Bad idea: Hitting the mill with a trailer

[SawyerBrown]

Well, it's not a good idea to back a trailer in the dark and not know EXACTLY where the mill is ...  I don't know why I'm admitting to being an idiot, but I did just that, and the consequences could have been much worse.

I thought I just busted the emergency brake box, but when I set up the mill the next day at the customer site (fortunately just a few miles from home), the hydraulic pump kicked on as soon as I touched the contact bar at the front of the mill, without actuating any of the levers.  Uh oh.

After several calls to WM in Indy, and some great help from their tech guys there, we discovered that the shaft with all the actuator rockers was bound up.  How this happened is still a mystery and will be discussed later.  Anyway, upon advice from WM, I pulled the whole valve body assembly out of the box without detaching any hydraulic hoses so I could work on it.  Rather than use the saw head for support that WM suggested, I just straddled the tongue with my 8' stepladder, loosened a couple of bolts, and roped the whole thing up in the air.



 

Oh, boy, this looks tricky ...



 

The valve bodies are all clamped together in one assembly.  The actuator shaft is supported by an L-shaped bracket attached to each individual body, so all have to be in alignment to allow the shaft to rotate smoothly and return to a "neutral" position via a torsion spring (seen on the near end).  Somehow, the shaft was binding, so had to loosen all individual brackets to see which one(s) was causing the problem, and then get them all back into alignment, which proved to be a little bit tricky, but with time and patience ...



 

Once the shaft was moving freely with all actuators and brackets tight, the follower on the actuator switch had to be adjusted to engage the motor when levers were moved but disengage in the neutral position.  Thought it was going to be tougher than it turned out to be.




 

Just another close-up shot:



 

Oh, yeah, I hit it.  DanG.



 

It's still a bit baffling, however.  The levers show no sign of any impact damage, although obviously I hit the box.  The valve body is supported by just two bolts, and the actuator shaft and all other hardware are supported by the valve body.  So how an individual actuator got out of alignment is still a surprise.

Anyway, hope this was interesting to somebody / anybody.

[RayMO]

I had my LT40 get hit the same place but a lot harder by a moron in a big parking lot . I parked it over 200 ft from actual area where folks would pull up to parking curb at my folks place of business as I thought it would be way out of way but not so . Some moron backed out and all the way across to back side of lot away from exit area and slammed into my mill hard . I saw it happen but could not get there fast enough to catch them before they sped away . Bent the lever guard and control box a bunch but no damage to levers or pump thank goodness .

[drobertson]

Accidents happen, I'm sure you kicked yourself enough already,  as to Raymo, man, that stinks, some folks are just @$$es  for sure,  I could just see you chasing them down with mill in tow!