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backhoe from scratch and scrap

Started by grouch, June 06, 2017, 09:06:12 AM

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woodmaker

My guess is that once you find the correct speed for the boom,you probably wont adjust it after that.  Good luck to you, and let us know how it works.
franklin q80,builtrite 40,husky 372,sachs dolmar 123, dozers,excavators,loaders,tri-axle dump trucks ,autocar tractor with dump,flatbed and detachable trailers, and 8  f350 diesels

grouch

Made some time to work on this thing through the heat of the day yesterday. (After several days and nights of rain and cool breezes, the temperature and the humidity ran a slow, miserable race toward 100. Neither got there, but were close enough for suffering).

It starts with the parts:




Been stationary far too long:


No eggs.


Closer look at the parts:
Replacement for a 3x16, to try to get a bit more oomph in lifting the boom:


Got a glycerin filled pressure gauge and everything needed to tee it into JIC lines. Unfortunately, I forgot that my pressure and return lines are NPT.


Cushion valve:


Flow control valve (full flow one way, adjustable the other):


And two 12-inch hoses with JIC-8 fittings:


The nearest thing to an assembly manual that I have are my chicken scratchings from when I was figuring out what to order:


They are slightly less indecipherable than the scratchings from when I first plumbed the thing:



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grouch

I managed to get the 3-1/2 inch cylinder hung. About 1/8 inch clearance each side at the top.


The local residents (red wasps) then let me know I was intruding:


Back at the stack valve, the red line marks the hose to the rod end (bottom) of the cylinder:


And its counterpart, the line to the top of the boom cylinder:


It's aggravating to get a crow's-foot wrench in there to torque those fittings.

Here's the assembly for plan 'A', to be installed under that stack valve:


Plan 'A' failed. Couldn't figure any way to get it to work with the hoses and fittings on hand.

Tried plan 'B' this morning -- moving things to the boom. I think I may be somewhere around plan 'F' by now. It's hanging by hoses and fittings and there's no place to mount the cushion valve. I'll have to figure out what needs to be done to make plan 'A' work.

This may work long enough for me to get it closer to my garage:


I don't like that bend in the lower 12-inch hose and I don't like things hanging from fittings.





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grouch

Hooked up the backhoe this morning. My system is not exactly a quick attach. According to the timestamps on the photos, it was 38 minutes from the time I backed up to the backhoe until it was ready to go.

The flow control works. With it turned all the way to its minimum, that boom will not lower at all. Discovered that while trying to get everything lined up.

Still don't know if the cushion valve will cure the problem of the bouncing tractor, and I still don't have a pressure gauge.





Highly sophisticated method of marking "pressure" and "tank" lines:






That's not spaghetti:


Pressure line to front loader comes from the power beyond port on the backhoe; return line from loader and backhoe tee together:


Gotta pump some life back into it and get it off the ground:






Now to align all the holes for 4 pins:




All hooked up and pinned in place:


Bad hose art:


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tule peak timber

I was going to ask about the ty-wraps , then I reread the post. I sure hope you are making your own hoses !$$$ :)
persistence personified - never let up , never let down

grouch

Quote from: tule peak timber on July 12, 2017, 02:14:30 PM
I was going to ask about the ty-wraps , then I reread the post. I sure hope you are making your own hoses !$$$ :)

All the hoses, cylinders and valves came from Surplus Center. Only that stack valve gave me sticker shock. I once priced a custom hydraulic hose locally. Decided it wasn't that important to have the length perfect to the inch.

[Edit to add:]
Oops! I kinda zipped right by the ties, didn't I?

Those zip-ties save me from having to refer to the tractor manual to remind me which hose provides pressure when I have the control lever for the remote hydraulics tied down. It is:
1 for P (pressure) and
Two for Tank (or any other mnemonic you want number 2 to reference). :)
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grouch

I didn't intend or expect to build a 2-1/2 ton see-saw. That problem appears to be cured now.

