jlittle2212
Well-Known Member
What would be the quickest way to complete? This is in a field enviornment with no shop in sight! :Banghead
Any suggestions?
Any suggestions?
jlittle2212, what is your line of work? Owner, operator, mechanic? Just curious. As far as repacking excavator cylinders, the nut holding the piston on is torqued to somewhere over 6000 lbs. And it is not a standard 6 sided nut so I don't believe you will find a socket to fit it. Pretty specialized work which could get hazardous real quick. Search the forums and you will find threads that showed ways of doing this in the field but unless you are very mechanically inclined I would not recommend trying it.
Hi. I have just done this job on an island in the Bahamas. No workshop or specialist tools. I had a 48" pipe wrench and a 10 foot tube to undo the cylinder head, once it has cracked it comes off easy, I pulled the rod out and put it back on the pin on the boom and done the same with the wrench and pipe to remove the nut. I placed the new seals in boiling water to soften them and reversed the proceedure to fit it back together again. I am feeling that if I can undo it that way, I can tighten it as well. When out in the field we have to make do with what we have to hand! Wrench was $90 and was brought over by a friend. Best $90 ever spent!!
I know it's nice to be able operate and repair your own machine but, there are some things that, if you value your life, are best left to others with the correct equipment. If you were on a small island in the South Pacific or the jungles of Brazil would be one thing. But stop and think what would happen if one little thing went wrong while trying to loosen a nut that is loctited on and torqued to 6000+ ft. lbs. Things fly a long ways and a body in the way will not win. Just don't want to see you get hurt. And yes, all Deere excavators since the late 1980's are built by Hitachi, look on the serial number plate on the lower right hand bottom of the cab. Should say right on there built by Hitachi. I'm somewhat amazed how many people own machinery and know so very little about it.
As it appears, it has a smaller nut with set screw. Won't be bad at all!
To me 6,000 foot pounds is safer than 500. You're not going to be hammering on the end of a pipe wrench for this. You'll make yourself a wrench and operate it from the cab of a machine out of the line of fire.
Nige has posted pics where they are using a plasma cut wrench, and and excavator pushing the wrench. Looks like all they do is mark the position of the nut, and put it back to there.