Case 580K front bucket top pivot ripped out!

[Willie B]

I doubt it's wet. It is on the right, the hydraulic tank. Fluid level is a foot lower than this crack. There's a little sight glass window to keep track of fluid level. Paint is gone, I'd be suspicious there's a crack, but no fluid at that level.

Willie

 

[Willie B]

There is no wet spot there as I only ever fill the digger quarter full, it has never got that high since I owned it, however losing the plate on the other side is likely to have caused stress flexing and the lines around part of the edge may be the start of a fissure so I will get a bead of weld around that side as well.

Duct tape would be about as effective as putting a bead on top.

 

[Delmer]

I don't care what y'all say, that first picture clearly shows uniformly faded paint, with one suspiciously glossy spot right in the center of where the paint is cracked from the root of the weld. Coincidentally right where it snapped off on the other side... I don't care if it's hydraulic oil, or what level the oil is, or even if it's not damp, that's all irrelevant.

9,000 hours of farm use could have been loading silage, manure and everything else most of it's running hours. I wouldn't worry about it being an inherent flaw that needs some newly engineered solution. And if it was mine, I would run a bead around the outside of that other side. UNLESS I was planning to run it another 9,000 hours

Anybody know what the internal support is between those "pins"? The way it broke it seems that was mounted only to the plate, but the diagram shows a support in the middle, does that go THROUGH the tanks and is that broken off also?

 

[Billrog]

Delmer looks like at 7 or 8 there is a faint crack from fatigue starting I'd definitely grind that out well and weld a few beads around it. I thought I'd looked closely but obviously hadn't.

 

[mhobson]

My neighbor asked me to borrow my tractor. Before the 580K, a Utility farm tractor with loader. He had some boulders to move. 1/2 hour later I heard what sounded like a demolition derby. I walked down to witness him driving low gear, full throttle banging into a two ton boulder mostly buried in the lawn. My words were not pleasant.

People do stupid things with machinery. We have to fix them.

The weld won't be simple, the cheapest gas would be nitrogen, but if you have 25% it'll work fine. Remove the fuel fill cap. Remove the fuel plate at the bottom of the tank, and use it to bring in the gas. Fill around the hose with more fiberglass. I don't think argon is heavier than air.Put a wad of fiberglass insulation in the filler neck also to allow slow flow of shielding gas. It needs a lot of grooving out. The break is not in the weld, it's beside it. If you aren't a skilled welder, hire one. This weld is important. I'd treat it like a pipe weld. Grind a 90 degree angle groove, with a land equal to the diameter of your filler rod. Then grind a gap also equal to filler rod diameter.

6010 3/32 run reverse polarity would be my choice of first pass filler. After that I might MIG. Purists would say that's wrong, 7018 is better.

It's critical that this be exactly in the correct place, and angle. Before any grinding, I'd suggest adding three bolted in place holders. To make these take two short pieces of 1/4" x 3/4" flat bar. Drill a hole in each. Bolt them tightly together. Repeat this twice more. Weld at three points around the break, one half of each to the frame, the other half to the broken out pin boss. Now you can grind the groove you need without losing the exact location it needs to be.

After tacking it up, cut off these pieces.

Good luck. You need it.

Cleaning the gunk from the tank is near impossible. Do your best, then add another fuel filter ahead of the primer pump. You want it accessible cause it'll need to be changed often.

Get good at it, you then have to do the other side.

Willie

Hello, This is very helpful. Despite the fact that over the years I have done quite a bit of welding and I may not be the brightest spark on the planet, I am not quite stupid enough to attempt this repair myself. I plan on getting a local agricultural welder to do the work for me, he has done quite a bit for me in the past to my satisfaction, I will attempt to translate your suggestions but he is French and I am English. I have removed quite a few boulders but not with the front bucket, I use the curl on the back actor and wiggle the rock, if I can get a millimetre of movement, I know I can get more and eventually the rock will come, if after digging all around and no wiggle I give up. I have never used the front bucket for that. It was a surprise when I saw the damage and I do not know what I must have done to cause it. I am not happy about putting water in the tank but I understand why, I wonder if I rig up a blower heater after the work is done to try and get the moisture out. Argon is 38% heavier than air and CO2 is about 48% heavier than air so my theory was that if the tank was emptied of diesel, then drain tap turned off and Argon/CO2 poured in from the top by a tube that went about halfway down, the air containing the worrying oxygen would rise to the top and exit leaving only inert gases inside, this may negate the need to fill with water and ensuing issues getting mixed with the diesel after refilling.