It felt pretty bad when it happened to me, but sitting almost above the pivot point, I didn't get the full effect. When my daughter dropped that boom and reflexes made her release the control -- just like me -- I was standing where I could see the front bucket lift on the first bounce. That's the whole tractor with front end loader and subframe being lifted. All the force exerted by that extended lever had to pass through the swing pivot joint. Nothing broke but hydraulic seals.

Makes me feel pretty good about my welds, now, at least.
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grouch

The backhoe had a droopy leg. One of the stabilizer cylinders wouldn't hold pressure. This is one of the cylinders I had paid to have repaired. They fixed the external leak and, apparently, created an internal one.

I had built the stabilizer mounts specifically for these slightly odd cylinders from an old forklift. Now the mount needs to fit the more common (and cheap!) tie-rod type cylinders with a clevis end.






Luckily, I had a couple of chunks of 1/2 inch steel left over from making the 'dogbone' for the backhoe bucket. This one is just right to make two new ears for a cylinder.

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grouch


Those are 3/32 inch welding rods holding a little spacing between the new bracket ears and the old.





I'm not sure if it needs that spacing, but welding a 1/2 inch flat bar over a combined 1/4 inch and 1/2 inch flat bar, and needing the holes to stay in line afterwards, I wanted somewhere for the weld to shrink without changing that alignment. Same spacing and technique was used for each side.


Each was tacked two places top and bottom and then welded along the top and bottom edges. 1/8 inch 7018 rod at 115A, DCEP.




I'm not good at overhead or vertical up. I'm even worse at those while standing on my head with a fan blowing hot, humid air around.
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grouch

The old brackets had to be cut off after the new ones were welded in place.


I used a cut-off disc to cut the 1/4 inch top and bottom plates back a little bit because I was too chicken to use a plasma cutter and risk gouging the new brackets.





Sawzall took care of the old brackets.



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grouch

Now it gets funky. Gotta weld around the lower back corner from the underside, up that sloping back edge and wrap it around the top back corner to the top weld. It also needs to be welded along the front cut edge where the old bracket was.

Miller recommends about a 15% reduction in amperage for overhead welding (with typical disclaimers, of course). Since I usually get decent results from 115A running horizontal, flat, that recommendation would put me at about 98A ...



Oops! That's a red machine. Do blue machine physics apply to red machines?



WARNING! It is well-documented that some welding attracts mutant steel seagulls with diarrhea! (Photographic evidence of their attacks may be found all over the Internet, however, there are no known photographs of the actual attackers).

If you find yourself victimized by these foul creatures...


The most effective cure for those effects is a grinder.


Second try, using 95A. Just attracted a lone scout this time -- maybe a wren or sparrow.





Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. Before welding the two (mostly) vertical edges, the pin was a snug fit requiring a few taps with the hammer to go home. After the seagull attack, the pin goes in with just hand pressure.

I tested with a 3x8 cylinder left from another project. It works, but I'm going to need a 3-1/2 or 4 inch cylinder; the 3 can't pick up the rear of the tractor.
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Kbeitz

It's nice to see someone still using a stick welder.
Collector and builder of many things.
Love machine shop work
and Wood work shop work
And now a saw mill work

grouch

Quote from: Kbeitz on July 27, 2017, 08:35:09 AM
It's nice to see someone still using a stick welder.

Just wish I wasn't so out of practice. Those welds look like I'm starting all over again, even though there's about 100 lbs of rods burned into that backhoe. Frustrating.
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GRANITEstateMP

grouch,

we use the "zip tie" method of hydraulic hose ID at the farm.  It works really well, unless my wife hooks something up...
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woodmaker

I know this isn't as fast as the zip ties,but i change every attachment to have one male fitting and one female fitting,so there can be no mistake.I don't let other people use my attachments,and i don't use theirs ,so it works in my world.I do the same thing with my older fisher snow plows also.
franklin q80,builtrite 40,husky 372,sachs dolmar 123, dozers,excavators,loaders,tri-axle dump trucks ,autocar tractor with dump,flatbed and detachable trailers, and 8  f350 diesels

whitepine2

Quote from: GRANITEstateMP on July 28, 2017, 11:28:37 AM
grouch,

we use the "zip tie" method of hydraulic hose ID at the farm.  It works really well, unless my wife hooks something up...

