Got up yesterday and took my ‘crowd cylinder’ (from atop the boom on the backhoe) to Pape (pronounced Pa Pay) over in Fife. Asked them if it would be okay for me to watch them replace the seals. Man, am I ever glad I took it over to them to fix!!! I’d have never gotten it done at home. Alone. We had to use a 5-ton crane and a lot of muscle to get the ram out of the cylinder! I got right in there with the young guy that was changing the seals and got just as dirty and tired. Guess I was some help cause they didn’t charge me for the job. Cool! We figured out I have a JD 350-D dozer. The ‘D’s stands for “Dey Don’t Make No More Parts For Dis One!”.
Left Fife at 1400 and zoomed to our property to meet the hydroseeding guy. Almost missed him. Showed him what we need hydroseeded but he thinks the job might be a bit too much for him; so he gave me a card with another company’s information on it. Was raining pretty good out there and we were soaked by the time we walked from the bottom of the hill to the top and back. Nice guy though.
Got up today and went and picked up my radiator. $700! Phew! I spent ALL DAY putting my dozer back together. Went fairly easy but MESSY! Even the front of the dozer went back on without much trouble. Lifting that 100lb cylinder back to the top of the boom was a bitch though! But after that it hooked back in quickly. Bled the air out by flooding one side (completely retracting the ram), hooking up the bottom side and unhooking the top side and filling it from the bottom until hydrolic fluid started coming out of the top. Then rehooked up the top side. Works great and NO leaks!
Radiator went in fairly easily. Ran the dozer for about 15 minutes for it to get warm. Had one small leak where I didn’t tighten down the hose completely but once I tightened it up i had NO leaks! Cool! Managed to tighten up one of the tracks but can’t get grease to go into the other.
Will have to finish this later; SWMBO wants me to reboot the internet server….
Apr
17