Cylinder is starting to seep. Reading up on removal procedures I run into 1 possible obstacle: do I need a hydraulic pusher/puller to remove the front and rear pins? I think I can manage the rest and would 'farm out' the actual overhaul of cylinder to the local Cat dealer as I am too old to manhandle a 300# hydraulic cylinder. Thanks...
This strikes me as weird. The R&I procedure is to use a hydraulic puller to remove the pins but when refitting the cylinder you reinstall them by hand. They are nothing special, simply plain parallel pins. I would imagine the requirement for a puller could be because that the pins are likely to have rusted into the loader frame after years of use. That would indicate to me that a hydraulic puller may not be an essential to remove the pins but that you may have to get creative by using penetrating fluid, heat, etc, etc, to get the pins out, then polish the bejasus out of them and use plenty of anti-seize in the machine frame before reinstalling.