I have been tracking down causes of a significant amount of play in my swing assembly. When swinging to the left and stopping, the bucket would bounce a lot from side to side. After cleaning everything out on the swing bracket, feeling how tight the new swing cylinder bushings feel with the new pins, and seeing how the new pins were going to tighten things right up nicely on the swing bracket (Not !!), I am trying to figure out a low-fuss repair. I thought there was a set of bushings on the tower that I could just replace. It sure looked/felt that way while I was de-gunking the tower assembly. But nope! They are simple holes, which had become noticeably elongated by the previous owners (obviously, the crap was beaten out of this bad boy in the past). New bushings in the swing cylinder rod eye will help a bit, but not enough me thinks. Take off the swing bracket, and repair/replace...I don't think so. That would take me a crazy amount of time to do (if I could) and I am not getting any younger. Wondering about shim materials. Stainless? Spring steel? I was actually trying to figure out how to grind down one of the bushings (that I am replacing on the cylinder eye) for that elliptical sort of shape. I need a small "crescent moon" shape to take up the play. That or a welding torch...
Your repair is only going to be as good as the time and expense you put into it. I've seen all kinds of things crammed into a elongated bushing hole........I even pulled a swing cylinder like this one time that had leather wrapped around the pin bosses. You can fix this any way you like to your own satisfaction....just remember whatever you use could possibly damage even more items that will be more expensive in the long run. The best option would be to remove the plate, have a machine shop cut it out, then machine spacers to press into the plate will will accept the original bushings. That really shouldn't cost that much to accomplish.
My 410C is loose there too. If you take the effort to dismantle it, I can't think why you wouldn't replace the bushings & pins. Bushings come out easily, apply heat. Use a stick welder, TIG welder, MIG welder, or acetylene torch. Let it cool, it'll drive out fine. Getting new ones in is not as simple. I'll try dry ice next round. Liquid nitrogen is far colder, but it is expensive!
Swing tower is not that bad to take off the machine aftermarket ones might be available for a reasonable price and vtech is right bore out the frame holes and cut bushings accordingly for it will be as good as new but you will still have to remove the swing tower If you dont make a living off it just let it be slow down a little and you can probably run it pretty smooth
Mine is annoying. It swings too quick & I can't always stop the swing in exactly the right place. Usually it's a hole, if my intended bucket position is 2" left, no big thing. When I want it in a precise spot, I then try to move a couple inches, it's very tricky to do. I did new bushings & pins on a Case backhoe once. It was quite a job, lots of hoses to remove.
Depending how bad the holes are, you could use split tension bushings to repair it. They will work on out of round holes as long as they aren't really bad. That's what I used on my swing post and also used Loctite 660 to fill the small gaps around the bushings. | Split Tension Bushings | Hydraulic Cylinders, Inc. (hydrauliccylindersinc.com) CONNEX - Spring Bushings & Pins (connexusa.com) LOCTITE 660 - Retaining Compound - Henkel Adhesives (henkel-adhesives.com)
I have already lost the spring, and now almost 1/2 the summer getting this thing back in shape. Between the main crankcase bearing/pulley, the hydraulic interface plates/rubber isolator, spline, and pump...I am into this thing for a lot of time and anguish. Add to that getting 3 incorrect/incomplete stabilizer kits, and a broken swing cylinder piston. That is not even getting to the crowd cylinder yet. I think that one is going to wait. Taking that swing tower off is opening up another huge can of worms. And without a garage and all the niceties, this might be a bit beyond what I want to do right now. Maybe come late fall (when I am "done" for the year) as a winter project. I already decided to replace both swing cylinder bushings and the pins (I already have them). I need to get some work done on the property, and time is going fast. Once I see the extent of the play in the new parts, it will either get shimmed with something (e.g. the commonly available stainless stuff) or some sort of hard metal ground down and hammered in there. The real question is what sort of metal stock.
I just don't believe anything you put in there will stay there. I'm not absolutely clear what is worn out on yours. Getting in there to shim it is (I believe) the same as re bushing it.
Sounds like this is a pin hole with no bushing that's oblong/egged out. You don't have much to lose by welding it up and grinding back to roundish, if it's really bad, you can get a carbon rod, or use copper or aluminum to weld around, probably not that much clearance though. or sanding some 1/8 sheet to a taper on the sides, then welding top and bottom, plain steel, no SS. If there's no bushing, then this joint isn't supposed to rotate is it? Ultimately, you have three joints adding up to a lot of play over the years. If you don't want to take the swing frame off and fix it right, I'd say keep it greased with moly grease and it won't wear much compared to all the years it was operated without grease.
Most swing towers I can think of only have a bushing in the rod eye witch is a design oversight but the idea was the pin was supposed to rotate in the rod eye and not in the tower a million cycles later and its loose Your not going to have long term success with a shom where there was no bushing designed because the parent material in the tower pin boss is softer than the shims and will just mushroom out around the shim that's jammed In there it might get you through 100 hours but will get sloppy and will be worse Operating sloppy machines needs to be done smoothly and never fast swing rams take a huge amount of torque in all directions if your jerky at all the sloop will show up and you will be in worse shape My .02c
Have we established the absence of bushing? My 410C has two bushings in the swing tower. Pin is stationary as to the moving parts. Bushings (top & bottom are not hard to replace if you can separate the hoe a few inches. Block it up, remove the pins, ease the tractor ahead a few inches. Hoses may need to be unhooked on one end. Mine is loose bottom of boom, not swing tower. I believe all of these joints can be rebuilt with bushings.
