A couple of days ago I traded my old Allis Chalmers TL16DA front end loder for a White Oliver 2-78-15 backhoe. It has a Waukesha VRD 283 6 cylinder diesel engine, The owner said it had low compression and tore it down for a rebuild. He put new sleeves in it before giving up and putting the machine up for sale. So now I get the fun job of putting it back together. He had the head redone. Valves seated, machined, etc. It wasn't until I got back here that I noticed that the head has a few cracks in it. I don't know if these will pose a problem or what I shoudl do about them. In this photo you can see the cracks. The hole is the injector port. There are no water passages in that area and it doesn't look like the cracks can structurally weaken the head. There are four of these cracks, all at the injector ports. So what should I do about them? Here is the next big problem. The exhaust mainfold has rotted paper thin, and has two big holes in it. I see that AGCO sells exhaust manifolds, so I hope they have one for this particular engine. Otherwise I don't know what I would do. Maybe fabricate one? I ordered parts and service manuals for the backhoe and a parts manual for the Waukesha. I couldn't find a service manual for the engine though. Come Monday I will try rounding up a few missing parts from suppliers. BTW there are more photos of this beast at: http://good-times.webshots.com/album/565283039LCiZgf?vhost=good-times I've not seen any other mention of White Olivers in this forum, so I am assuming this is a rare one. Either because of bad design, inability to penetrate market or company running out of time and going out of business. Don't know. I plan to use it to do some work around the house and at our industrial museum site, so it will probably never again see heavy work.
Hmm, I wonder why I can't imbed images in posts. This works on every other forum I subscribe to. Why is img code set to off? Moderator?
It took four months but now the engine rebuild is complete and the Waukesha started and ran on Saturday! Everything seems to work on it although bad packing on the boom cylinder resulted in pulling out the cylinder for rebuilding. Once I get the cylinder reinstalled I'll give it a once over with some Equipment Yellow from Tractor Supply and it will be ready to dig. This TLB will never see revenue generating service again, it belongs to our historical society and will be used for doing work at our industrial museum site. I initially traded our Allis Chalmers TL16DA loader for the hulk of a backhoe. It came with a new set of liners and pistons which were for the WRONG engine. So I had to drop a grand on new liners and pistons, $150 for a used exhaust manifold, $130 on new wheel bearings, $500 to haul both machines for the trade, and a few hundred more on misc. stuff and supplies. I originally paid $700 for the loader, so all told I probably have about $3,000 invested in the TLB and will have a machine with a new engine and ready to work.
thats great! now we need a video doing what it was meant to do frank
She's done!