have finallly made a start on rebuilding the rayco,had the cab off to repair transfer case that drive hydraulic pumps, transfer case was noisy, reason was no oil , dipstick missing and full of dirt, .
rayco rocking and rolling mower head now fully rebuilt, all new tips and holders, new belts , bearings, repaired cracks etc.now on to tracks,put up on blocks, removed old tracks, found 32 broken studs that hold rollers and track guards on, mostly from track guards which previous owner had welded on.took 3 days to drill out studs and then grind them out with die grinder, not much fun..still have 2 studs to get out, they have broken drills or easy outs broken off in them from some one else previous attempt to drill them out. having a break for a few days to earn some money.
rayco lifted on to blocks with 16 tonne sumitomo and volvo 4500 loader, 2 more broken studs on idler, wrong rollers fitted on one side , too narrow, track was running on raised lip.
2 of the top roller carriers have been broken off at some stage and welded on crokked.
Glutton for punishment! Hi Pete. I once bought a Fiat 70ci Dozer which had most of the bottom rollers similar to your Rayco. They were the original grease type and obviously had not seen grease for some time. The rollers in the roller bearings had long since fallen out. I replaced them with some good secondhand oil bath rollers. Had to extract some broken studs/bolts in the track frame as well. Usually just blew the centre of the bolt out with the oxy and the heat made them much easier to extract with an ezy-out or other stud extractor. Also had to drill out with a magnetic drill, some head studs in the motor and helicoil them. However the abuse the 70ci suffered was just ignorant neglect. Your Rayco seems to have been wantonly thrashed by previous operators with no sense of feel for mechanical parts and then had repairs done by bush mechanics using crude tools. And it looks like maintenance was only performed when something broke/fell off. And then to put the wrong track rollers on so it ran up the idler... The tracks must have screamed like a banshee when it moved. Did you know it needed this amount of work when you bought it? It will certainly keep you busy in your spare time getting it fully functional. I would assume you'll be the only one using it, as by past usage it looks like the Rayco would last a lot longer with a sensitive operator. Especially an operator who had poured tens of thousands of dollars and countless hours into it Good luck with it. Let us know how it performs when it's on its first job. Regards AusDave
I salute you and your efforts. Do you think that machine will remember you saved it from the scrap pile?
will post some more pics as i progress.
Hope you have plenty of work lined to help offset the costs. Good job.:drinkup
Nice work there Pete, I can appreciate the detail of the work you are doing. There is no excuse for the lack of preventative maintenance, no fluid or dipstick...that is too bad. Do you purchase at an auction?
I just bought a John Deere 148 loader and every pin was bone dry. I replaced all the grease fittings and everyone of the pins took the grease.
whats the weight rating on those logs?...haha
Those pictures are nearly beyond belief , how on Earth did it keep going ? It's a wonder it didn't turn on the operator and chew him up .
yes, from auction, it was a repo.
no sure exactly, however it is more than the rayco weighs.
it is amazing, lots more shonky stuff, several swithes bypassed as circuit board was faulty, auto elec installed new board and hey presto, lots of swithces now working,one of the joysticks that control tracks was also faulty, did what it wanted, replaced that and fixed that problem. another gem was the hydraulic ram which tilts the mower head back so you can cut through a tree, they removed the ram and welded in a steel bar, no tilt ram means you cant tilt the head back to mow a tree down, you have to push it over and then mulch it, they welded heaps of extra steel on to the frame to push over trees, this managed to crack and bend, we have removed all the additional steel so it is back to standard, had a new ram made to install when we fit the mower head after all the other repairs.
no work lined up yet, have to finish and do some trials to make sure all working correctly, im sure we will find some more problems to repair.
Gees Iam sooo glad I did'nt buy that machine before it went to auction. I went and bought it little brother a Rayco c140 ointhead
the price i paid allowed me to spend plenty on it, it will be a good machine at a reasonable price when finished, i have learnt a lot and it is character building. how does the 140 go ?
aussie pete, for that ammount of repairs, I think they paid you to take it home... It always encouraging to see someone revive a machine from the dead though.
These Rayco machines are realy character building alright,so far i have poored about $2000 worth of hyd oil on the ground, not bad for a brand new machine.Just got over all those troubles and am looking for track gear replacements and bugger me this machine is running a mix match of stuff 20yrs old(can't buy anything new or 2nd hand in Aus).Fair to say though when it works it works realy well,have cleared country that blokes with excavators have walked away from and can clear nearly twice as much as a Posi Track an hour
the price of a new one here in australia is $450,000 , that was 12 months ago, i am guessing it would be $500,000 now.
mine had a mixture of track gear on it, the local cat dealer has come up with some D4 track gear that will fit. did you buy yours new and it has a mix of 20 year old track gear ? how long have you had it ? how many hours have you done to wear out the tracks ? there is a guy in Qld who sells rayco stuff including track gear, you should try him..his details are below. good luck PETER NEWMAN [mailto: [email protected] ]
Yeh,Pete sold us the tractor 16mths ago and done 1300hrs.The track chains are Fait Allis FL4,top rollers are Case and Christ does'nt know what the idlers,bottom rollers and sprocket are. Berco and LWE are trying to sort this mess out now.
the $64 question pete - have you had the mulching head operational as yet? ie is it bent or out of balance? one of the local boys operator bent the drum on his tak mounted mower by hitting a bit of sleeper in some lantana (apparently) good job btw, i would've run screaming long ago. what does the stump grinding head fit coincidentally?
was it new from the rayco factory with that mixture ? i dont know if my chains were the original ones, the have proTrac stamped on them, there were 3 different kinds of rollers on it, i guess they had all been replaced. have yours only done 1300 hrs from new ? if so that sounds poor, they should do 3 times that. a guy from westrac the cat dealer worked my tracks out, he made several visits here to check and measure, even took a sprocket away to compare with a cat one, he has finally come up with chains, rollers, sprockets and idlers that will all fit. i am going to order them soon, am nearly ready to fit tracks and start putting it back together.
i am hoping the head is not bent, dont think it is. the stump grinding head fits the rayco.
