Two problems with my cat 320c machine. Need advice from professionals

my machine is having two main problems. Running very warm sometimes......oddly...the belt is only 3 months old and it already has a slice in the middle.....I've adjusted it normally.....and I suspect it's the water pump bearing locking down sporadically cause I've changed the coolant, thermostat, blown out dusty radiator with air compressor. It just happens sometimes....not all the time.

I'm thinking the water pump is locking up and the belt is slicing across the pulley?

I have a new water pump ready to stick on it.....and it uses a flat o-ring gasket and cat left the damn gasket out of the box! Machine has 5000 gentle hours. We bought it new.



On the the next issue..... The dang thing is losing it's prime in the fuel system. Started spluttering sometimes. Then got worse. Changed fuel filter. Was hard to use the hand pump to prime filter with bleeder air screw. Ran good...then spluttered. Then will die when using machine under load. Prime with hand pump again. Then runs good a second...then splutters and dies.

So, the gauge shows half a tank of fuel.

I stuck a steel brake line down in the tank to confirm depth of fuel. Gauge is accurate.

I opened that tank drain valve on the bottom of fuel tank and nothing drains out! Odd. Shouldn't this be used as a water drain? Fuel drain?

There are two petcocks. One for closing off the fuel line to engine. One for draining off water from bottom of tank.

The fuel tank drain petcock doesn't drain. Odd. Must be stopped up?



So I decided to pull the rubber fuel line that runs to engine before darkness fell upon me on Saturday night. Rubber line must be glued to the nipple yet needs a hose clamp to retain tightness.



I had planned to blow air throughout the fuel line.



Shouldn't this machine have a primary fuel filter like the glass type that precedes the canister type? But where?



Is the fuel pump mounted on the side of the injector pump? That's the only place I can figure that it is right? Do they commonly fail @5000 hours? It must suction instead of push fuel from tank.

Part number and price? Easy to replace?



So one more thing....at dark....I used the long brake line to reach down in tank to scratch around in the bottom of the tank thinking there might be a screen or something that catches rust. I did feel something that felt "grated". Cranked up machine to move it to a better location for refueling Monday. Machine ran fine all the sudden.



So for Monday morning....I'm in a rush to get this machine running. Would put air pressure on the fuel line to blow out some trash or rust? Order a new fuel pump? Will compressed air blow out some type of diaphragm in the fuel pump?



As far as overheating......my hunch says it's water pump. But, any other ideas? Any ideas that might link these two problems together?



Operator swears to me that he has watched the temp gauge and made sure he let's it idle down when getting two bars below the red zone. Engine sounds smooth. I would have replaced the water pump Friday but....cat didn't give me a new o-ring gasket for pump. They are closed on weekends!



I would really appreciate some thoughts on my problem from other experienced cat320c owners. I hope you can understand my rambling description on here.



Thanks to all.....

Two problems with my cat 320c machine. Need advice from professionals