zmansmac
Gold Member
I've had a leakdown issue with the lift cylinders on my loader for some time and had been procrastinating on rebuilding them. After seeing Mars posting in January with his professional looking videos I was inspired to make a similar upgrade. My curl cylinders worked fine and I was primarily interested in more lifting power. My original cylinders are 1 1/2 inch bore with 1 inch rods. I purchased a couple of cylinders from Surplus Center that are 2 inch bore with 1 1/4 inch rods. They also had a 2 inch longer stroke. My original cylinders used 3/4 inch pins but the replacements had 1 inch tubing so I had to make some modifications to my loader to accommodate them. On the rod end I had to cut the tubing narrower to fit in the frame and simply inserted a 3/4 to 1 inch bushing. The real problem was the cylinder end. The loader frame was too narrow to accept it and I made new tab pieces with 1 inch bores which I welded on the outside of the frame to gain the additional width I needed. As it turned out I miscalculated the retracted length I wanted and ended up grinding off the tubing on the cylinder end and adding a 1 inch spacer. This resulted in the cylinder O.D. not becoming and issue with the frame and I could have used the bushing trick like the rod end. Overall I'm very happy with the result for added lifting power. Yes it's a little slower lifting but in my case I see that as a good thing keeping me out of trouble. And as a bonus with the additional length in stroke I gained 5 3/4 inched in maximum lift. My hat's off to Mars for this one.
