Small Cat tilt cylinder: Take to Cat dealership or regular hydraulic shop for reseal?

[Shimmy1]

Your dad has a machine shop. To me, that means he has the proper wrench already, just have to remove a little extra metal here and there until it fits.

That was my first thought when I read that post lol.

 

[Shimmy1]

Thanks for posting those- I didn't realize those were available for just a few bucks. I grabbed a set.

I still haven't had time to play with the stubborn cylinder but will later this week. Seals are delayed anyway due to the polar vortex messing up shipping.

If you've done any mechanical work at all, those cylinders shouldn't be too hard once you get the gland out. I've never used those goofy pliers, a cheap, blunt regular screwdriver works just fine if you're careful. You will probably need to have one anyway to work that rod seal all the way into place. When I set out to rebuild a cylinder, I clean the bench up like an operating table, lay everything out on clean towels in the exact order they go together, and make sure I have an hour to be undisturbed to put it together. Make sure you identify every seal needed in the kit before getting started, now days the wonderful thing is they have less available kits with more options for seals to reduce the total number of kits to keep in stock. Also, THANKS DEERE, John Deere makes you order the gland kit and the piston kit separately for each cylinder. And, of course, there are several different orings and rod seals in each kit you have to sort through and find the right one.

 

[LCA078]

Your dad has a machine shop. To me, that means he has the proper wrench already, just have to remove a little extra metal here and there until it fits.

We have spanner wrenches for changing out milling cutters, lathe chucks, etc. but nothing strong enough to take a cheater bar. A two foot pipe wrench without cheater bar didn't budge it the first go around and just haven't had time to mess with it since. The gland nut has 4 notches on the outer ring which isn't typical tooling for us. Of course I could make a wrench specific to this gland nut...but again it's a time thing as I have a lot of other irons in the fire that are keeping me busy.

When I set out to rebuild a cylinder, I clean the bench up like an operating table, lay everything out on clean towels in the exact order they go together, and make sure I have an hour to be undisturbed to put it together. Make sure you identify every seal needed in the kit before getting started, now days the wonderful thing is they have less available kits with more options for seals to reduce the total number of kits to keep in stock.

Good advice. I'm mainly worried about the gland nut seals and not the piston. But will replace the piston seals as long as they show up and look like they fit.

 

[LCA078]

Had some free time today to work on getting the gland nut off the cylinder. The biggest issue I had earlier was trying to hold the cylinder securely while getting a good bite with a pipe wrench on the thin section of the nut. I understand that normally this would be done with the cylinder still installed and you'd break the nut free before taking it off but I couldn't get a good bite with the cylinder installed as there wasn't room. So to be fair, while I had a two foot pipe wrench on it earlier, I probably couldn't get full leverage as the cylinder would move allowing the pipe wrench to twist off.

Anyway, I finally figured out a way to securely hold the cylinder in my hydraulic press with a 1/2" impact drive extension to pin the back end of the cylinder. I grabbed the 4ft pipe wrench and with one good "umph" she broke free. Didn't need to do the ball peen hammer trick this time. Front wiper seal was brittle. Middle seal was pliable but very hard. Back seal was as brittle as the wiper. Now just need to wait on the new seals to come in.

So much drama for such a dinky cylinder...

 

[Joe H]

If you don't have a local hydraulic shop, Hercules seal in Florida can match anything.

But those little bits might be a hard one. They do have a pretty knowledgeable crew so might be worth asking them if your seals don't show up.

Joe H

 

[thepumpguysc]

Now THATS using your head.!!
I’m impressed..!!

 

[Nige]

You have an advantage in that you have the Cat part numbers already. Most seal companies would have a cross-reference to their brand surely.?

 

[LCA078]

@thepumpguysc Looking back at my pics makes me realize how ridiculous it was to use a 4ft pipe wrench on that little guy...but it WORKED!

@Nige- using the Cat part number 911726 is how I found the seal kits on the internet. Seems to be cross-referencing to Daewoo parts too.

The funny thing is when I stopped at our hydraulic shop a couple weeks ago (the one who had the 3 week backlog), I even asked if I could just buy the seals from him since I had the part number. He said "Not really. We open up the cylinders then try to match with seals we keep on hand. We don't have kits, just a lot of individual seals." Sounds about right as I'm assuming hydraulic seals are pretty much standard sizes like o-rings.

But there I go assuming again...