I have rebuilt 4 of my cylinders so far, and have not taken any of the cylinders completely off. This avoids wrestling with the hydraulic lines and one of the pins.
You need to get a little movie going in your head on the best position to lay the hoe out to get the chrome side of the cylinder off. You need to make sure whatever position you leave it in, that it will stay there by itself when you take the pin out of the chrome end of the cylinder. I like to have the cylinder I am working on as horizontal as I can get it, or better yet tilted downward with the painted side of the cylinder lower than the chrome side. This helps keep some of the oil in the cylinder when you pull it apart.
The first thing I always do is take the pin out of the chrome side of the cylinder.
Then I would start the hoe and extend the dipper cylinder all the way out. This helps shove the piston out to the end, and push most of the oil out on the chrome side, most of the oil will be on the painted side of the cylinder.
On mine, I need a pin wrench to put in one of the 4 holes to spin the end of the cylinder gland off. A trick I found out on this board says to take a hammer and wack the end of the cylinder all the way around pretty good. Not on the gland itself, but on the cylinder tube where the threads for the gland are. This really works to loosen the gland up. My pin wrench is a homemade piece of metal with a 1/4-20 bolt sticking out on one end. It works pretty good, though the 1/4 bolt is a little soft and you might have to replace it when it bends on a stubborn gland.
Once you get the gland loose and slid up the chrome shaft a little bit, go find a bunch of cardboard boxes, a bunch of old sheets, anything you can pile up pretty tall that is soft. Then get a come-along and a immoveable object like a truck bumper, hook the come-along to the cylinder and the truck, and start pulling on the chrome cylinder rod. It will suddenly fly out of the cylinder and drop to the ground or on the backhoe arm, so you want something to protect it and the gland threads when it drops. You will lose some oil, you can't help it.
You then need to take the large nut off that holds the piston in place. This can be the most dfficult part of the whole rebuild, that nut is very large and very tight. I had to beef up my shop bench mounting for my vise, and got all of them loose except one, I had to take it to a large truck shop and they put a 1 inch impact on it and took it right off. I had a 5ft piece of pipe on my 3/4 breaker bar to get the other ones loose.
You can get seal kits for these cylinders on ebay for about $30.
