A Little seems like a Lot in FEL bushing wear.

[Gale Hawkins]

The old 1983 310B backhoe has wear all over but the compound wrist pin (not on the bucket connection but the pin in the loader arms?) are the only one place there is super slop due to wear and the right one is worse than the left.

The last time I parked it the bucket was dumped so as not to catch rain and these pins were out of ANY bind so this evening I pulled them with the help of my daughter (on getting the keepers out).

Natually the 1.5" pin is under cut some but the OEM bushings seem to still not be cut through so with the right shop equipment they can all be replaced. I was hoping to find a bushing that could act as a shim to help tighten it it some until one day I will take in to some shop with the right equipment to go over both ends and replace pins and bushings right.

But the wear being on both services some shows less wear than I expected with all the slop at that point.

Has anyone come up with something thin enough and hard enough to help tighten up things a bit for a temp fix. The right side hole in the arm is now 1 7/8ths from a slip fit with the 1 1/2" pin when new but the left side is just 1/16 th over size in the hole alone.

 

[rswyan]

Has anyone come up with something thin enough and hard enough to help tighten up things a bit for a temp fix. The right side hole in the arm is now 1 7/8ths from a slip fit with the 1 1/2" pin when new but the left side is just 1/16 th over size in the hole alone.

Not familiar with those pins particularly, but what about:

Drill Bushings and Liners

Reamers

 

[Gale Hawkins]

Actually for the large size hole they had a size that would have worked OK . The old hard steel inserts are still in there so reaming is out but I could enlarge the smaller one with a stone on a drill.

 

[Gale Hawkins]

Well we got some slack out of the bushings that are used to do the curl that are in the ears welded to the cross piece between the two arms.

The pins are 1.5" and one bushing was at 1 9/16ths but the right one was at 1 7/8ths so there was a LOT of slop in that one.

Since the pins are undercut some I was just looking for something we could do that required not torch, etc. Not sure our patch job will hold up but we got it done and about 1/6 of a $6 piece of 22 gauge cold roll flat stock from TSC. I cut it into strips with shears. One side only needed the thickness of one piece but the right side needed 4 of the 22 gauge "bushings".

We bent them to shape on a block of wood and angles on the FEL and cut them short so when inserted there was about 1/8 gap. On the side requiring four I did three of the one piece design and one that was in two halves that I used last to tighten up the other three that were one piece. These half bushings went next to the OD bearing surface.

While they can not come out I am not sure how well the cold roll steel with hold up under the high pressure of curling out a stump, etc. With only a $1 in materials for the job we do not have too much at risk and finally my daughter got excited about what we were doing when it hit her what our goal was and how it seemed to have been reached.

I used wheel bearing grease on each surface when installing so the side with the four "bushings" as long as they slip between each one will mean there is actually little movement of each of the four.

We geased the bucket well and I watched as my daughter did 9-10 full curls. It was nice to see that the excessive slop was all gone. Now all the wear is about equal in all pins and bushings and will last us another 20 years by keeping them greased.

Even if these do not hold up well at least we know there should not be any new wear on the old pins or bushings.

We may just pull the pins from time to time and put some wheel bearing grease around the pins and shims we made and installed. We can still gease the ID of the OEM bushings like before.:thumbsup:

 

[markct]

its not likely to hold up for long, as the shim stock will walk out eventualy unless very light use. also the pins are likely metric, i know my jd 210c from the late 80s is all metric

 

[Gale Hawkins]

its not likely to hold up for long, as the shim stock will walk out eventualy unless very light use. also the pins are likely metric, i know my jd 210c from the late 80s is all metric

It will be interesting to see how our hack job holds up for sure. It seems like out 1983 310B was built before the metric change over as the pins are 1.5" and all wrench use is SAE too.

The home made bushings really will have a hard time of 'walk' out since they have no place to walk too very well but the cold roll is very soft for sure while the OEM bushings and pins are very hard and slick.

The grooves cut in the pins are concave which means the OD bushings are convex. I am sure just the weight of the empty bucket has already seated the cold roll "bushing" shims conform to the same shape. If the single 22 gauge peice on the left side comes out I will not sweat replacing it and if the four peices on the right side holds up for a while it will only be a 25 minute job to replace them.

We are thinking of some way to make grease seals for these two connections. This job is helping the kids learn more about heavy equipment issues. After the curling cylinders settled some we were trying to use a large pry bar to get the pins to line up with the holes but learned the 6" bottle jack did the same thing and we needed fewer hands.

Working on heavy equipment is a very different ball game for me and practicing/teaching safety so the kids can see how easy it is to loose a digit or more keeps me on my toes. These curling pins do not keep the bucket attached to the loader arms in any real way so they are simple to take out and back in.

This week I may lift the front and load these pins hard to see how they work.