In an effort to cut down on thread count, I will try running everything in this thread now. Let me know if that works for you all. My next job after the tracks is the boom pin/bushings/seals and lower boom cylinder bushings. Those are the most beaten. I am planning on doing the bushings in place, lifting the boom enough to scarf out the old and freeze in the new. My chicken-eye sees about .050 maximum movement at the chassis. I can live with that and skip the line boring there. The bushings are far gone, on the other hand. Should I presume the pin to be bad? I can pull and check it before ordering up one.
I’ve always put pins and bushings in as a set . New parts matched with old worn parts puts extra wear on new parts.
duly noted and I agree on principle.
New pin and seals on the way from the John Deere dealer, and I found the bushings elsewhere for a pittance. They are new open box an properly tagged with the hitachi part number. I will open it up and see if the boom is wallowed out. If it is, I can put it back together with the old parts and make a date at a machine shop for the job. I have a $5400 quote to do the big end of the boom up, line boring both the house and boom. I will ask for the add on price of line boring the small end and the stick while they have it apart.
There are 5 nasty looking hoses at the boom base, and a couple that look like they were changed. It has the optional separate return line for the hoe pack, that one is OK, and one of the pricey hoses looks like it was changed. Dealer said they are in the 400-450 dollar range, each. They have long metal elbows and are not conducive for a typical hose shop build. I got into the catalog and googled, and found all of them but one for less than $300 each.
I measured the rotek at about 1/8" play. The boom cylinder pin bosses on the house are hammered out pretty bad. I pretty much decided that this machine is only going to get bushings and pins and minimal repair to tighten things up. By the time I got done having everything line bored, I'd be about 20 grand into it. I don't think the owner of the company is ready for that, and I can dig with it the way it is.
The bushings arrived today! They have a little bit of surface rust, but that's easy to clean up with some Scotch Brite. There are two variations, one has a central grease groove and small helices coming out, the other one has big helices cut in it with no central groove. I imagine the big helix one is the later revision. It certainly has better support without that big groove cut out of the center. I'll clean them up and post some pictures. John Deere wanted $175 each. I got these four bushings for $100 shipped. I figured if I messed something up I have spares
The dealer wanted 16 hours to r&r the boom. That's $2,500 on the bill. after they got it out they wanted $800 per setup on line boring. Two setups for the cylinder bosses and one for the boom bosses on the house. One setup for the boom bore itself. If I pull the boom blank off the hoses and roll it up onto my trailer and take it down there I'll save the $1600. A part of me really would like to rebuild it completely. If I get a newer machine, most of them are going to be 135 sized and I'll need a new trailer too which sucks. The 120 does fit a special spot in the equipment line up the way you can haul it with two axles.
I realize I am just talking to myself in here, but that is normal. Too much time alone in the cab I guess. I stopped by to order up the hoses and some bushings, and went back to talk to the service manager. He said he knew where I was coming from, he hears all the time " we might be trading it in next year so we don't want to dump a lot of $$ into it". He was very gracious about it, and suggested that some heat might restore some of the bores on the house, if they were not too bad. Try the new pin, he said, and try some heat. I am driving back to the shop and realize what he meant by heat. He just couldn't say " toss a couple of strategic hot weld beads on it and see how it shrinks up"
I’m listening
I would have loved to have a 135. I’ve ran a few over the years. But your absolutely right. The 120 is a sweet spot. Big enough to have decent reach, load trucks, and weight/width is good. You can get them into fairly small lots and will run a 2000/2500 lbs hammer, which can chew through a lot of rock.
Still waiting on pins, bushings, and hoses. I took off the cutting edge on the 4' cleanup bucket, and will be taking it to a machine shop to straighten out the bottom of it. I will scarf off most of the wear plates to facilitate an easier straightening and they are shot anyway. One of them is peeling off like a sardine can tab
What are you using to transport this 120?
