Except I don't. What is the proper way to fit and mount backhoe teeth particularly 230 held on with the little pin with rubber in the middle. My Case 580SM is struggling to keep teeth on the bucket. ( Haven't run it without teeth.) Dad went digging out trees and the ripping up roots got a tiny bit of movement on the shanks. I've been putting in tile on a steep hillside with greasy clay on top and shale underneath. I'm having to push myself up hill and shake, hammer, shovel the freezing sticky clay out of the skinny bucket. The original teeth had no markings I thought they were H&L 230 but I'll be remeasuring and comparing to Cat and Komatsu. Do I need to weld up the shank and hand fit each tooth for maximum contact?
Do you have a picture of the retainers? The teeth should normally have a little wiggle to them
Ok don't have any pictures right now. It's the standard two chunks of steel, rubber sandwich with the points to go forward, Flex pin. I have a bucket buddy tool to put them in and take them out. A little wiggle is good? How much is a little
I don't know, maybe a quarter inch. Are you losing teeth? Periodically you have to replace the retainers. If the shanks are really worn then sometimes the teeth won't stay on.
I've never had any luck with toughs connectors and have been using a grade 8 bolt the right diameter and length to threw and held in place with a ni-lock nut installed backwards since 1995 on my backhoes. If the shank is waren to much so the tooth just flops around you have to build it up with some welding.
I have to disagree with a little wiggle, they should be tight. Any wiggle means the shanks on the bucket are worn and you’ll have trouble ever keeping teeth on. Using a new tooth determine where the shank is worn, build it up with weld and grind down until a new tooth fits firmly with no wiggle. The hole in the shank vs the tooth should also have the slightest misalignment so the rubber/metal tooth retainer pin is always putting pressure on the tooth holding it back into the shank. If that is too much work just install new teeth, drive them back with a hammer till snug and run a bead of weld top and bottom to hold them on. To change teeth cut the weld out. I wouldn’t recommend doing this if you dig in a lot of rock or abrasive material where your changing teeth often.
I have a little experience with loose teeth on a backhoe bucket. The previous owner on my backhoe had the shanks on my bucket worn down and new teeth would be loose on them. A couple were only a little bit loose and a couple of the others were sloppy. I welded the teeth to the shanks and they would still break loose especially when I was moving concrete. I never considered building up the shanks with weld beads because the the teeth and shanks need a perfect fit in order to stay on very long. I got tired of loosing teeth and finally put new shanks on the bucket. I should have done that years ago. New teeth and decent shanks have no wriggle after the tooth has been driven on. They are a tight fit. I have never had a tooth accidently come off after I had the new shanks put on the bucket. #230 is an industry standard size for a tooth and it is the correct one for your 580SM. Some aftermarket teeth wear out a lot faster than others. At least that has been my experience with them. Digging tree stumps and roots is always tough to keep teeth on their shanks. A tremendous force is on the keeper pin when the tooth is pulled out of the wood. They will almost always break.
Well, as a matter of polite disagreement, good teeth can if fact wiggle on good shanks. I have had several new buckets; brand new with the paint on, and the teeth had some wiggle. The J style teeth probably have more movement than others. The HL teeth are tighter. I have had both on different new buckets. The mini bucket I have is a 36" bucket on a Cat 305, bought the bucket new, it has about 1000 hours now. The teeth right now wiggle as much as maybe 3/8". They have more or less done that since new, though I didn't take endplay measurements when it was new. This machine doesn't lose teeth, but periodically I have found that the rubber and steel retainer rings need to be replaced. It seems like every 3 or 4 hundred hours it will start dropping teeth, usually doing demo work or dealing with rocks. Go knock out the pins, clean everything out, put new retainers in, and knock the pins back in.
If fall off frequently are too floppy.
A thing to look at is the wear on the shank immediately behind the tooth. As it wears it exposes the back of the tooth and dirt and rock hammer it causing(a, the rubber block to disintegrate or(b, the pin to bend. Weld a piece of metal there so it's above the tooth can eliminate the problem of coming lose.
Put the retainer pins in, and tack weld them in place. If the pins can't fall out, the teeth won't either. Easy to cut the tack welds off to replace teeth compared to cutting welds holding the entire tooth onto the shank.
I made a heavy drag with a piece of H beam with 15 new series 23/230 teeth and shanks with the proper rubber flex pins. The teeth don't move at all on the shanks. If you have anywhere near 1/4" of play either the shanks are worn or the teeth don't fit properly. I'd say around 1/8" movement is about time to consider building up the shanks.
Time to hand fit and make the tooth good and tight appears worth it. Thank you for letting me know I'm not the only one as well.