cat320
Charter Member
She is a cutie , I'm sure she will be helping when gets older
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The Great Gradall Project
- Thread starter CraneInnovation
- Start date
CraneInnovation
Well-Known Member
Well well......its been a while since I've updated this thread. Been a few kids and career hops along the way.
Took advantage of the long weekend and actually did some real work on this thing. If you haven't read the previous thread, I got my hands on this Gradall real cheap....and there were reasons for that. Biggest issue was the truck cab was smashed by the bucket in a previous life leaving all the electronic and pneumatic control bits to rot in the weather....along with much of the cab. Attempts to band-aid it just unearthed more problems and so we removed the cab and started a ground-up rebuild. Life and other things eventually got in the way and she's been sitting for a few years.
Until today... Things kinda got lost in the weeds of deciding whether to send the cab out to be sandblasted, do it ourselves, or just get a full new complete cab from Gradall ($7500!) etc.... Finally realized even the band-aid paint job held up pretty well over the last FOUR years and decided that "best" was becoming the enemy of "just-fine". Got out the grinders and sanders and attacked everything that doesn't absolutely need to be sandblasted.
Diamond plate is coming in this week for the floor. A game plan has been made for reinstalling the controls. Final colors will be blue body with white cabs and outer boom. A bit like Amquip. Maybe grey cab roofs, not sure yet. Got primer on almost everything.....what's left will be sandblasted in a week or two.
For reference....the passenger side front cab metalwork and roof were fabricated by us. The originals were destroyed.
Not the most impressive update in the world but it was a lot of paint prep we were just procrastinating on and decided to just tackle. I owe Bob another wire brush for his die grinder though....that cab ate it for lunch. More to come.
Took advantage of the long weekend and actually did some real work on this thing. If you haven't read the previous thread, I got my hands on this Gradall real cheap....and there were reasons for that. Biggest issue was the truck cab was smashed by the bucket in a previous life leaving all the electronic and pneumatic control bits to rot in the weather....along with much of the cab. Attempts to band-aid it just unearthed more problems and so we removed the cab and started a ground-up rebuild. Life and other things eventually got in the way and she's been sitting for a few years.
Until today... Things kinda got lost in the weeds of deciding whether to send the cab out to be sandblasted, do it ourselves, or just get a full new complete cab from Gradall ($7500!) etc.... Finally realized even the band-aid paint job held up pretty well over the last FOUR years and decided that "best" was becoming the enemy of "just-fine". Got out the grinders and sanders and attacked everything that doesn't absolutely need to be sandblasted.
Diamond plate is coming in this week for the floor. A game plan has been made for reinstalling the controls. Final colors will be blue body with white cabs and outer boom. A bit like Amquip. Maybe grey cab roofs, not sure yet. Got primer on almost everything.....what's left will be sandblasted in a week or two.
For reference....the passenger side front cab metalwork and roof were fabricated by us. The originals were destroyed.
Not the most impressive update in the world but it was a lot of paint prep we were just procrastinating on and decided to just tackle. I owe Bob another wire brush for his die grinder though....that cab ate it for lunch. More to come.
Last edited:
Legdoc
Senior Member
Wow that is a real project. I thought my hands were full refurbishing a 2004 Ditch Witch RT-40! Great Job.