20 ton tandem tilt with a 20' deck and about 7' of tongue. Trailer weighs about 10K. Behind a L9000 Ford with 3406B and 15 speed. Trailer is at 38,500 gross and I put about 5000 of that on the pintle. That keeps those axles at under the 34K rule. That's one of the reasons I like the 120. Towing with a pair of axles, that trailer is a lot more 'fun' than any 3 axle I have drug around.
sounds good
I had a local hitch shop weld on a class V 2.5" receiver down below my big pintle so I can tow my little 16K trailer for the mini. I installed a brake controller for that last week, and built a flat 7 pin to round pin whip adapter. It will be much nicer than lugging the 20 ton around with a mini on it. The 16K has a 4' fixed porch on it for the tools, just a much nicer setup for the mini. I have 3 buckets and a hoe pack for it. On the 20 ton all that sat up on the nose and I'd have to mash it down with the bucket to walk on.
I have a friend who has an ex RR service (F800 I think) truck set up like that, except the receiver uses 3" solid square ball mounts.
The shop added a 3" box tube to the bottom of the rear plate to get a good height. He angle cut it to match and boxed it in on the ends, I thought it was a great job for $300 plus the price of the new pintle. Then I took a look when I was running wiring with the bed up. He also made some beefy knife plates that reached up onto the existing plate, and back to the extended tube. It was a great job by a pro and one of those times it was better than money well spent.
Ahhh Ford 9000. Those and GMC Generals had great interiors And drove great. I don’t know why they didn’t stick like the other manufacturers the 3406 and 15 combo is a great set up as well.
And that bucket is gnarly
Link to Ebay bushings for JD/hitachi 120 boom. https://www.ebay.com/itm/184480220192
I'm back at the yard picking apart the 120. Today's task replace the wiper motor. As usual it seems like everything is revealed once you remove the ashtray screw!
I got it in there and wanted to run it before closing it all up. I had no function and that stumped me until I realized that no, it is not going to work with the window up What was funny was how I spotted the very well hidden interlock switch, it is a totally out of sight plunger inside the right latch pin socket. Wiper motor works but washer does not. While I had the motor out I fished the hose for the washer out, the nozzle bit had been broken off and it fell down inside the double wall of the cab. I'll figure that out tomorrow. The wiper motor shaft was broken off by bucket to cab interference. The CWS 3' bucket can hit the wiper arm if fitted with twin tiger teeth. When I inherited the machine the arm was behind the seat with a bunch of other garbage.
I got the 5 worst main hoses replaced today from boom to valves. it also got me in there really looking around and i have pilot hoses that need attention too. I need to set the boom at a few angles and see if I need to clock the hoses a bit. i think i have the valve ends OK.
I picked up 130# of 3/8" AR400 to armor and repair all 3 buckets. They all need a little attention. I took the plate out to a friend's with a decent plasma cutter to rip it into strips. Mild steel does not open up like that when you rip it.
I started with the two foot bucket and scarfed off the destroyed wear plates on each side. I figured I would start smaller. I don't have a lot of big tooling to repair my 4-ft cleanup bucket, so my plan is to scarf off all of the worn out wear plates, and then pick the one and that's most lined up with the dented in bottom of the bucket. Pop a hole through the bucket in the middle of that wear strip location, use some 6-in channel on edge that I have and make a pull fixture using some 7/8 coil rod I have and a nut. Heat it up, beat on it, and tighten up the nut until I get it as flat as I can. I'll pull all the tooling off and put new wear strips on it and I will plug weld that hole back in the middle.
I got one of the strips on the 2 foot bucket edge. 3/8" by 3" strip of AR400 Lots of rosebud and 4 pound hammer.