Yes, they did it right on the 410! No bushings in mine, which really is a bummer. I wouldn't think twice about replacing them if they existed. I did notice "some" differential in play between the old bushings (on the swing cylinder eye) and the new one, but even the new ones have a little. I just finished rebuilding the stabilizers, and started cleaning everything off in the swing cylinder piston/gland. It is all dry and hard behind the grease fittings. I am hoping that it will be significantly better once the new stuff is in there. I only used this machine for a few hours last fall, to pull a few stumps and to evaluate what needed repair sooner than later. I did get very good at slowly swinging it back and forth when needed. It had power to do it all. But the leaks were too much to keep going so it got parked at its current resting place (where I have been fixing things). At least I am at a point where things are going back together!
Soooooo... I managed to rebuild my stabilizer cylinders just fine. Got them all cleaned out (particularly the milky oil), got the rods and bore kits installed, and all back together. These are smaller than the swing cylinders (as far as bore goes). Got the swing cylinders all cleaned out nice, a new piston (that I wrecked getting things apart) and fully cleaned piston, all the seals replaced and gland ll cleaned out well. There was a lot of milky oil in these, which are the lowest point (well, almost) in the machine. It all looked pretty dang good inside the cylinder. Getting these back together...there is just something wrong. The cylinder has got to be out of round or something. Excessively difficult getting it all back together. My gut tells me the cylinder is toast. The force needed to pull these out was more than 500-750 pounds. Question: Do these cylinders warp? Can these be realistically repaired, or is this really a lost cause? My gut tells me that the previous owner did a lot of swing-whacking with the bucket or something. Or the milk froze and wrecked things. Once I get the pulley/hydraulic linkages back together in the next day or two, I guess I will find out if these will actually function. I don't have a good feeling though.
750lbs. is not unheard of. It can take a lot pressure to pull cylinders apart and/or get them back together. Did you have both hoses disconnected? Using piston ring compressors or other means are often required to get them back together. Look in the search forum on here for more info and ideas.
I've never had a piston compressor tool, it can be tricky to get the new software into the bore. Might a seal be out of place?
Some have mentioned wrapping the seals with shim stock and using hose clamps to squeeze the piston seals. Should be a lot of info in the archives on here.
Are you talking about the swing cylinders? it would be relatively difficult to damage a swing cylinder compared to a bucket or stabilizer cylinder that could get dented by any carelessness. the cylinder would have to be half full or more of water to damage anything from freezing, even then, I doubt it would do any damage until closer to full. How much water did you drain out of the cylinder, or hydraulic tank. Milky oil can be ounces of water, enough water to do freeze damage to a big horizontal cylinder like that would be gallons on the bottom. You should have seen any damage on the piston, or the inside bore of the cylinder. what did the old seals look like after they got out. pictures of the old piston, and bore would tell us a lot.
I used the piston compressor tool on the pistons on each side. I had read posts that this helps to un-stretch the seals (after heating to get them on) and I was hoping for a little insurance. I also did not want to risk damaging the cast iron ring in front. In both cases, the pistons went in fairly easily to the first 1/4 of the cylinder. When I started seeing a lot of resistance on the first cylinder, I actually removed the piston to check it all out. I was able to remove everything just fine, and the seals looked just fine (which was a relief). I put plenty of fluid in the cylinder, and made sure to distribute all around the top/sides just prior to re-inserting. And the piston/seals were also well coated. The inside of the cylinder looked pretty good. The only iffy part was towards the gland, and this was cleaned/honed finishing off with steel wool wrapped around the hone to smooth it off as much as possible. Quite a few of the milky areas of fluid were closer to cottage cheese than milk in these cylinders when removing. All of this would have been exposed to winter extremes last season (down to about -17F). Lots of cream in the hydraulic filter, and cream sludge in the hydraulic reservoir on the bottom. The old seals were just destroyed. It is quite possible that along with the rust, that pieces of the seal caught on to the installation ring, causing the ring to dislodge and possibly breaking the cast iron ring during removal. Or it was already broken/damaged prior to removal. The stabilizers were in similar shape. Yet I was able to move these in the cylinder without much trouble. I know these have significantly greater surface area, but they were just dang tough to move at all. I finished putting everything back together, except for the pump. The rebuilt one it turns out did not have the same adapters as the original (Vickers). Hopefully this will be remedied Monday.
Is a complete hyd. system flush in the near future ? I hope so. It is a time and fluid consuming process to do it right.
Yes, probably before winter sets in. Also probably by/with someone who knows what they are doing. That would not be me as of yet. Hopefully, I can get the other leaky cylinders rebuilt before then. I think water is getting in from the bad gland seals. Also looking to put a makeshift roof/tarps using the manufactured gantry as the main tarp support in the middle. I did what I could in the mean time, draining from as much as could reasonably be done. I might try to drain some more from the boom cylinder etc. by removing the hoses at the lower endpoints of the cylinders. I did pull a stupid-b@stard move that is giving me a few extra days: I neglected to remove the adapters from the old Vickers pump, and only noticed when trying to put it back in. The old one is long gone to the scrap heap. Lesson learned. Thought I was all ready to put her all back together. On the good side, it appears that there was a lack of o-rings (shown in the manual) for the hose-ends. I ordered everything (O-rings, adapters) and am expecting everything to arrive Friday (with my luck, Monday). No wonder there was so much muck around everywhere. Night and day in the engine compartment after cleaning/painting a lot of the area. Should be able to see any fluid leakage much easier. Finishing the painting the inside of the hood today, and cleaning out the cab interior a bit. Using up all the non-matched yellow for stuff like this (I have a gallon of "Old Construction Yellow, from another thread here, for the engine compartment and exterior parts). Used the wrong color for the fan/radiator and dampener assemblies while everything was out.