You know, last year I dug and set about 60 railroad ties doing my fencing project, and
all these poles around the pole barn here that I'm going to put an extension on. And through the
process of that, I was using a 12 inch auger. I did stress this three-point hitch sum. It's a
hitch that I got from Steiner tractor. It's a category 2 tractor hitch made for horsepower from 40
to 100. And I'm on the bottom end of that scale, but I wanted a three point that was pretty stout. Well
through the process of that I had to reinforce part of the side frames on this three point.
Well putting this backhoe on it, and extending this hole out and trying to work some of the air
out of these cylinders, I've noticed that the top roller bar, that connects to the top link of the
three point, is starting to bend. And I'm going to start the tractor up and kind of show you what's
happening there. And I think I need to run it into town and do some reinforcements on that also.
So we've got some pressure off of this top link. I got the full three point of his whole back
backhoe assembly, I've got blocked up underneath to kind of take the pressure off the three points. So
we're already rebuilt this whole assembly here and reinforced it, but in order to get this top roller out
you have to take one side off so I can pry this out, disconnect my cylinder to my three-point arm.
This is the brace down to the drawbar frame.
These are what attached to the axles themselves. And you see this extra
this plate I put here, and a brace there just strengthen up this framework.
I need to support this draw bar carrier. High lift jacks are not my favorite jack
I'd rather have a hydraulic. I don't have a hydraulic out here. I'm just going to put a little
a little weight on that just to take that. I've got to take that bottom bolt that this carrier
here bolts onto my side frame. And then we're about ready to take this off. So I'm going to
carry that. I'm going to take that handle out so I don't knock it loose. I gotta crawl underneath
get that last bolt.
Now when I go to crawling around out here, I kind of take an eyeball first. You
know I've killed a number of rattlesnakes around here, and they hunt up shade when it's this hot,
and I really don't like their company. So I kind of eyeballs things first.
Kind of tight in there when I added that extra framework.
I get my hand right there in the way don't I?
When I put this back together, I'm going to take
this whole thing to the shop and brace it up.
When I come back I'm going to bring a hydraulic jack
Get under this a little better. That pretty much kicks me loose. I'll go up on top and take that out.
Now I'll head back to town and put this in the press.
I think you can see I have a bend in this.
There's quite a little bit of drop. A quarter of an inch?
If I measure the change in the spread. We're 31 and a half at the bar. Out here at the tip we're 32
and a half, so we've spread this out quite a bit. And you can see this pretty severe bend
in it right through here. So I'm going to stick this in the press and straighten this back out
to get these to where they're parallel again. and I'm going to put some kind of a brace, I'm
going to stiffen this up. We've got this started here. We put a strap around this arm, just kind of
make sure it doesn't kind of flying out on me. Kind of secure that a little bit. This is an air
over hydraulic 50 ton. I took a little bit out of this side, but I need to take a little more out of this side.
I got about 10 ton on it now. I've got a little bit of belly this direction.
A little bit past, so I'll take some pressure off and see if it stays.
We went back a little. I think we're pretty straight there. A little tough to measure across
my arms, because this press is in the way. I think I'll take it out and lay it down and see how close I am.
There I can measure. So we were 31 and a half at the rod.
So we're 31 and a quarter. So I'm a little bit bent past, which is a good thing.
So we're a little bit this direction, which brings
the arms here a little closer together, so that's a good thing.
Well, something else that showed up, you know I've got this pretty straight;
put a straight edge on the back side and you know everything looks pretty decent. I'm
measuring a quarter inch narrower at the tips than I am here. But you'll see my two arms here
aren't laying flat on my table of my saw here that I'd double up as a bench.
These are up to almost like three quarters of an inch on this one side, so my question is,
was it not welded straight, or in the process of this bending like so, did it somehow twist? You
know the connections to the lower arms are adjustable, so you know I could compensate for that,
but it kind of bothers my head. It should be parallel.