I got the sides on the cleanup bucket today. Scarfed Cleaned up with the grinder The other side finished Had a funny thing happen. I ran out of acetylene and was getting ready to go to town for more, and i remembered doing a lot of cutting on the farm with oxy propane 40 plus years ago. I found a 20 pound bottle and got back after it. My guess is about 1/3 as many BTU from the rosebud, but it was enough to heat the 3" wide strip to an even dull orange -brown. I only had about 6" to blacksmith into place so that saved me an hour plus round trip to get the high octane stuff.
I have a job to do Tuesday with the 120. When i get it back to the shop the plan is to scarf off all those worn off cross strips and then make a slicing plan so we can straighten the bottom. I'll torch slice it and then clean the slices up with a grinder.
Pick up an oxy-propane rosebud and a no. 3 cutting tip for oxy-propane to stash in your tool box for those days you need to switch. They're cheap enough (under $100) to sit on. You'll get great performance out of the propane with the correct tip on the end of your torch. The same as acetylene? Maybe, maybe not. Guys claim they like a propane rosebud better than acetylene. I can't attest to that as I have only used it in cutting applications. Properly set up with the correct tip, I was very happy with the performance of oxy-propane for cutting steel up to 1 inch. There was a learning curve though for lighting the torch, but welder Dave and tugger2 gave some solid tips on how to light the torch most efficiently by setting the tip at an angle against the work surface and adding in the oxygen. And propane is considerably cheaper than acetylene today so that factors in as well.
I love seeing the pics and hearing the discussion of the rebuild. My grandpa owns a 590D that is going to need some of this same treatment. Our bucket is solid, but there is quite a bit of slop in the stick, and it needs undercarriage work in a bad way. It had 13,000 hours when we got it so the best hours are long gone, but we don't use it a lot, just a little bit here and there throughout the year. Someday she'll get some good love too.
I got those tracks from my local Deere dealer for pretty cheap. It is really the easiest and least expensive gratification on an old hoe.
The boss wanted me to change hoses, more of a gut thing than logic. I did the 4 boom hoist hoses as they were original and stiff and easy to do, then I picked the 5 nastiest looking ones at the boom base and replaced with OEM's for about 1500.
Love the "talking to myself"! I need to do 2 similar projects on my R130 LC3, keep the pictures coming. My bucket needs attention, new wear plates, fix a hole in the bottom and new adapters/cutting edge. I also need new pins and bushings. Its a farm machine so i keep putting it off.
Looking good. Wish I had welding skills.
I am getting ready to tackle pulling the boom away from the carbody and looking for advice. The machine is all stretched out, thumb cylinder is locked off with the hoe pack valves so no stored energy there. I put the 4' bucket on for stability. I was thinking, pull the top cylinder pin out and lower the boom cylinders one at a time as I remove that pin, then disconnect the hoses and block off lines, and pull the lower pins. The hoses block the lower pins so this looks like the right order. Then I will weld on some channel in front of the boom base, so I can rest it on there and use a porta-power or whatever for some adjustment. I have a 5000 pound forklift to pick on that end of the boom, and I can borrow a guy but mostly working alone. Slide hammer the pin out, block off the rest of the lines, and crawl the machine back a few inches till I can see through the boom bore. The channel I will weld on will be plenty long enough for that. There is plenty of channel to build a rest for the boom heel on the ground. I have new bushings for cylinder bottom bores, new lower cylinder pins, new boom heel pin, bushings, seals. If the house does not check out with the new pin, I will call the dealer for line boring. I will pick up the boom with the forklift and back the excavator away from it, and either load it up and take it to the dealer or spin it around and have the mechanic line bore it there. The other end of the boom/stick is not bad. The bucket end is really bad, but I have yet to gather all the CWS bushings and pin and parts for that. That is another day. Thoughts?
I got the first boom cylinder off, it has a seal leak so I'll be taking it down and getting at least that fixed. The car body bore looks questionable to ok. I can wiggle the new pin up and down slightly more than I can front to back. The old pin was seriously grooved and trashed and it looks like metallurgy might have won the day there. If I have to line bore The boom locations, I'll probably just have them do those bosses too for the boom cylinders but if it was just this, I'd probably leave it alone with just new pin and bushing.
