My S185 has developed a crack across the top of the Bobtach. See the red line in the picture below that I pulled off the internet. I know its not an S185 but the crack is in the same place. I've welded it as best I can without tearing the Bobtach right off. By the time I get the snow plowed again its broken the weld. I need to reinforce the welded area somehow but there isn't much room to add anything. If it ever warms up and quits snowing I need to fix it properly. Any thoughts?
Hmm, never seen one crack there before. :beatsme
that is a new place for a crack to happen... Can you identify the forces causing the crack? Is your bobtach coupling in tight or is it sloppy? Did you v the crack out, drill the ends of it, and make several passes?
I'm running a 88" snow bucket and a 108" angle plow. They both fit fairly tight. There's a certain amount of twisting I suppose. I have nailed the odd curb and frozen rock this winter so there were a few shock loads. I ground the crack out as best I could without taking the Bobtach apart. I need this machine to plow snow for another month so I can't fix it properly yet. All I can do is make a pass to two on both sides and hope for the best until the snow stops
Well, I'm certain you're putting some kind of unusual stress on that joint BDFT, never seen that before on a Bobcat coupler. Just do what you gotta do and fix it when you get a chance, about the only thing I can say about this one.
Its the width of that bucket. Lots of leverage there. It may be interesting to consider adding some torsional stiffness to the bucket. Stop the bucket from twisting and you change the way it applies load to coupler. Just a thought. You could consider a trip edge on your blade, that would also help. But in the short term, all you can do is find a way to add some good quality steel the the crack area. Probably the easiest way is to put some serious beads in the area, build up both sides as much as you can.
I have to agree its the lenth of the the plow or bucket that causes a crack in that area. A snow pusher loads the plate more even but if your running a angle plow one side of the blade is doing all the work. to fix that you need a die grider, drill a hole in each end with like a 3/8" bit . Then get a some flux core E70T-4 and a 200 amp mig machine . I would suggest preheating the area and vee it out to a min of 1/2" wide and full depth of the steel. try to avoid useing to much heat so its not undercutting the surrounding area , it will just crack beside the weld if it was to hot. .
You need to v out the crack and then you can weld it up make sure to weld it good on bolth sides. You can put a plate on the backside of the quick tach for support and it will not get in the way of anything, we have done this to our t190 and have not had a problem with it since. Good luck.
BOY That is a weird place to break ! .... I'd bet it was defective right from the factory .... it has nothing to do with the attachment size, and not like the pic its a 2 cyl set-up..... it is the same part # as mine on an A-300, I out weigh you and use wider/heavier attachments as well, for as far as misuse and impacting may go....and mine has not broken there....but maybe it has more to do with the mating surface of your bucket/blade if they were tweeked and stress loading that point ?? .... even then I would doubt it .... I would check if the back side of what the pic is .... if i'm not mistaken thats where there is a horizontal weld on the BC Q/A plate and i'd bet that the original weld was defective, like none or over penetration. I've had alot of bad luck with BC branded attachments that the welds looked like they had no penetration, we even had a new rental 430 excav (only 410hrs on it) that the bucket pin boss on the stick tore right off ! .... when the BC tech/mechanic showed up we found more cracks, like the weld was lifting right off of the metal .....so much for robotic welding ..... Which dealer do you use up here? ....how old is your S185 ?.... remember the squeekiest wheel always gets greased ! ....... OBTW, out of curiosity, have you priced out a new plate only ? .... might be worth while to check out, as you say it's hard to strengthen it with gussets or ?? Let us know how it goes. ..... Good-luck ! ...... Cheers .....
The nearest dealer is Williams Machinery in PG. The machine is a 2008. Its off warranty but I doubt Williams would do anything about it even if it was. I can't say I've had very good service from them when it comes to warranty. I agree with you on the robot welds on some BC attachments. I've seen a few sketchy looking jobs on some stuff. I'll pull it off and weld it up properly when it warms up a bit and quits snowing. Maybe lay a fishplate over the weld if there's room. I priced out a new one for my 853 a few years ago and it was expensive as hell. I can't remember how much but it was too rich for me. 7018 can fix anything.
As long as you haven't bent the very top of the coupler, where it hooks the attachment, I'd say you just need to either reweld the crack, or cut the weld out an re-do it. That gusset is a support for the top of the coupler, kinda important. We've worn out two Bobcat couplers on our 773G, using the third one presently, and I've never seen that plate crack where yours has. But strange things happen.
last year I fixed a New Holland plate that was cracked similarly, v it out fer sure, and weld it for now, but I'm willing to bet that your probably going to be looking at getting a plate minus the hyd, and pins and etc........just a striped down plate isn't too much of a cost (I hope) I think the New Holland was somewhere in the $200 ish range. In the end I pulled the pins and switched pins, installed new bushings, pulled cylinder off and switched to new plate. Not a real bad swap, just more hassle that I'm sure you don't need right now. best of luck!
ours cracked in same spot. we were using t300 bucket on t190,alot of stress. its a pain but to do it right you have to remove the coupler to reinforce it. good luck
I'm running an s185 and s175, mostly clearing rubble, which is really hard on machinery, and both have started to crack on the bob-tach plates, though not exactly where yours did. Getting an entirely new plate through customs here would be a nightmare, but I'm okay with the plates looking like Frankenstein's monster when I'm done at the end of this year. Welding here is not great, but it's extremely cheap, so I have the budget to get them welded every couple of months for the rest of the year and still be much, much cheaper than two new plates. If I got funding for plates, I would order them and maybe see them released from customs by the Fall sometime, which would be nice for whoever we sell or donate them too.
I can imagine clearing earthquake rubble would be hell on the Bobtach and the boom. Its probably pretty hard on the operator too. How the Hell do you keep tires on those machines? I would think even solid tires would chew up pretty fast with all the nails, rebar and broken concrete.