summer months. By August, the attachment plates on your tractor-trailer and the grease Zerks on your heavy equipment need a little TLC. Stripping these and other hard-to-reach areas now will keep your equipment in good working order through the fall and winter months.
Degreasers and coating removers are excellent chemistries for grease and contaminant removal on heavy equipment. The most versatile products can be brushed or sprayed on with a pressure washer and left to soak to break down contaminants.
Seacole recommends 956 Plus, a coating remover that is environmentally safe so it won’t affect the pH of your waste water, which is good news for farm and other outdoor applications. Spray, brush, or soak 956 Plus onto the parts you’re cleaning, including steel, copper, brass, aluminum, plastics, rubber, and painted surfaces. Soak, spray, brush, and rinse your parts for a squeaky-clean surface free from residue.
Don’t wait until it’s too late to degrease your heavy equipment. Contact the industrial cleaning experts at Seacole to find a solution that will work for you.