I have the lines all capped off and plugged. Hopefully the former operator will stop by and help me with pulling the pin tomorrow. I made a rookie mistake, and forgot to bleed off the tank pressure. The return line from the hoe pack schooled me on that one. The tank pressure kept sending me oil down that line even with the line raised, so I put it back on and bled off the residual pressure. It was just the oil in the belly of the line but I knew better.
So what are you using this 120 for? I have been running a mini and skid steer for a while now, and am starting to upgrade to bigger jobs where I end up renting a larger hoe. I have been looking at the Deere 120s and 130s and 135s as my big thing is mobilization with a tandem dump truck and a tandem tag along. How much weight are you putting on your hitch when it comes to scale? Do you feel like having something 315 sized sometimes even though you would need a lowboy or tri axle? Thanks Keith
The employer has had this machine since 2000 I believe, before my time. They are a commercial plumbing contractor. When I need it, I am digging for grease interceptors and larger CB's, or harder ground or larger trenches. I mobilize it onto any job I think it will help me get done better than the 35 mini. Washington state follows the federal axle laws. That is 34,000 on any two axles. My 20 ton tandem tilt trailer is pegged right at 34,000 and I put about 6000 on the pintle hitch. It is legal and quite driveable. The only time it is a pain is on steep city streets. I could not legally haul a 130+ class machine on two axles. I also do not want to spend the $$ pn a 3 axle trailer and this two axle is quite sporty and maneuverable. I can get it all done with the 120, and if i wanted to rent bigger I would not mess around, and get at least a 200 class delivered as needed. It has not come up yet.
Is that 6000lbs on the hitch with the machine all the way forward? Or is that all you want / need to put on the truck?
I put 6 on the hitch to keep the trailer axles at 34. I am forward but not all the way by any means. it is a position I figured out at a scale near my house, about 15 years ago. It has not failed me, I have never been waved in at the scales. I was able to unchain the machine and fine tune it at a state scale that was recently closed on the Mountain Highway.
Boom is shakalaka. I was able to pull the pin with the mini and no hammering.
Now I'm left with the question of how much play is too much? I know there has to be some assembly clearance. I don't have a dial indicator here or bore gauges but I can get the bore gauge. The hole is pretty concentric when I get it balanced in the center of it it moves front and back about the same amount as up and down. One of the boom bushings has a crack. I was told that's a bad sign as far as keeping that bore. The other side does not have a crack.
There is a company in California selling a slewing bearing for 2500 plus freight on Ebay. Time to run that by the boss. The machine is relatively fast for it's age, if not for the crappy slops. I'd have to tool up to get those inside bolts out, I bet they require a torque multiplier or something.
You're not talking to yourself...cool thread but I'm like a dog watching TV for some of it. I like your input and pictures and am learning from it. I have a Takeuchi TB370, only about 150 hrs so far...excavator newb...but what you are doing is teaching me stuff. Thanks for taking the time to share.
The crack is likely from the pounding on the worn spot. The give away on needing a weld and bore there is how tight the old bushings are in the boom bore. If you can't move them with a punch and eight pound hammer, the bores are good. I've usually taken them out with a carbon arc.
Today's mission it to get the bore gauges and micrometers together. I was thinking just give those bushings a few licks with an oxyacetylene torch to weaken them up. Will that suffice? There is a spacer in the end of the boom between the bushings, so I expect them to be tight to the spacer.
It’s a land in the boom itself. That’s why I used the carbon arc. You can just pull bushing material and barely scuff to the boom material all the way to the land. You can also try welding rings in the bushing and hope it shrinks it enough to loosen them.