  I find paint on the connectors work nice "RED" for pressure side and "GREEN"
for return or any color you got. I also found that when you weld with a fan
it can blow the arc away from the weld streem and can cause sticking of rod.
Some say this  is why they call it stick welding LOL :D

    Just my way of doing things hope this helps.

grouch

Quote from: woodmaker on July 28, 2017, 09:56:27 PM
I know this isn't as fast as the zip ties,but i change every attachment to have one male fitting and one female fitting,so there can be no mistake.I don't let other people use my attachments,and i don't use theirs ,so it works in my world.I do the same thing with my older fisher snow plows also.

I'm using the tractor's remotes with the handle tied down to power the backhoe and the power beyond port of the backhoe's stack valves feeds the front loader. When used with an attachment that doesn't have a control valve, that handle can't be tied down, and each of the pair of remotes can be either pressure or return. That ruins the scheme of using male coupling for pressure, female for return.



Quote from: whitepine2 on July 29, 2017, 12:02:38 PM
  I find paint on the connectors work nice "RED" for pressure side and "GREEN"
for return or any color you got. I also found that when you weld with a fan
it can blow the arc away from the weld streem and can cause sticking of rod.
Some say this  is why they call it stick welding LOL :D

    Just my way of doing things hope this helps.

I tried paint -- too many leaks on my old tractor for it to stick very long. :)

The fan was necessary for me to do that at all in the weather we had. I was welding 'way up in the night and it was still *stifling*. The worst problem for me wasn't sticking the rod, it was getting contorted to aim the thing and still see the puddle! I have trouble with out of position welds in the best of conditions. These weren't those conditions.  ;D
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whitepine2

 Yes I know about working in heat,I hate hot. I just found that a fan blowing was
causing all sorts of problems found when started back welding with fan off things
went a lot better. A friend that was working with me tried welding and found a problem and he is a professional welder we both learned a lesson that day. Just
thought I would pass it along for what it's worth. Keep up the good work

Busy Beaver Lumber

Grouch, that is a fine looking backhoe. Wish I had metal fab skills like that. Just bought a ford 1710 tractor and would love a detachable backhoe for it
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grouch

Quote from: Busy Beaver Lumber on August 01, 2017, 08:33:26 PM
Grouch, that is a fine looking backhoe. Wish I had metal fab skills like that. Just bought a ford 1710 tractor and would love a detachable backhoe for it

Thank you.

What you have to decide is whether you want to spend your time building one, or spend your time using one.  ;D It's the old "good, fast, cheap" triad -- pick any two. Mine took years to build in spare time, but I never had a pressing need for it. There was more fun than tedium in building it.

It could be done in a very much shorter period of time. This is especially true if you started with proven plans where all the dimensions -- especially hinge joint spacing -- were already worked out. I didn't like any of the plans out there and besides, I wanted to build *my own*. (Never claimed to be smart or even sensible about things).

Now that all the big bugs are out of it, I'm going to start posting the mountain of photos I've taken of the build from start to finish.
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Crusarius

i'm in for the show. definitely look forward to it since I have thought about building something like this as well.

grouch

Looks like a storm may roll in, so I'll make a quick post.

If you want to see a backhoe as art, take a look at BFreaky's homemade backhoe. I imagine its cost pretty well reflects its status as machine art, though.

For some reason my camera decided everything should be dark today. Had to crank up brightness and contrast just to see these things.


This is my "owner's manual". After I got things fairly well worked out in QCad, cardboard, OSB and bits of an old Erector set, I printed out all the layers on one page just to see what it would be like. The above is the result. If it doesn't hurt your eyes too bad, you might be able to make out that each cylinder is shown at 0, 25, 50, 75 and 100% extension.


