Hello fellas, I'm fairly new to heavy equipment, I've got one of the tilt cylinders off my crawler and am working on repacking it. My problems is I've got the rod out of the cylinder and the nut off that holds the piston to the road. Now how do I get the piston off the rod? Any advice would help! I would like to get this old girl back together this weekend.
Piston installs on a taper on the rod. You'll need a press of some sort to pop it out. The Service Manual is extremely short on information for this task, doesn't even list any special tooling for the job.
The in field service method involves putting thread bar through the cylinder cap (the bit still trapped on the rod with 4 holes in) into a hard bar or drilled plate and using the service press cylinder (small stumpy cylinder used to press up clutches etc) to pop the piston off the rod, but the easy option would be to use a shop press, you did well to undo the nut on the rod as these can be pigs to get spinning, a bit of hot water on the piston seal helps things stretch, to re shrink the seal to aid fitting back in the cylinder, wrap in paper and use a piston ring clamp to reset the seal to its normal size, all the seals fit better after the hot water treatment, on the taper fitting cylinders you have no doubt on the way the piston fits to the rod, but on the hoist cylinders remember its fibre next to the nut, when you fit things back together do the cap bolts up with the rod just into the cylinder.
When I did mine, After loosening the piston nut I stood the rod up and slid the end cap to the top, then dropped it onto the piston. Kind of like a slide hammer. After 2 times the piston came loose. Probably not the greatest idea but it worked for me in a pinch.
Thanks for the input guys, RNI- I tried your method and it worked first attempt. Sometimes the simplest work the best!