This boom end does have a spacer, floating in a sea of old grease. I had quite the dumpster fire going getting that first bushing torched out. With one out I could pull the spacer and scoop out pounds of old cooked grease. The mobile machinist stopped by and looked it all over. amd we made a plan. The carbody cylinder bosses are around .030 play, and a relatively expensive and time consuming setup. We are going to heat those bosses with a rosebud and shrink them as much as possible and run with that. The boom pin bosses are more like .060 so that bore will get welded up and line bored. I pulled the tool box out of the way, but the fuel tank can stay. The top pin bore in the middle of the boom was really hammered out. I did not get that pin in advance, but the shop will make a new one for us. He will line bore that one and I do have the top and bottom cylinder bushings on hand.
he had to grind a little on the tank to get the line boring equipment on. I cut a couple of troughs in each bushing, but not clear through. That took all the fight out of them. All done and test fit, and johnny yellow.
I am working on getting a new Rotec or slewing bearing, and talking through the job. I need to crib up the house SAFELY and pull the carbody assembly out from under it. I was scratching my head about how to block it up, and then I remembered I took this picture the other day to illustrate the clearance at the loading dock that I made with those huge blocks. DoH! I can crib to one of those and it is truly not going anywhere. 6200 pounds of concrete. Just a couple of 4x6 blocks on top.
The boom cylinder top bore is welded and line bored, a new pin fitted, and the boom is back on the machine. Now I wait on the cylinder repair.
We just rebuilt our 135d this winter doing every pin a bushing and build a hydraulic quick attach and paint. In the fall i was working in our pit and had the boom cylinder smash out the side window so the boss decided it was time. We had to lift the cab to do those bushings. My boss had a machine shop before he got into excavation so we did everything in house. Great size machine and runs like a top with 11000 hours on it.
We decided to leave those lower bores at about .040 slop on a new pin, because it was at least $2000 for that setup. I'd have to cut out that portion of the carbody that the toolbox sits on to give clearance for the machine. With everything else new I can live with that. That was quite a failure to break the glass, I am wondering what gave way? I'd need a new trailer to haul a 135D, so we will keep this 120 going. The other thing is, a new machine means emissions and that hit on reliability on a machine that does not get too much use. All my buckets are the CWS wedge fit. I'd love a hydraulic coupler.
Thanks for sharing your experience on the rebuild, very interesting and useful information.
you're welcome. The machinist has a fancy 8000 pound crane on his truck, and we picked up the end of the boom at that upper pin. I gave a guess of 2500~3000 pounds at that point, and his remote readout was 2470. Pretty close for a WAG I was really glad to pay him for the help getting that pin in. The tolerance is now 0.005, and we spent a lot of time tracking and swinging the house, I took a burke bar and a steel wedge to the bucket to roll the boom slightly and it went most of the way in by hand. The original tolerance at that bore was probably 0.015 according to him.
Great rebuild project! That machine is definitely worth the time and money spent to freshen it up. The JD120c is one of the best machine that Deere ever made. Too bad they still don't make them anymore, no emissions and minimal electronics. Keep us posted on the rest of the project.
Nice work. Hopefully the guy that replaces you after you retire doesn’t have any success at convincing the boss to trade it in for a new machine, after all the effort and expense that went into it.
There's no way, the boss is balking at these parts prices lol!
Here's a tip for you, not a pro tip as I am an amateur. When the boom hoses are out of the way, you have the best access to the well of gunk that excavators have around the swivel, swing gear, and valve body. This machine had 24 years of accumulated pine cones and needles and grease and oil and gunk. It was about 1.5" deep and caked pretty good. Pressure washing it out of there is pretty difficult and beyond messy. I got in there and scooped it all out, scraped it and vacuumed it out. Then I cracked all the 6 lines and those two bolts on the swivel assembly, and tightened them back up to my personal specification. Some of them were crazy tight and required two wrenching or hammering. it was easy to do through this hole. I did that because I am ( hopefully ) dropping that swivel out when I do the Rotec bearing, and I will be standing on my head and getting at it over top of the boom. That is PITA enough with them pre-loosened. I hosed it down with some brakleen so there are no gobs of junk ready to contaminate the hydraulic system.
