Hello Everyone, I'm new to the Forum. Surfing and reading the posts, I see there's a great community here. My company, Midwest Industrial Sales, is looking for a place that can rebuild and test hydraulic pumps. Preferably close to Chicago, Illinois. The problem we have is with a certain Vickers piston pump. It's a model PVE21L but has a OEM (Euclid\Hitachi) head and compensator. The compensators get worn and keeps the pump in full stoke, causing the steering system oil to overheat and the pump eventually explodes if the operators\mechanics do not pay attention to the temp gage. 90% of the time we get a pump that shows no sing of mechanical failure, so it's the compensator that's failed. Euclid\Hitachi has had these pumps on backorder for 6 months. Which is weird in my opinion because they fit the older R40 and R60 rigid frame trucks and the newer R65's and the EH700 and 750 along with the current EH1100 series trucks (-1, -3 and the current -5 trucks as well). Has to be thousands of these types of machines in use still. Anyone that knows of anyplace that might be able to help us, post here or e-mail me at [email protected] Thank you in advance
Welcome to HEF Dave . Maybe some of our Chicago area contributors can help you with that. I think Funwithfuel is from Illinois so he might know a good local place. They are not local to the windy city but you could try Flint Hydraulics (TN).
We know about Flint Hydraulics, Perfection Hydraulics, Attica Hydraulics, Sun Source and a few more. They all come in and say yeah, no problem, even after we send them pictures, OEM and Vickers model designation code and the specs and operating principles of the system, then after we send them the pump, it's always an oops, we can't repair this. Sorry. Perfection Hydraulics in Evansville Indiana had a pump shop manager, now retired, that was keen on how to repair the worn compensators, but I guess he didn't tell his secrets to the shop mechanics about how to do so, or those that did know went on to other pastures.
After reading this I think you need good machine shop instead of pump rebuilder. HRD ( Hydraulic Repair and Design) used to do R and D on pump parts. They are member of Hydraulex - same conglomerate as Flynt and Attica, try talking to them, but they are all the way in Puyallup WA! Machine shop probably will need good compensator as well to take measurements from I’m the other hand! I don’t have time to look for literature on this particular pump, but as far as I know these compensators are bolt on design, it may be that the “secret” of the retired guy was that he knew the compensator off of other pump(s) more available, that fits your pump. And parts not available for something Hitachi makes - NOT A SURPRISE AT ALL!!!
On a lot of older iron it's getting to where you might have to come up with your own solutions. What I would suggest is contacting someone at Vickers directly with your problem and asking if they could supply a compensator directly that will fix your problems. Try to get hold of someone in engineering instead of a sales person. The engineering people might see it as a challenge while the sales people usually view these types of things as a pain where they have no basis in the engineering.
Is there an accumulator in the system? If so I solved this issue years ago on a Wabco artic truck by going to a fixed displacement gear pump and an unloading relief valve. Worked for years with out any issues. We did install a new return filter in the return line from the unloading relief.
The PVE series is in phase out mode with Eaton. You can get knock offs from Fluidyne in MI. and Metaris in MS. as well as others.