So the question is, how do I take a two inch solid pipe and twist it
to where these two arms will be parallel? I would have to heat it here in the middle somewhere
and make that twist in it. And I think what I can do, my welding table isn't fastened
permanently. Now I have a flat top, and it's 18 inches wide, and on here I need about 16 inches
to clamp this down. So if I were to clamp this down all cold I would probably twist my table.
But if I clamp one side down, this side down here, and then heated this up and gradually clamped
the other one down, I think I could get the twist, if this was hot enough I could get the twist to
happen here, and leave my table square. That's what I think I'm gonna try. I'm going to end up welding
some plate on here, so I'm going to mess all this up anyway, and have to clean it up and repaint it,
so I'm not too worried about doing that, messing this all up, but I think that's what I'm going to
try. I'm going to try to straighten these two arms out so that they are laying flat and parallel.
So this is what I've got. I pulled my welding table off from the wall, you know it's kind of shaky,
but it's kind of flat. This is the arm that was up while I clamped it down, and clamping it down it
brings this side up, so I'm going to I have two 80,000 BTU torches, rose buds, I'm going to put in this
area here. It doesn't really matter where I guess. Actually when I get that good and cherry, close to
white hot, where it is softer than the table, I'm going to take this clamp and clamp it here and
try to bring that down and twist this bar back to where these two arms are parallel with each other.
I think we're good. We've got a little bit of a crown that kind of showed cup in here.
I'm gonna straighten it out a bit.
Now to do is just let her cool and see what we got. I think we got her.
We're not cold, cool, in fact there's a lot of heat in that yet, but uh the red has gone out of it.
Kind of see it's back to the gray again, but there's a lot of heat there.
As I eyeball across these two arms, now they seem to be pretty parallel. Kind of see here.
Look across one to the next, and even if I take off these
pipe clamps and we can still see that as we look across these
we're gonna stay pretty parallel. Once this cools off I'll go ahead and put them back on the
bench, on a flat table, and we'll see just how close we are. Well that makes
a big difference. Now it sits down sets down square like you should. So now I can brace it.
I'm going to add some bracing on both sides here to strengthen this bar. I've got a half by three,
I'm gonna sandwich that on one side and then I got a 3/8 by three. I could use another 1/2, but...
This 3/8 I'm going to bring it right in between here and give this some sideways strength. So that's kind of my plan.
This is where it wants to bend, that's where I'm gonna plate it, kind of counteract that bend.
Well if these arms here are sticking up past this two inch in both these end plates,
I'm going to put this bar in. It's a 3/8". That brings it up flush here,
so then I can bring this on and get it welded good and solid. So I'm going to put this on first.
This is how I finally have it sandwiched between two three inch plates.
Well my initial thought on repairing this top bar of this three point, I was going to cut it
all apart and put a piece of two inch solid 4140 in there. But when I got to considering
everything that had to be cut apart, and the degree of rebuilding, that's why I decided to go with this
three inch plate on both sides. And I think it's going to really stiffen it up where it'll handle
the weight of this backhoe. So anyway, we'll go out and put this back on and see how it works.
And on a second note, I'd like to say I apologize for the poor quality of the audio on some of these
little clips. I do have a lavalier mic that is coming that'll help improve the quality of that
audio, so hopefully the future videos will be a little bit better. And lastly, as you have noticed
if you've been following along very long, in the last few weeks there's been some scammers and
spammers that have been playing in the comment section. They're using my Engels Coach Shop name
and talking about how they so appreciate your comments, and they're trying different tactics,
but just as a heads up, be aware, I'm not going to ask you for anything in reply to a comment you've
made, or any special offers, or all that. But if you pay close attention, they have kind of hijacked my
logo and they use my name, but it's not me, so just kind of a heads up, just be cautious who
you respond to in these comments. My wife Diane actually does the majority of the responding on
these comments. She really enjoys going through them and she keeps me abreast of a lot of these
questions. And so anyways, she will come up as Diane Engel, and occasionally I do, but you'll
see Engels Coach Shop, but I'm not going to have a lot of extra garbage along with it to entice you
for anything, so just be aware, heads up. Once again, thanks for following along. Thanks for watching!