Nothing failed it just had that much loose. We did not weld anything we over sized everything. My boss said he has spent far to many hours in a previous life welding up bores to do it to his own machines. The original was just a manual wedge quick attach and we made it hydraulic if you want i can take a few photos of it for you. It works great.
My 2003 315clc weighed in at 39,900# back when it was new. It's probably heavier than that now that it has 20 years of dust on it. The long undercarriage, reach boom, long stick, coupler, and thumb all add weight to move it beyond 15 metric tons. It also had a 36" CAT severe duty bucket when weighed. A 20 ton tandem should be able to haul 40k# of payload along federal guidelines. 34,000# is what was allowed in CA on tandems but I thought that 36k was federal. I don't recall where AZ is at on tandem weights. I bought a 25t tri-axle so that I could up size someday and not have to also invest in a new trailer. This didn't work out to be such a swell idea. When I first bought the 25t trailer I was thinking that I would "snowbird" back to CA in the winter. New Mexico only allowed 36k on the tridem and CA didn't even recognize the tridem so the most weight I could have (combined on the three axles) was 34k. The only way that I could make that happen was to drive the 315 all the way forward until the grousers made contact with the head-rail. Despite the trailer MFR telling me that I could put that much weight on the pintle, I just wasn't comfortable enough to do it. That experiment confirmed for em that tri-axles don't make sense in some states. Because of the lighter weight of the trailer (My tri-axle weighs 11k# vs ?? for a tandem) it would be easier to haul that much payload with a tandem. The other reason that the tri-axle didn't go quite as planned is that 20t excavators keep getting heavier. I now have (2) "20t class" machines. Both of them (a '17 Deere 245G, and a '21 CAT 325 NG) are much heavier than 50k# (60k#, and 64k# respectively). Therefore I must use a lowbed service to be legal when transporting. On the positive side, I do use the 25t trailer to move both of the big machines, but only within the subdivision that do most of my work in, and I keep it around 10mph.
Thanks for all the good info. I appreciate it. I've looked into it and AZ is 34k on tandems. I wish I could rent some of the machines I was interested in buying but they are not available in this crazy market. I think AZ is 42k on a tridem but I would have to double check.
Yes Don I would like to see those details. I get the idea from the one picture. I am surprised it holds well enough.
I ran into a roadblock on getting the new Rotec bearing. The Ebay seller won't sell it to me unless I can verify fitment by counting teeth, etc. In other words he does not know what he is selling or doing. That's a bummer! Sure, I'll just jack this thing up and count the bolt holes and teeth for you, no problem. Only about a full day of labor one way. No problem.
What do they cost from an aftermarket dealer? I've always had issues with people on Ebay.
About double. Ironic thing is it's probably the same part from the same machine shop.
OK the game is afoot! I have a rotec bearing on a pallet waiting for me to have time to install it. I have a job to do starting tomorrow so it will have to wait till late next week or so.
All righty I'm back at the rotec job Or have a port-a-power ordered, I'm breaking loose the bolts and capping off the lines to the swivel today. I'll try the vacuum cleaner trick.
shop vac did wonders. The one case drain line would have poured oil instead not even a drop. It was a JIC #8 that's a big leak. I did not have the cap/plug for it so I wedged it up high and went for proper plugs where I did not have them. It is all broke loose and ready for me to take out the (4) bottom bolts and lower it down. I looked it over and will make a wooden custom block so I can jack it down with all the lines on it, with a floor jack. It only has to lower down 7" or so, and the lines are set up proper for that. I can screw a couple of 2x4 across the hole to hold it secure when it is down. my 36" *Dunnage* is too tall, so I flopped it on the side. Now it is a perfect 32". I have new nylon straps to wrap around one of the boom cylinders to act as a safety on that end. The parts runner will pick up the 50t porta-power for me and it is coming apart tomorrow.
the bolts are all broke loose, but so is the wrencher. I am going to try a back brace today.
