When should you Re-Use, Repair or Replace your Hydraulic hoses?
Choosing whether to have a hydraulic hose repaired or replaced with a new one is a very important decision that should not be taken lightly. There are many reasons why a hose may be removed from service, and quite often the reason has nothing to do with a hose failure. It may be due to routine scheduled maintenance on the equipment or a failure of a different part entirely but regardless the reason, this can provide an opportunity to thoroughly inspect the hose and decide whether it is time to replace the assembly. Some important things to consider include:
- Age of the hose – Hydraulic hoses serve as flexible connections in your piping system, often subjected to continuous flexing, vibration and pressure fluctuations along with temperature extremes in both the environment and in the media conveyed. Sometimes the result of these adverse conditions is very evident in the hose appearance, i.e. external wear, chafing, hardening and cracking of the outer hose cover, kinking, deterioration and/or corrosion of the hose couplings, fitting slippage on hose, leaks at the fittings, etc. At other times the effects are less obvious, you cannot see frayed metal or textile braided reinforcement hidden by the hose outer cover or tube deterioration.
- How critical the hose assembly is – if the hose is allowed to work till end of life, i.e. absolute failure, what are the ramifications? Will the potential cost of equipment downtime exceed the cost of replacing the hose now while it is off the machine? Deciding on the replacement interval should be based on your hose inspection, OEM equipment manufacturer’s recommendations and industry or company guidelines along with past experience with the equipment.
- Safety issues – Hydraulic hose failures can be extremely dangerous. Hose and Fitting failures can cause death, personal injury and significant property damage. Possible consequences of failures include Fittings thrown off at high speeds, high velocity fluid discharge, explosions or burning of conveyed fluid, high pressure fluid injection, contact with fluids that may be hot, cold, toxic or otherwise injurious, inhalation injuries, and more.
Let Goodyear Rubber Products’ ParkerStore experts help you with these critical hose evaluations. Our ParkerStore team members are factory trained to evaluate your hydraulic hose and recommend the best solutions, solutions that will keep your hydraulic hoses in service with only the minimum “scheduled” downtime.
