On 06/26/2015 8:19 PM, Jim Wilkins wrote:
wrote in message
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On 06/26/2015 6:37 PM, Ignoramus23199 wrote:
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One of the guys who does maintenance for me, knows how to rebuild
cylinders. It is not difficult.

_Rebuilding_ the cylinder is pretty much trivial, yes; getting the
main lift and level cylinders out _to_ rebuild is a major effort.

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It would be easy with a crane, but ................

The cylinder rebuilding shop where I get my scrap steel cutoffs has a
rack of large telescoping tubing to make such cylinders. It might be
useful to get to know a shop where you are.

W/ working farm I know the hydraulics folks in town _quite_ well...

I don't have the facilities to handle these larger cylinders,
though...the "extend" is almost 20' single stroke 2=1/2" bore; the main
lift isn't huge but need enough shop area to support the boom and crane
to lift and extract horizontal as it is enclosed inside the boom and has
to come out lengthwise; I have neither of sufficient capacity.

I took it (well, actually, they sent the float to take it to their shop)
to the Deere shop in town; they ended up unable to get the end caps off
the main lift and took it to the hydraulic shop. He needed most of a
day to finally get it apart to replace the seals....

Turned out it also was a major effort to remove the link pins for the
main lift cylinder as well...after almost 30 years (its an '88 model
lift) they had "growed" in place and were buggers to drive out. The
much smaller slave lift (one that keeps the basket level with varying
boom height) wasn't that bad; if it were only it I might have tried it
but figure wasn't any point in doing one w/o the other given the age; if
the slave was already leaking it wouldn't be long before the master also
began.

Meanwhile, the seal kits were only $40/ea or thereabouts.

I'm not at all upset over the shop charges; it's part of having such. I
can and do deal with most routine stuff, but that one is beyond what
I've the capacity to handle and have other things that need doing anyway...

PS. After it was finished, loaned the lift to a local non-profit riding
stable that works with developmentally-challenged kids so they could
work over the tension rods holding the frame of their arena (it's one of
the soft-cover over metal support type). The Deere dealer contributed
the haul over to their place and will go pick it up and deliver it home
when they're finished...

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