 

[Tinkerer]

I have watched mechanics weld fuel tanks after connecting a hose to a running truck engine tailpipe and putting a continuous flow of exhaust into the tank they were welding. I dunno, maybe they were just lucky.

 

[Delmer]

The argon CO2 is somewhat standard practice and perfectly acceptable. I suggested water because that's what I use many times. The sparks will drop into the sludge on the bottom and raise explosive fumes, if there's water then the sparks will be cool by the time they hit the bottom. You should be fine with inert gas, but to me the water is easy. You'll want to rinse the tank out anyway to get the grit and slag out. Welding the other side with inert gas over the oil is what I'd do, unless you're going to grind through the crack, which I don't think is needed here.

I wouldn't worry one bit about what caused this, it wasn't you, it was the former life. Now you'll know to keep an eye on cracks though.

 

[Willie B]

For years I treated diesel like it was non flammable. Use a cutting torch to cut not empty tanks in half, then bail the liquid out. Diesel, like everything else, only burns as a gas. Sparks, flame, and drops of liquid steel don't ignite the liquid.

The moral of this story is that one night I was in the middle of cutting a 275 gallon tank with cutting torch. My son and his friend wanted into the garage. I had the tank on forks, and moved the tractor. A very small amount of diesel splashed on the gravel. The first subsequent sparks ignited it. On gravel it could vaporize enough to ignite. I had a driveway in flame! The extinguisher was close at hand thankfully.

On another occasion I was decommissioning a 10,000 gallon tank. It had maybe 15 gallons of nasty sludge in it. I cut a 4' square hole in the end of the tank, allowing me to stand where I could look inside the tank. In a tank this big that much oil isn't very deep. I decided to burn it rather than risk spilling it. A pollution equivalent to heating your house a couple days. I splashed a bit up the wall of the tank, and lit it with the acetylene torch. It lit instantly, and gradually grew as the increasing heat vaporized even more. Ultimately flame blasted out 10 feet horizontal, then thirty feet vertical. It was 200 yards from the nearest neighbor, but I was sure I was going to be in terrible trouble. A few people came to see what was happening, but no firemen, or police ever came.

Diesel is manageable but not fireproof. Be aware that you can purge the tank of air, but outside the tank, all bets are off.

Willie

 

[mhobson]

Oh well now things seem to be going from bad to worse. My agricultural welder has refused to do the work, he says it is too dangerous, so I have been looking at it again with a view to me possibly welding it myself but I am not happy about it and I have been looking at it more closely this morning and there are other issues. The diesel drain plug is quite large and well positioned at the very bottom all sides sloping down to it so I think that the tank should drain well. I think if I filled the tank with water, after the welding had been done I could empty the water and run hot air through for several hours from the drain hole out of the filler cap, but now the real problems arise. Ideally it would need the plate and pivot removed from the front forks, cleaned up, groove ground around the hole and edge of plate, tacked in place and then welded, unfortunately the left and right side of the forks are welded together in front so there is not enough gap to allow the separation of the plate and pivot shaft and reattaching the left hand fork after welding, so therefore the grinding and welding have to be done with the forks still attached which blocks access and makes the job very difficult. The next problem is how to get the plate lined up with the hole. I have been trying to do so by fiddling with the hydraulics and parking the digger on different slopes, even trying to push it into place by pushing against a big tree, as yet no luck. The only option I can see at the moment if I cannot get it in the hole, and it is a bodge that cannot be hidden, is to weld a flat plate over the hole and then weld the pivot plate assembly to that plate as close as possible to the original position. To be able to use the hydraulics and adjust the position of the plate I will need to connect an external fuel container to the engine.

 

[mhobson]

I suppose if I could find someone with a digger or tractor with fore end loader I may be able to drift out the pivot shaft and lift the forks up to do the repair, it may need a bit of jiggling afterwards to get the forks lined up again when refitting the pivot shaft, has anyone had experience of doing that?

 

[Willie B]

Block it up, and back the tractor away. If you have, or can rent an A frame hoist to hold the weight while the repair is made.

I have more experience with repairing gas tanks than diesel. Water does not help. After a thorough flush with water I once tried to solder a leak in a Jeep gas tank with a propane torch. My father had already advised against that. It exploded internally. The tank was upside down, the blast came out the filler. It didn't tear the tank open but did significantly change it's shape. Another gas tank, a flat 5 gallon one forming the top of a Honda portable generator was flushed with water for hours. I then laid a strip of cloth as a fuse, and lit it. watching from a safe distance. there was a small bang, then a low flame maybe 1/2" tall burned for over an hour. Stick to the shielding gas idea. Don't be stingy with the gas. Your life may depend on it.

