Several weeks ago, I had a very scary experience with our skidsteer. It was bitter cold, as in 30-40 below zero with the wind chill, and I went up to the barn to do chores. I attempted to do start our skidsteer and it wouldn't start. Engine would barely even role over and then it made a really weird noise. I got nervous and went to get the cordless phone in the house and headed(ran) back up to the barn. I went back in and checked the skidsteer and everything looked fine and it was no longer making the weird noise. It smelled hot but I still could not see any problems. I went outside and called Luke to find out what he wanted me to do for chores and to tell him about the skidsteer. I was only on the phone with him for a couple of minutes and when I got off of the phone I went back in and the skidsteer was on fire. I panicked and could not remember where the fire extinguisher was and had to run back outside to call Luke and I screamed into the phone "fire extinguisher" and he replied "on the feed room wall." I hung up the phone got the extinguisher and was able to put the fire out.
As soon as I put the fire out I went back out and called my neighbor Doug (a close friend who live 2 minutes away from us). Then I called Luke back to tell him I put the fire out and find out what needed to be done. He told me to disconnect the battery cable, so I got off the phone again and did that. At this point I was shaking so badly that I could put a wrench to anything no matter how hard I tried and it felt like it was taking forever for Doug to come over. Mind you it only took Doug several minutes to come over. Doug quickly disconnected the battery and we called Luke back to give him an update of the situation. He asked us to try and get the skidsteer out of the barn. We attempted pulling it out with Doug's truck but the skidsteer wouldn't budge. We then decided to call the fire captain for out township and ask him if he wanted to come check everything out and see if he would have any equipment to pull it out with. He came out and said everything looked find and said we shouldn't have any problems with it and that he didn't have any equipment that would pull it out as the driveway in front of the barn was snow covered and icy.
So, after 2.5 hours working on the skidsteer, we had to leave it in the barn and wait. Luke was at work through all of this and when he got home he started making calls to get a rental skidsteer and for someone to come and get ours to get us an estimate and possibly fix. Luckily a dealership was able to come out the next morning to pick the skidsteer up and deliver a rental to us. After everything, there was quite a bit of damage, but it was all fixable. It took over 2 weeks to fix it but we now have it back just in time for a cold spell that could possibly be colder than the first cold stretch. Hopefully only good things!
