When I got my 580c case the front bucket was all dinked up. The place that I had bought it from "town dump" had been using it to clean up the areas that the old toilets concrete slabs etc go. They did all of this work with no cutting edge. So they bent 3/4" of the metal in the bucket up about 3-4" it's only about 6ish inches into the bucket but it needs to get fixed seeing that winter is here and I'm looking at buying 19 acres and using this machine to build 1,500 feet of road and a house lot. I have already started to cut all the crap metal away. but ended up almost killing a new 4 1/2" grinder on the 3/16 metal. So I'm buying a plasma cutter (I have other attachments I want to build for this machine so it won't kill me to spend the $$$$$ for a plasma cutter). This is my plan, I'm going to cut all the bad metal out including the wear plate on the front of the bucket I'm ordering 1/2 x 6" flat stock to replace the wear plate and ordering a sheet of 3/16" rolled steel to fix the inside of the bucket. Now the bucket was built to recive a weld on cutting edge. I want a bolt on cutter edge what the difference in a bucket the accepts a bolt on vs a weld on edge. I'm pretty sure I could figure this out on my own but I bet there are s bunch of you that have done this before so I'm just after tips. I'm also a little scared about using basic steel. I doubt it will harm anything it's not like this machine is going to live out it's years doing hard work every day. Thanks Adam
Check with your supplier as to [AR] Abrasion Resistant steel for the wear surfaces, also check if they can order your cutting edge, my local steel yard did that for me as they had a shop they preferred to order from for a local quarry repair parts. Get into the web and look up http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...wa17ts6p0ONOTxIoA&sig2=M0qtzYSoMFceLVXzaqzYCQ , will give a few pointers on how to lace the new metals in so the bucket doesn't distort into a smiley or frown face.