Hydraulic hose lifespan?
My American Dream diesel is 20 years old with 29000 miles. It has spent its entire life stored in climate controlled storage when not in use. I'm concerned whether I should see about having the hydrau...
Forum Discussion
4x4ord wrote:
We own a lot of equipment with hydraulic hoses. Most is newer but some is approaching 40 years old and still has many original hoses. Hydraulic hoses failing is a common occurrence for us but the likelyhood of a hydraulic hose failure is every bit as great on the new equipment as the old. One machine in particular is 4 years old and has had 6 different hoses fail on it already. We don't, as a rule, try to guess when a hose is going to fail. However, if two hoses are routed together we will replace both when one fails.
There is a lot of truth here. One major reason that a hose may fail when new is manufacturing defects. We anticipate that with aircraft by pressure testing to x times the rated pressure. The failure rate is very small, but when one lets go it sounds like a shotgun blast.
