A few more tips -
Azbinder's suggestion on marking is really good, and gets better the more hoses you do at once - I found that several of mine were too "un-pristine" to write directly on with ANYTHING I had, so my local office supply had these
I'm kida **** about messing up stuff so I put one on EACH END of each hose, figured it'd be less likely for BOTH to get ripped off by a careless employee.
If you don't already have an actual SERVICE manual, you should - the actual paper ones were close to $200 when I bought mine, but BEWARE of manuals on DVD - if you go too cheap (like under about $40) there's a very real chance the "manual" you get will be a PDF like the OVER $40 ones, but all you'll get is a PDF with PICTURES of each page - usually kinda blurry too.
The more expensive ones will BRAG about being "searchable" - this only happens if the maker took the time to get higher quality pictures of pages, THEN run those PICTURES thru an OCR program (stands for Optical Character Recognition) - that process turns all the words on a picture into actual ASCII code, which your computer can read as REAL WORDS - so if you search that manual for "filter", or "bearing", etc, the search will show you EVERY SINGLE INSTANCE of the word. That ability can be HUGE when you can't find something from just the original index page. Again, if the manual you're looking at HAS that capability, it'll be more than the cheapest versions and they
WILL BRAG about it.
Torque - service manual torques for the cylinder piston bolts on the hoe are VERY important - not that they have to be EXACT, but they should be CLOSE - Picture just how much fun it'd be if the piston came off the INSIDE end of the rod (odds are VERY good the piston would end up at the INNER end of the cylinder, with NOTHING left to pull it out...
Sooo, factory torque specs -
Loader cylinder Piston bolts (all 4) 200-220 ft lbs
Backhoe cylinder piston bolts
Bucket cylinder piston bolt - 475-525 ft lbs
Dipper cylinder piston bolt - 1000-1200 ft lbs (NOT a misprint) I haven't done this one yet, I figure my 1" impact will get it loose (rod end mounted in 100# vise bolted to my 1000# weld table) - I intend to use my 3' 3/4 drive flex handle with a 6' pipe and my butt bouncing on the end of the pipe...
Boom cylinder piston bolt - 475-525 ft lbs (there are 2 cylinders so not as beefy as the dipper)
ALL of the gland nuts on loader AND hoe are 100-200 ft lbs
If you haven't already found 'em, there are usually a single small metal screw on each gland nut where it contacts the cylinder barrel - it's much easier if these get removed BEFORE inscrewing the gland (DAMHIKT)
New seals on piston going back in - not that hard, Case was kind enough to flare the gland end of the cylinders - still, if you have a piston ring compresser it'll help get things started, maybe with a single layer of aluminum roll flashing around the seals - new seals don't like to cooperate much, depending on in machine or out I reach for a "BADBH" (BigAzzDeadBlowHammer) or, if there's a convenient anchor point sometimes a comealong. I ALWAYS squirt a fair amount of hydraulic fluid on the new seals.
One thing NOT to do - use compressed air to move a cylinder - because air is compressible and fluid is NOT, when it finally moves you should be in a DIFFERENT ROOM...
I probably missed a few dozen things I'd (hopefully) remember if I was doing the job, but maybe this'll jog OTHER members' memories... Steve
Oh, I tried to build 3 different DIY gland nut tools, finally gave up (broke 'em all) and bought this
There are copies that're cheaper, but there's a LOT of stress on those pins on most of the case cylinders I've done...
... Steve