Pete, the original pads look to be in decent shape. Will the old pads fit the new rails?
Yes it shore did!!:Banghead
You've just had the mulching head fully rebuilt haven't you ? It can't be bent now . Now that you've gone this far , it would be an idea to replace/rebuild the pumps and motors and renew all the hoses . Nothing worse than being out the back of woop woop and have hydraulic troubles . You have a fair bit of equity in that machine . If you spent another 20k on it , it will still be cheap . Then you can give it a squirt of Yellow paint and let it earn you some money .
unfortunately no, different bolt pattern.
the guy who does my hydraulic work knows my rayco and he told me that it had $40 spent on the hydralics not too long before i bought it so that should all be good, we are going to have a good look at all the hoses and replace any that look suspect, i have a painter getting it ready for painting, he is doing it in his spare time so will take a few weeks.
painting the painting of the rayco starts in our state of the art spray booth using cutting edge technology. colour is bright yellow, same as i had my mack painted..
Does it have fire suppression on it??? If not spend a couple bucks and put it on, the guys I've talked to run with the cab door open because when it catches on fire they don't have time to open the door and get out, one guy told me its not of matter of if it'll burn but when, the fuel tank is under you along one side and the hydraulic is along the other and they claim they go up in smoke quickly and consume the cab in seconds, just passing along what I've seen and been told. By the condition of the machine when you got it how did the previous owner even get it to run let alone do any work with it?? Excellant job on the restoration of a machine.
australian pete Looking forward to seeing the finished pics of the paint job..... Looking good.
i think those guys may be eexaggerating , it would be impossible to run with the door open, it;s well insured so a fire would be no real tragedy. i guess the previos owner would have had a lot of trouble running it, i believe it reguarly walked out of the tracks, i have never seen tracks on any machine in worse condition.
more pics soon.
Come on Pete , cough em up .
paint finished, will take some pics and put them on. moved in to new house 10 days ago, have been flat out.
dont be so flat out that you forget to read your emails and call me re that 2-3k hectare job, i'm demoing there next week but i dont think my gear is going to cut the grade. i haven't seen the job as yet but it sounds a perfect test job for the rayco.
This Rayco T275 stump grinder looks like a real monster,but do it finish stumps really very fast? I have never seen one work ,but with that big cutting wheel its got to be fast. What is the specs on the hydraulic pump and hydraulic motor? Ray
i bought it second hand and have been slowly rebuilding it, have not used it, dont know the specs on the hydraulic system.
Hi Pete will be a good asset once you get it going,Ive had quite a few rayco products one of the first things i would recommend doing is changing the polychain drive belt to triple fan belts.
hi case, it has new belts so i will wait till they wear out, what is the problem with the polychain belts,
The belts are fine but the pulleys get worn and get sharp,Poly chains are expensive so are the pulleys. Kevlar fan belts are the go. Heres my tow behind rayco 60hp turbo running tomahawk teeth. YouTube - stump grindind tomahawk teeth
thanks for the tip case.
I wouldn't run rayco teeth either... cheaper and better http://www.leonarditreecare.com/Teeth-Tomahawk.html
have already fitted new holders and tips, not rayco.
Are there any agents for them in Aust?
Yes http://www.marriott-tree.com/home/default.asp
Any pics of the Rayco after paint?
coming soon.
Any updates??
yes mate there is an update, it is now going, have mowed some scrub behind my house, have not had time to take any pics yet, 2 words to describe machine, BLOODY AWESOME. will post some pics soon.
Good to hear you got the beast running. Sure was a long way from eating trees when you started.:drinkup
I can't wait for the pics!! Also, I have always wondered what "bloody" actually meant??
bloody awesome means really awesome. you could say im bloody tired, im bloody excited etc.
Thanks for the clarification. For some reason I was always under the impression that it was profanity of some sort.
it is usually used where it is inapropriate to use the f word.
There will be some Bloody F words soon if we don't get some pictures .
Pics??
sorry for the delay, been busy, will take some today.
C'mon Pete must have had it out!
Pls allow me to use this image for my blog. thanks
rayco i had a contractor bougth one new probiem was i worked on it more than it ran the hydrualics trashed it self after 600 hours we redesign the hydrualic system and sloved our problems he ran it almost 2 years with no problem untill a hose busted and fluid hit the muffler and burnt
cant remember how to insert pics from my pictures, can anybody help ?
some pics of rayco on a job.
one more pic
one more
Pete Is that before and after pictures? Looks good
it is before and after pics jerry, it was part of a golf course which was overgrown with weeds and scrub, mowed it with rayco and forestry mower on excavator, there was also some trees we put through the grinder.
there were more pics however camera was accidentally set on manual focus so most of the pics were no good.
there were more pictures however camera was on wrong setting and most were poor quality.
Have you run it enough now to form a solid opinion on the Rayco yet Pete?
have not used it much, too busy clearing and grinding. it seems to be an excellent machine particuarly for scrub and small trees.