In view of the complicated hydraulic system, the many driving parts and the great load variation in the combine harvester, and on-line monitoring methods of hydraulic actuating parts such as cutting tables, conveyors and threshing drums were studied. By analyzing the working principle of the hydraulic system of the combine harvester, a mathematical model of the hydraulic system of the combine harvester was established; a simulation model for the fault diagnosis of the hydraulic system of the combine harvester was established based on AMESim. The load signal was introduced to simulate the feeding amount, and the simulation test was carried out. According to the simulation analysis results, the best position of each monitoring point was determined. The on-line monitoring system of the hydraulic actuators of the combine harvester was designed by using LabView, which can collect and display the working parameters of the main working parts of a combine harvester in real time, and alarm the user to faulty working conditions. The field experiment results show that the function and precision of the monitoring system completely meet the requirements of field operation condition monitoring of combine harvesters. The accuracy rate of the fault alarm is 96.5%, and the automatic diagnosis time of the fault alarm is less than 1 min and 18 s, which greatly improves the operation efficiency of the combine harvester.