Willie

 

[Tinkerer]

Block it up, and back the tractor away. If you have, or can rent an A frame hoist to hold the weight while the repair is made.

I have more experience with repairing gas tanks than diesel. Water does not help. After a thorough flush with water I once tried to solder a leak in a Jeep gas tank with a propane torch. My father had already advised against that. It exploded internally. The tank was upside down, the blast came out the filler. It didn't tear the tank open but did significantly change it's shape. Another gas tank, a flat 5 gallon one forming the top of a Honda portable generator was flushed with water for hours. I then laid a strip of cloth as a fuse, and lit it. watching from a safe distance. there was a small bang, then a low flame maybe 1/2" tall burned for over an hour. Stick to the shielding gas idea. Don't be stingy with the gas. Your life may depend on it.

Willie

The voice of experience at its best ! Thanks for sharing that Willie. Like I said at the end of my post about the exhaust pipe stunt to do the purge ---- I guess they were just lucky.
And yeah, he needs to get the loader off and out of the way.

 

[Delmer]

I don't think you're going to get that joint apart to grind it, it will have to be ground in place. To take the loader off, the loader arms have to be cut apart, or the other side bracket has to be cut out of the hydraulic tank, right? If something is bent, bend it back.

If it won't line up using the machine, then you need to pull it in place. Use a come along, chain and ratchet binders, high lift jack, porta power, something along those lines. Even $7 2" ratchet straps will do it if you use enough of them.

The water displaces air/oxygen and cools the sparks that would otherwise vaporize the fuel residue on the bottom of the tank. I never said it would flush the fuel out. That's the standard method of cutting open propane tanks with a cutting torch. Use whatever you feel most comfortable with. For me that would be inert gas on top of water.

 

[Grady]

It's always nice to have another piece of equipment around - or a heavy duty tripod with a chain falls to do the heavy lifting. Your's isn't the first machine to see this kind of abuse. I don't know the exact circumstances that led to these booger welds as they came installed when I got it but they sure aren't factory. Most likely an operator who wasn't the one paying for repairs. ATTACH]160157[/ATTACH]

I thought I had some advise for you after looking at my C but the pivots on the K are different.

 

[Tinkerer]

He could get a power hacksaw blade between the arms and the frame and saw the shaft to get the arms out of the way. Case 182650A1 Shafts new and used are available at many places on the internet. That is way I would do it.

 

[Delmer]

To take the loader off, the loader arms have to be cut apart, or the other side bracket has to be cut out of the hydraulic tank, right?

Never mind that. I didn't realize that one pin goes through both loader arms, and the pivots, and both tanks. Maybe the OP didn't realize that either.

So... Pull that pin/shaft out however it takes, grind the broken support and the plate it broke out of, put it all back together, tack and weld. Right?

 

[Tinkerer]

Never mind that. I didn't realize that one pin goes through both loader arms, and the pivots, and both tanks. Maybe the OP didn't realize that either.

So... Pull that pin/shaft out however it takes, grind the broken support and the plate it broke out of, put it all back together, tack and weld. Right?

Yes Delmer, Those pins are quite a piece of steel. My thinking is that there is sooo much strain on the side opposite of the break that it will be a real hassel to get the pin out. That is why I would sacrifice the pin and cut it between the frame and tanks. The pin could be bent anyway and a straight pin is a must have to realign those tank bushings.
here is an example of the pin on eBay. ------> http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fro...RC0.H0.TRS0&_nkw=Case+182650A1+Shaft&_sacat=0

They are available way cheaper than that one.

 

[Willie B]

If I'm not mistaken the pin passes through a tube. I can see a tube under the access lid I can't see the pin. Not sure how they seal preventing diesel in the hydraulic oil.

Willie

 

[Tinkerer]

I think the tube goes all the way thru the tanks.
On my 680 the tube goes all the way thru the hydraulic tank. No bushings at the ends. It is just a very heavy walled tube.

 

[Willie B]

I think the tube goes all the way thru the tanks.
On my 680 the tube goes all the way thru the hydraulic tank. No bushings at the ends. It is just a very heavy walled tube.

Does that mean the tube is broken off also?

Willie