Fixing Cracks in a Backhoe - Big ! with pics

[thingy]

John,I think them welds look pretty good for what you had to do,,hopefully you'll get this thing to line up,and I'm sure with some machineing and sledge hammers,you will get her to hook up,,,and hopefully you'll get many hours of use out of this hoe,,,and ones things for sure,,you learned how to do it next time,,and make some money doing it,,,consider flux core for next job like this,,or stick,,,,nice pictures too,,,show some pictures hooked up and digging some dirt,,that'll finish it up,,,thingy

 

[MikeD74T]

I'll bite,,,,,your friend didn't know what he was talking about.thingy

Sorry, I wasn't fishing. I'll give you one thing though -he could weld as good as you can brag....can you ????? MikeD74T

 

[thingy]

You must have me mistaken for somebody else,,,educating and bragging are two different things,,,when I go to a doctor and he tells me stuff I don't quite understand,,I don't accuse him of bragging,,,,thingy

 

[RobJ]

Just stumbled onto this post. Very interesting and I enjoy all the pics and stuff.

Rob

 

[Ifixcars]

Nice job on the backhoe repairs! I enjoyed all the pictures and maybe I learned a thing or two. The original repairs were as ugly as I ever saw. Somebody should be ashamed of themselves. How much time do you have in this project?

 

[greenedeere]

Great job John,you have more talent and determination than you give your self credit for.You should keep up doing what ever you have been since it appears you know what your doing. Thanks for sharing your task at hand with us,and by the way by the quality of your photography you could have a new day job.

 

[john_bud]

Nice job on the backhoe repairs! I enjoyed all the pictures and maybe I learned a thing or two. The original repairs were as ugly as I ever saw. Somebody should be ashamed of themselves. How much time do you have in this project?

Thanks!

I really haven't been clocking in and out, so I don't really know. There was probably 2 hours with the pressure washer before taking the hoe off. Then the time to take it off and get it all apart was probably 10-12 hours, maybe more. Many of the bolts and things needed to be heated to be budged. I know that I used up 6 cutting discs 4 1/4 x 1/16", 4 cutting discs 4 1/2 x 1/8", a dozen grinding discs, broke 3 carbide cutters, wore out 2 wire brush cups, used up my supply of O/A and emptied 4 cans of brake cleaner/degreaser. Prep work is a bear and quite time consuming, at a guess there may be 30 hours of prep and lots of hours with a broom and vacuum. The totally pizz poor previous welding that left slag in the weldment was really slow cleaning out. Plus the areas were not all easy to get to. Time welding was probably only 10 - 15 hours or so. Then there were some side tracks, like finding the boom stuffed full of grease soaked hay and dead rats. My 30 gal trash can got about 1/2 -2/3 filled with that stuff and it took a good morning and afternoon to get it all out! Then the crack check penetrant took a couple days of playing around. Mostly with the cleaning and waiting for the dye to soak in, then wiping it off. The metal is so rough that it was a real pain to wipe and there was residual grease in the cracks.

Sure glad I'm not paying to have this done!!!

jb

 

[schmism]

seems like this project would be the ideal thing for the biggest tig you could get your hands on. I love welding with my neighbors sincrowave. the ablity to just mix the two sides together with no filler i think is great as your not just pumping a bunch of filler ontop of a crack. No hiding the fact your melting the two sides of the crack back together with a tig.

 

[john_bud]

Ahhhh TIG, sigh... Well, I don't have access to one and very little experience running one. (like under 5 minutes).

While the big parts of the hoe are at the shop I thought that looking over the bucket and learning why it only has 1 tooth would be in order. Here is a picture of the bucket cutting area as I got it.




You can see that the cutting edge has sections snapped out where the teeth were and only 1 tooth left. I knew that the prior owner (NOTE: This bucket was originally from a JD 310 hoe. It had a completely different prior owner than the Ford hoe I am working on. Sadly, the JD owner had the same lack of welding skills as the prior hoe owner. YIKES! So many people with the equipment to melt metal and so few with a shred of skill.) Anyway, the cutting edge had been replaced and some teeth were bubble gummed onto the cutting edge with pigeon poop. Here are some pictures of the cutting edge. You can see the complete lack of penetration. I think this is exacerbated by the cutting edge being high carbon steel. (I've been waiting all week to use that word). You can also see the tooth that I removed. The shank and the tooth had been welded together.








I've got the old chicken chit ground down flush, now I have to get some weld on shanks for 5/8th cutting edge. Preferably ones with a longer top piece that will get some support from the top side. Then I am assuming that I will have to use Ni rod and a stick welder.




Any comments on selection of rod, specific technique, heat treatment (pre and post) to get shanks to stick?

Also, anyone have a source for CHEAP weld on shanks and teeth?

Thanks!
jb

 

[thingy]

John,I don't know,don't have any recent experience with doing that sort of thing. The bucket may just be mild steel as well as shank,,the tooth maybe the only thing thats hardened steel?? You could go to a place that sells hoes and works on construction equipement,,they should be able to help in saying how this works. If so,than 7018 would work fine,preheat it up a little,,etc,,if not well there are all kinds a rods,,I 'd have to think about that a little,,equipement place could probably steer you there as well,,,a place like case or john deere that not only sell dozers and hoes but works on them too,,if there is alotta old weld or hardsurfacing on area you plan to be welding on,,you oughta grind that out of area,,,but not sure,,I'm sure somebody else has got more sperience with this,,,,thingy