My starting point was a scale drawing (PDF) showing specs of a Terex TC29 mini excavator. I can't attach the PDF because of the insanity of copyright law, but, for the purposes of this discussion, here's a photo of a piece of it:



I imported the drawing into Gimp, measured the spacing of various joints and the bucket, converted that pixel count to millimeters based on Terex's stated "dipperstick" length, and then converted to inches because I'm still a dinosaur. They came out surprisingly close to workable. My bucket is almost exactly the shape shown there. Everything else had to be adapted to my junk, more or less. Terex was used because (a.) that pdf was there, (b.) that excavator has about the same horsepower as my tractor, and (c.) I figured they had some experience at excavating.
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grouch

"Ain't it funny how time slips away"
"It was 10 years ago, on a cold, dark night..."

Actually, it was broad daylight in the middle of June, but it was 10 years ago when I started accumulating materials to build a backhoe. You can't build stuff without stuff.

The plan was to build:
(1.) a subframe for my tractor, because I've seen too many photos of tractors broken in half,
(2.) a front end loader, because what's a backhoe if you can't move the dirt?
and
(3.) the backhoe, just because.


My wife convinced me to go to a farm auction. There are two manual-trip loader frames there along with some miscellaneous steel pieces.


I think that bucket of bolts was about $2 and I ended up using just a couple of them.


First test fit does not look promising.

\
In fact, it looks ridiculous.


That's a lot of shortening. I think that loader frame was off of an Allis Chalmers, but I'm not sure.


Praying mantis in mid-strike?



That's a long way to reach a bolt hole.
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grouch

When in doubt, get more stuff!


That was $0.10 per pound. Sid, of R.E. Harp and Sons Recycling wasn't going to let me in the yard because some half-wit had sued them in an attempt at insurance fraud. The half-wit's own doctor testified against him, pointing out the age of the injury in question. Lots of farmers, construction companies and backyard builders had to find an alternate source of salvage for the time that suit went on. Sid softened a bit when I told him what I was intending to do and relented with a laugh when I told him, "Well, if I break a leg clambering on that steel, just dump some more on top of me, run me through the shredder, and send me and the chips on to China."

He got another laugh when I ran the Dodge over the scales and paid the bill. I had told him earlier about buying 1 piece of 1" x 3" flatbar from Fastenal for $1.10 / pound. I asked, "Are you sure about that amount?" He grinned from ear to ear and said, "You know you get a little bigger pile for your money at 10 cents a pound than at $1.10."

(I have recently learned that Sid passed away a few years ago. Would have liked to show him what resulted from his taking a chance on me, but at least he knew that day how happy he made this old codger).





There's most of a subframe, loader towers and backhoe in there, somewhere.

Of course, you have to take measure of your treasure:



Some of the cuts were worse than even mine, but they were cutting down a building, not prepping to build something else. That's 1/4 inch wall, 5 inch square steel tube, over 13 ft long.






Some 4 inch by 8 inch rectangular steel tube, some was 1/4 inch wall, some was 3/16, random lengths.

Need more stuff! Another farm auction:


Hard to tell there are 3 of those beams in the truck. Two of them are now being used to extend the track on my sawmill.


It was loaded pretty good.


3/8 inch plate on the bottom; 2 pieces (I thought I had 3) of 1/2 inch thick 4 inch x 8 inch angle, each 8 ft long.
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grouch

Surveying possible mounting points:


It looks like some optional equipment was intended to mount here. Those holes were plugged with corks from the factory and the threads were pristine. Simple and effective.


More heavy duty mount pads on the back of the rear axle.


A wider view of the previous photo.


These are on the bottom of the transmission. That just looks thin and risky to me.


Underside, all the way back.


Same pads as above.


And one more view of the above, just one of the pair.


This location looks almost as risky as the belly of the transmission.
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