That job is hard on the shoulders and back when things go right. Be careful!
Today the swivel took me to school. It was the perfect case of " do what you originally planned" instead of " let's try this shortcut" I had such a good go with capping all the lines at the top of the swivel and I thought I could keep the lines on it and lower it down. First problem was the side case drain on the one side and some small return on the other, that got hooked up on the rubber seal. I jacked it back up, pulled those and then pulled the seal boot off the swivel. I plugged those holes with regular pipe plugs because that was some nasty stuff I was going to have to drag it through. Then I tried lowering the swivel down. NO GO! There is an extension on the top of the swivel for the torque plate, and to get it through the carbody you need to rotate the swivel assembly 90 degrees. You'd think that was easy enough, but that swivel is really tight and not something I could turn by hand. Looking back I might have turned it about halfway with the torque bar, but then I would run into the swing housing. I just got the right plugs and took the lines off and capped them, like I had originally planned. In the meantime I got rained on by that combo of old black grease and water that accumulates over 24 years. My first maneuver I managed to drag the house an inch towards the bucket side. Not a great start. Then I got the porta power going and slowly got clearance under the gear. The only one I could get has a 1" stroke so it was slow going. The 32" high concrete block was very handy. I lifted the front up and set it on 3" of channel till I can get back to it. I will take it up another half and it will be even with the back, when I go to drag out the carbody. New slewing bearing is ready to unwrap and install. I won't get back till Thursday as I have a dig with the mini tomorrow.
I looked over the job some more. When I get it airborne and wrap my nylon lifting strap around the cylinder for safety, I will pull the sun gears and drag it out and horse it a little sideways to fix my mis step today. When I have just enough room to work on the bearing comfortably, the idler and ~2' of track will be under the frame below the cab, so I can crib to the idler with some big blocks I have for additional safety. I need to get under the house and clean up the bottom of it before I can set it back down.
OK, several of my pictures didn't. I lifted up the machine. i took off the final drive covers, removed the sun gears, pulled the carbody and track assembly about 8' out from under the machine, using the other excavator. I blocked up the machine on the end of the track and a vertical 4x6 . Crawled under and cleaned off all the gunk and grease off the bottom by that drive gear in the pictures above. There was 5 gallons of greasy gunk the consistency of cake batter in the tub inside and below the rotec vbearing. I sacrificed a shop vac to the excavator gods and sucked all that gunk up. @John C. was available and was gracious to come over and help me with the heavy stuff. I had broken loose the 36 M16 bolts that hold the gear to the carbody, and we got it off, cleaned up, installed the new bearing, shoved the tracks and carbody back under the excavator, lined it up and lowered it down in about 3 hours. That included torquing 66 bolts to 200~250 pounds. So we went from this: To this! John, I can't thank you enough. I would have been a long time with a lot of frustration getting it lined up by myself. Getting all those bolts in and torqued was a huge task after that. On a side note the 35 mini moved that ~12,000 pound carbody assembly sideways with ease. The two of us got it lined up quickly.
just sitting there at idle, I can tell how much of a difference the pins, bushings, line bores and slewing bearing have made. It is like a new machine in pitch stability. I'm also sitting on fresh tracks. This is going to make work faster and more pleasurable, more accurate.
Great descriptions and updates on your work. Thanks for the time you spend documenting this.
