A hose on my loader circuit recently blew out and I replaced it. Before throwing out the old hose I cut off the two crimped ferrule ends with a side grinder and recovered the fittings. I then closed and welded the open end to make end plugs for future use. But my question is are these hose end fittings re-usable with a new ferrule sleeve ? Or is that sleeve a part of the new fitting. Any cost savings with this approach or is it wasted effort? I could see buying a crimper and reel of hose and sleeves for the main hose size and diy because I have more hose replacements in my future !
No. Never reuse a hose end, unless it was designed to be reused. There is a big safety factor with a one piece fitting with the crimp sleeve as an integral part of the fitting.
Birdseye, The fitting in your pic is a one and done crimp fitting. Below is a link to what that fitting looks prior to being crimped. https://www.discounthydraulichose.com/female-jic-37-swivel-43-series.html The fittings in the link below are reusable...Check out the price...More than the one and done crimp style. https://www.discounthydraulichose.com/jic-female-swivel-770.html To answer your question, yes, the part that gets crimped is part of the fitting, not something that can be replaced.
I also like to save some ends to make plugs out of No those type are not reusable there are some larger cat fittings that are reusable including the sleeve I think they are kinda neat but doesn't apply in your case
Some are and some aren't. I have had some reused. The last hose I had made had large expensive ends. Every hose on my machine seems to have step down fittings so the actual fitting is a size smaller than the hose it takes. The guy that made my last hose had to use a different size sleeve than the normal Gates fitting would have used for the size hose required. He said it was a calculated risk but it looked and worked perfect. He took great care not to over or under crimp it. I use to always make note of the clock position and cut the old fitting sleeves off. The place I use to have make my hoses would use some and refuse some. I don't remember the details on why.
The place I've been getting my hoses made are Gates brand, I asked him if we could reuse some of the fittings and he said nope. I like the cap idea, I have a couple old hoses I replaced. I'm gonna make myself a set of those or three..
I just switched to Gates for my last few hoses. I hope they pan out. Just noticed the hoses on my grapple are made in the USA Parker brand. They are mostly covered with sleeve but the exposed parts are covered in spider cracks. They came with the grapple so I don't know how old the hoses are but I bought the grapple 3 years ago.
That's the problem. All it takes is a few inches of sun and it doesn't matter whether you have a sleeve or not. I now buy sleeve in bulk and wrinkle it up on the hose. If you measure the length of the sleeve and compare it to the hose, you can come up with a formula for that hose size. After installation, the sleeve seeks a more normal length and flattens out, moving towards the ends, covering the hose completely. You can clamp the sleeve over the fitting afterwards.
I'd be worried about welding the old ones up to even use as cap. If they were expected to hold at pressure might fail by themself without the hose or outer crimp sleeve over them.
Yeah crimp ends should never be reused, and the new ones should be matched to the correct hose no odd ball stuff. You can get JIC, ORB, ORFS cap and plug kits online or if you have an actual, good hydraulic place nearby just have them supply the caps and plugs and fill up organizers how you want.
Agreed, but, get your trusty number punch set and mark them, male/female sets (odd how my backhoe has hose ends of male and female), and they are useful for disassembly and reassembly (no pressure involved). That said, I purchase a cap/plug kit for each style of fitting I have, but two things come to mind. 1. A quote from an ebay seller: the world is short # 16 orfs caps.... so getting them is tough at times. 2. Why not save a buck if you can, cost me over $100 for the set. Again, I would use them for disassembly only, not pressure.
You can reuse some inner fittings on low pressure lines (like return lines) if you can tell the difference. Its not really something I recommend but I have had to in the past with some funky ass fitting I couldn't find. Never use one on a high pressure hose.
I would hazard to guess that 25% of the hoses I have had built have at least one reused fitting. Sometimes because I cheaped out and other times because they didn't have a new fitting in the right configuration. I have NEVER had a built hose fail due to a reused fitting. In my opinion if the inner fitting looks good and hose and crimp sleeves are available to fit there is no reason they won't work as new.
100% correct. But, for clarification the OP is asking about fittings do not have independent sleeves. That is how I understood the meaning of his question. The fittings that use independent (replaceable) sleeves are non-existent in my area.
I can imagine a faulty hose blowing, and dumping 35 gallons of hydro oil into the soil. Never mind the cost of new fluid, but the environmental cleanup makes me cringe. I had a 70 year old heating oil tank in my house that was not leaking. When an oil heat tech showed up to look at my ham radio station, and noticed the tank, he suggested replacing it. When I protested that it looked solid, he asked me how I could like to clean up 250 gallons of diesel oil in my cellar? He also told me that it would probably leak into the sub soil, necessitating the removal of the cellar floor. He related that the last one he saw ran $150,000, excluding the fines and EPA fees. The tank was gone the next day.
If the inner part of a fitting was reused, it would have to made with the same thickness of hose it was designed for. Standard fittings usually aren't too expensive, so I'm not sure if 2 piece fittings make any sense??? What sucks worse is having a Cat track loader and backhoe that uses Cat reusable fittings. Cat designed the clamps to hold the hoses around the reusable fittings. I have 6 2 part hoses (12 total) on the backhoe swing tower clamped on the reusable fittings. The big problem is Cat no longer offers the reusable fittings so I have to change/modify the 6 hose clamp to use bulk head fittings. I think I have 2 of the longer hoses replaced using standard fittings that will thread onto bulk head fittings. That means I need to have 6 short hoses made and 4 long hoses made in addition to the 6 bulk head fittings. I can't just replace an individual hose so it's a gonna be a little pricey to change all the hoses over to standard fittings.
I would never use the 2 piece fittings for replacements because I prefer to have the crimp sleeve formed around the insert. I realize that in an emergency or if a machine is long way out in the boonies it would make sense to use them.
Out in the boonies may be where the non crimp reusable fittings make sense.
Trust me, many times I have been grateful for the reusable fittings when an aerial lift is stuck in the air with a blown hose. Remember, because humans are aloft, every cylinder has a holding valve to lock the oil in. oh, and most of the booms go over center, so even if you were to release all the holding valves, the only way back over center is with hydraulic power. So, cut the blown hose, install 2 reusable fittings, connect them back together with a male/male adaptor, and fold that baby up . I must confess, I have even used the Parker KarryKrimp in the later years to crimp a fitting on the road.
Dave have you talked to your Cat hose man there is no reason to buy new fittings thats the deal with the reusable ones Cat most certainty still makes them its saves hundreds of dollars per large hose to reuse them it may be branch specific if they threw out the old press but if they tell you they are not made anymore or cant be reused its a lie To bad postage would be a killer I would have them done for you at our cat dealer
Finning told me they aren't available any more a few years ago. To order the pre made hoses if available would probably cost more than changing them over to conventional hoses. They are 1/2" hoses I think.
I think the reusable XT fittings are still available but I think some dealers try and get away from them cause as I remember they required the hose to be skived and that's an extra pain in the process, why do that when you can use one piece fittings that don't need skiving for most things. Those reusable XT's where one of the only two piece crimps actually meant to be reusable since the crimper also dismantled them, it wasn't just a dude with a thin wheel lol.
There were extra steps to use the reusable fittings that deleted any savings in using them. At one time there was another hose shop that had a Cat press but then Cat wouldn't sell the dies to do them anymore.
The reusable Cat fittings are available at my local Cat dealer. They have an assembly charge for building a hose so they don't care about reusing those fittings.