Dig-It towable Backhoe partial restoration

[alabama mike]

Hey Mike welcome to the Dig-It club.. I will try and remember to look at my manual tonight and get you specs.. If they aren't in there, I will get them this weekend when I head up to the property where mine is located. If I have to go to the property it will be late Sunday evening before I can get you the specs.. I have no internet capabilities up there and no cell towers available

Again welcome to the club, once you get it up and running again you will have a blast trying to find ways to use this little but very useful tool

Thanks, no rush I'm pulling the pump off the engine and working on getting it in good running order right now, Mines been sitting 5 years or better, so there is quite a bit of work to do.

Thanks,
Mike

 

[Wa11banger]

601Blues - sorry not a single spring on any of my throttle controls.. They are all hand controls with solid links. Now mine may be polish engineered as you said also but it seems to work great.

Alabama mike - good news is they are relatively the same with the exception of the boom cylinder, here are the dimensions on mine

Main Boom cylinder
22" closed length pin center to pin center
1.25" attachment pin diameter
1.5" rod diameter
didn't have a hole or cliff nearby to measure max stroke

Dipper arm:
22" closed pin center to pin center
1.25" attachment pin diameter
1.25" rod diameter
13" stroke

Curl cylinder
22" Closed length pin center to pin center
1.25" attachment pin diameter
1.25" rod diameter
forgot to get stroke measurement

All cylinders have hydraulic connections on the same side of the cylinder. Important if you have the stock hoses for reference

 

[PILOON]

In all probability all cylinders are the same spec (have the same stroke) for best volume pricing on purchase.
I would not hesitate to order all the same.
In fact even the swing cylinder was same as all boom cylinders.
(I had a Toe Hoe 'Cricket') and that was the case. On that brand they did use an inner sleeve to limit the lift height of that cylinder, made it difficult to load a truck bed or trailer.

 

[alabama mike]

601Blues - sorry not a single spring on any of my throttle controls.. They are all hand controls with solid links. Now mine may be polish engineered as you said also but it seems to work great.

Alabama mike - good news is they are relatively the same with the exception of the boom cylinder, here are the dimensions on mine

Main Boom cylinder
22" closed length pin center to pin center
1.25" attachment pin diameter
1.5" rod diameter
didn't have a hole or cliff nearby to measure max stroke

Dipper arm:
22" closed pin center to pin center
1.25" attachment pin diameter
1.25" rod diameter
13" stroke

Curl cylinder
22" Closed length pin center to pin center
1.25" attachment pin diameter
1.25" rod diameter
forgot to get stroke measurement

All cylinders have hydraulic connections on the same side of the cylinder. Important if you have the stock hoses for reference

Thank you so much, now to start looking for cylinders, LOL

 

[Wa11banger]

I am betting they can be bought from the guys at powerking tractor for about as good a price as anywhere

 

[JHolman05]

Silly forum makes you have 5 posts before making a post with attachments... here's 1.

 

[JHolman05]

I stumbled upon this thread after my brother and I purchased our Dig It in much need of a restoration. We were needing an excavator on the farm for a few projects and decided instead of paying someone else or rushing the job with a rental we would buy our own, fix it up and sell when we're done with it. That being said I don't think we fully grasped what we were getting into when we bought this Dig It 148. Come to find out it's actually a model 116 per the Name plate but has most of the 148 parts, it must have been when they were transitioning. We're repowering it with a 15hp electric start Lifan motor with an 18amp charging circuit so we can run lights if needed. New wheels and tires all around, new seat, new fenders, new hydraulic drive motor, some new hoses, two new cylinders, new bushings and pins throughout and new decals and paint to freshen it up. Right now we're currently putting it back together and hope to have a complete unit in less than a week.

 

[JHolman05]

Huge thanks to the guys who have shared Mission Manufacturing/Power King tractors. We have spent a load of money with them and they've been very helpful. The manual is a huge help as ours had been improvised on in the past.

 

[JHolman05]

Question I have and I'm sure it varies state to state, do you need to have this thing plated to tow around? Obviously it had lights on it but we didn't see any place for a licence plate.

 

[JHolman05]

The night we picked it up.


Model 116, serial number indicates it's from 1987.


Tearing it down, we were able to rig it up to run on my brothers 13hp Honda GX390 to diagnose which cylinders needed replaced.


Took all the parts to my brothers down the road to pressure wash.






Stripped it down to bare metal




Everything received a couple fresh coats of paint.


New Decals, ours came with the 148 model so we figured to stick with that, given the 116 model came with a different hoe arm.


More pictures to follow once we have it all together. We ran into quite a few problems with this so if anyone has questions feel free to ask, I will subscribe to this thread so I will get any new posts sent to my email.

Thanks for looking,
Jesse