Guys - Have a wild idea that may or may not be a good idea. I want opinions. I have an old Cat 235 with no auxiliary hydraulics and to add them would be very costly and the machine just isn't worth it in my mind. So I had an idea this morning that may or may not be a good one. We added a solenoid splitter valve to the tilt function on our payloader for a grapple fork and it works very well. Could this be done to the excavator on the stick function or bucket curl function? I would guess the bucket curl would probably be the most favorable since if I had the thumb I could close it up by either using the thumb cylinder or bucket curl.... wouldn't need both at the same time where as the stick I may way to stick out and unload the thumb at the same time dumping trees or rubble or whatever. Is this possible? Is this stupid? What would the hydraulic flow just through that one circuit be? Pressure? Looking at what type of splitter valve I would need to do this. Thanks for the opinions guys. Chris
In theory there's nothing wrong with the idea, just finding the hardware may be a problem. Without a serial number to check, I'd guess the circuit would be flowing 50-100gpm. After a brief google search I can't find any 2 position 4 way solenoid valve which gets close to handling this kind of flow.
Serial # is a 32K01025. That's what I was a little worried about was a valve that would handle that amount of flow.
OK so I was pretty much on the money. You're making between 45 and 92 gpm at 1000psi at the pump, and then you lose a little due to pump wear and resistance in the lines. Still, the biggest valve I can see without spending all night on google flows around 15gpm. I reckon if you can find a solenoid valve to do the job, it will be such a big old motherhubbard that you will need to reinforce the stick to take the weight. If it was that easy, everyone would be doing it, right?
The valve that we put on our payloader was a 40GPM valve. I'll have to do some checking. The other option that I have is a pump that bolts to the front cover of the engine and drives off the front gear train. I have a pump for that too but I'd have to add a valve, tank, plumbing all the way from the engine bay up along the boom/stick etc.... You are right the easy way would be to trade the machine for one set up for auxiliary hydraulics but the problem is mine probably isn't worth much to trade for the size and age of machine that it is.