Dig-It truckhoe / backhoe

[YotaFun]

Thats priceless Keith lol!!!

[Good Times]

o man that's too funny.

and I thought people totally forgot about that pix!

[corax]

Turns out it wasn&#39;t seized, had it running in < 1 hour but the maintenance guy that helped me get it hitched up said it backfires. I&#39;ll have to wait till I get the exhaust together to see how well it runs (don&#39;t like running it with a manifold). I got 2 partial tube manifolds together so I can piece a header system together (nice mandrel bends) and my roomie is donating this muffler from his Formula SAE kart (I want to make a stack out of it and put a flapper on the top )



It&#39;s amazing how much interchange there is on these engines - I was junkyarding yesterday and snagged the airfilter box and front shroud off a B&S Vanguard figuring I could hack it up and make it work. I don&#39;t even have to cut anything, most of the bolt holes already line up

[corax]

header is made, now I need to fab a 2-1 collector and find 2 nice 90 degree mandrel bends in small diameter tube to run to the muffler

[YotaFun]

looking good Keith

[corax]

got a bit more work done on it in the last few weeks - engine runs great, just needed to be blasted out with some carb cleaner and have the low speed jet cleaned. I also poured SeaFoam down the carb while cranking until it hydrolocked (low speed crank = no damage, don&#39;t try this at home) and let it sit for an hour so it could seep into the rings and free them up nicely (no more exhaust smoke ) then I blew it all out the tailpipe. found a front shroud on ebay for $10, and got the governor linkages all reassembled and adjusted. installed the hydraulic pump yesterday and decided to finish up the exhaust today. here&#39;s the 2-1 collector I made for the header out of a piece of 2" i.d. reducer with some 1 5/8" universal flex pipe to the muffler

my roomie couldn&#39;t get rid of this CBR muffler for $5 so he donated it to my cause, just had to weld one 1/4" tab onto the reservoir so I could bolt my muffler on to that


I was thinking of running it like a stack with one of those little flapper valves on the top to keep water out, but that would&#39;ve put the exhaust pipe too close to the rubber suction hose for the pump

[corax]

I had it out yesterday in WV to dig out a bunch of stumps, the soil was anything but clean - plenty of bowling ball and smaller sized rocks - and it did rather well. Hell of a lot better than digging by hand (which wouldn&#39;t have been fun because of the rocks anyway), and as long as I could get under the roots I could break them without much stress to the machine (also moved some rocks about the size of a 10 year old kid). My biggest problem was getting the machine around the property, it would occasionally get stuck and I had to use the bucket to drag my ass one way or the other (didn&#39;t think about airing down the tires until I was on my way home), but I was also working on damp ground with plenty of leaf cover and those hydro motors don&#39;t exactly spin fast. Anyway, on one of those stucks, my day ended abruptly when I backed up and the one rear caster snapped off - when I looked closer I found the pivot pin had either been undercut or started to crack a long time ago and I just helped it along with my ham-fisted maneuverings and trying to offroad it




The fix is pretty simple though - drill the caster and weld a new 1 3/16" pin in place so I should be bck up and running in a few days . . . now to figure out who make an M/T tire small enough to fit this machine . . .

[DHC6twinotter]

What are those upper two casters for? Does the back end flip down or something?

[CJM]

Thats why i like tracks.

[corax]

What are those upper two casters for? Does the back end flip down or something?

The front (by the boom) drive wheels/motors have hydraulic quick disconnects and a giant clevis pin holds the motor and wheel onto the machine - disconnect the hydraulics, pull the pin and yank both wheels off the machine so those casters can go inboard of where the hydraulic motors were - now the machine is only 35" wide and can be pushed through a regular fence gate

Thats why i like tracks.

Yeah, I'll agree with that. Really I was looking for a small TLB (tractor/loader/backhoe), but I couldn't find one that wouldn't seriously dent my bank account - I only have ~ $2k into this and I should be able to get that out of it when I'm done