Few questions, My first question is, I started a pond project on my property. There use to be a pond where I'm digging but the owner said it grew up and is now all razor grass and sludge. Everything was going great until I hit a spring, water started to gush out and then slowed down. I thought for sure the amount of water coming out would fill the small pond I had already dug.. it just bubbles in one small spot though. I assume the water table is that low? I took a metal rod (8ft) and it sucked it down all the way. I had plans of getting the excavator up here but it could very well swallow the entire machine. He said at one point the pond was 20ft 60 some odd years ago. Now we want it to be 5-6ft deep. Much of the soil is a grey silt and a ton of clay. The first 6" on top is just a muck of dead grass and rotten wood. My other question is, in digging I blew a cylinder seal, it was coming out pretty good. I bought the seals, is there a special tool to get them off. It looks like someone at some point buggered the cap using a screw driver and a hammer.
Straight 580, or letter suffix? My K uses a spanner with two pins to turn the cap. If it is already damaged you may have to get creative to remove. The cave dweller trick is a big pipe wrench. Which cylinder? You will need a glory hole if there is a run off. dig out the low end first, keep it drained. Once the pond is cleaned, install a glory hole. Essentially an L shaped structure with a mechanical gate near bottom. Normally water from the surface splashes down the glory hole. Next time you want to drain the pond, open the gate. Willie
Good idea with the glory hole! Yeah, there are four holes in the cap. Napa has the spanner tool. Hopefully I can get it to work, otherwise I may need to weld around a copper piece.
Good luck. Mine took all day with a ten foot handle on the spanner, and two 200 LB men. Some thinker had used red locktite on the thread. Willie
Did the dipper cylinder gland nut with a big pipe wrench I got from Harbor Freight. I had to use a 10`pipe on the wrench, very very hard go. The piston went to a shop for the nut and he had a hard time with the nut. Also did a clam bucket cylinder myself with the pipe wrench and did the nut too, not too bad it was smaller. Good luck with this.
We got the boom cylinder gland nut (very fine thread) off, set out to take the piston nut off, It wouldn't budge. Friends have a 1" impact wrench acquired at an auction. That wouldn't touch it. We trucked it 120 miles one way to a hydraulic rebuilder I was using at the time, only to learn an employee had bought it. The former owners left with all the tools. The sockets they now had were Chinese. After they broke three sockets on it, they admitted it was beyond their capabilities. We crossed from NY, across VT to Plainfield NH to the Case Dealer. By 6:00 PM we picked up a rebuilt cylinder. Cost wasn't bad. I wish I had had sense enough to go there in the first place. This has been true a number of times. Willie PS. Try gentle heat on those. It may be Loctite making them hard to turn.
Heat is your friend on both gland and piston bolt/nut/ Tom
Hey all, no problems getting the cylinder fixed! Wasn't that bad really, I'm saving up work and I'm hoping to get a seal kit from Dale. Back to the pond... I sank the hoe pretty good. Rolled off the brush pile I had stacked up, was able to get out of it. If I rolled a foot more I would have been into some deep crap. Is there a method to digging out existing ponds? We have the glory hole setup and water has been running non-stop from the under ground springs. I was thinking about getting some matts or building a sand road across where I cannot reach. It has been very dry this year so I would like to get it dug out. We only had three rains this summer. I can get 4x6 timber from the local saw mill, wouldn't cost me that much to drill them together. Should I wait until it rains and just pull the soil to the dig out? I'll get some pictures.