Thanks. Like I said, several pictures I thought I took are missing, the ones with the carbody pulled out and the tub of gunk, etc. I have some apitong cutoffs from the trailer deck replacement, and I wedged those on top of the track over the idler and under the cab frame for security.
we did the chain through the hole trick. One of the plumbers is a pretty good operator, and another plumber guided it from above while I got the bolts in it. It gets these 8 lines below and 6 above. I had to clock it 90 to get the torque flange through the hole. I had not labeled the top hoses so off to the online parts manual to figure that out. There's a rubber boot that snaps over the yellow casting and seals around the swivel. That is the torque bar that holds the top of the swivel in relation to the house. It is surprisingly stiff to turn, i could not budge it but that is normal. You want them tight, according to John C. Note the pipe plugs in the sides. Those had O-ringed JIC adapters that I had to remove to get the boot off, and I plugged the holes before I dropped the swivel down through that infernal gunk. I kept plugs and caps on everything. I probably did not lose more than a cup or two of oil.
There was another chapter to this story that I left out. The line boring field machinist started a fire with the welder that followed up the hose around the pilot lines up into the right console. I had been around and asked if I could help and he said no, he had it. In retrospect I would have been helpful for fire watch!! He put it out, and then decided to start the machine without doing much investigation. I suspect that killed the computer because it was dead. No throttle. The next day he set up line boring and spliced the harness and no joy. They sent out a proper tech who fixed the harness, and figured out the computer was no longer talking. A couple of weeks of looking around for a computer came next. I found one on Ebay and hinted strongly that they get it coming. Remember, I'm doing this rotec and all this with the hope that they come through for me, as I have a month long job to start. Yesterday I call them and the computer is out for delivery, and the person says " we will have a technician up there to install it Tuesday" Gentlemen, I lost it. I said I had been most accommodating and kept the owner out of this, and the lawyer. I said I am mobilizing this machine to a job 50 miles further away and they had best make that fix happen TODAY!! The squeaky wheel got the grease. I have a throttle in and trained up, and there is one more burnt piece of console coming. I told them I do not need them to come install that, just drop ship it to me. They came through for me. I am grateful. Somebody else out there got put off and I am sorry for that, but do try to use enough welding blankets and due diligence when welding on a machine. I know I learned that one.
sun gears are back in, finals assembled and topped off with gear oil, hydraulics topped up, swing bay filled with 14 tubes of grease to start. Tool box is back on and all the covers and loaded up on the trailer to go to work. I was mistaken in saying the throttle was properly trained, i discovered that it was about 65% today so I got the procedures from the tech and did it right. Now i have full throttle authority.
I dug trench with it today and it was nice. Much tighter now.
Very cool to see someone invest time and money in an old machine they like. Everything now is run it hard throw it to auction and get a new one. Or lease it
I put 15K in parts and outside labor and put off a big purchase. There's no point in getting new iron when they don't use it enough to justify it.
And that was less expensive than renting a machine of that size for the time that you do use. A rental on a site that isn't being utilized every minute is throwing away money.
Apparently I had fumble fingered and archived the missing photos of the machine when it was really split in two. The dainty little sun gears: With those out, the mini ex dragged the carbody out with ease. I blocked directly over the idler with the cutoffs of apitong from the trailer deck job last year. Those are some heavy stout chunks of wood. This is the point I got to before John showed up and made it all go together easily
I think you had it all figured out really well. I was just another pair of eyes and a torque wrench.
Skyking1, thanks for putting all the info/pics/vids up- that was a GREAT read/accomplishment- especially the added details of how/why you did certain steps the way you did…and then to see the house balanced away from the undercarriage…just awesome! Also a bit jealous of your metal/fab work too…very cool to see people make difficult jobs look easy. Well done!!!
Thanks. I've got the bucket end of the pins to do, and my travel alarm cancel button doesn't work. I don't remember when it last worked lol. I'll have to get some wiring schematics and dig into that.
A little truck for marking all of your hoses so you know where they go back is to engrave your caps/plugs. I have all of mine numbered and initialed. Hose with plug #16 goes on fitting with cap #16. Certain sizes I have 50 cap/plug pairs.
Things have been stable until today, when I found final drive oil on the trailer deck. Argh. I am quite tempted to just add oil when I use it, which is not that often. For the most part we run it on the high and dry and not in mud holes.