Home made and big tools.

[Spike188]

Posted 1st

I offered to loan my 600 lb torque wrench to Eugen on Monday. Who would have guessed that even though it hasn't been out of the box for over 6 years, it got used today.

Posted 2nd

last night was a failed search of the net for a 40mm 4 pin wheel nut socket and a failed search at Princes Auto. Today with venier in hand a return trip to PA yielded a 1-7/16 socket to modify. A piece of 1/4 plate became a crows foot.

Posted 3rd

There are no shop manuals for the breakdown of the rollers. One appeared to have a broken shaft. After hitting a hard stop pulling the shaft on it, I moved on to the intact roller.

Posted 4th

Out came a used slide hammer from the seldom used tool shelf.

Posted 5th

The intact shaft pulled out with a few good blows of the slide hammer bolted into the shaft centering hole.

Posted 6th

The drum end is cracked out around the diameter of the bearing.

Posted 7th

This was once a welded shaft.

Posted 8th

At the end of a long day tools are put away and roller shafts are ready to take to a machine shop to be welded and machined.

[Eugen]

Do I ever like big tools... especially with a cool side story. I can imagine you wrestled with those rollers some good time. I'm curious what you cut the crow foot with? Especially the 1/2 inch square hole for the drive. Or did you just weld a sacrificial socket on it?

It's got to be hard to work on jobs like this when you can never guess what crazy tools you might need. I suppose it's acceptable to come back with tools the next day.

[Spike188]

@Eugen The crows foot was cut using a 4-1/2" zip disc and the 1/2 drive sq was made drilling small holes in 4 corners, then a 1/2 hole in the centre, followed by a dremel zip disk and hand filed square. When the rollers get reinstalled the crows foot is short enough to allow perfect level adjustment of the roller. 4 point socket was free hand grinding with a 4-1/2" zip disk.

The socket was a 12 point, chosen because it made finding the centres on 4 quadrants a breeze. By cutting on the major diameter, the minor was about 37 mm and gave a good bite. The final fit on the 4 points was both lucky and a surprise. but done very slowly with constant test fitting on the roller. It would have been easier if an spare nut would have been on hand. I fully expected the points to shear when laying into the long 600 lb wrench. The wheel nuts were self locking, thread locked and dowled. A small torch was used to preheat the nut, melting away the thread locker. The eccentric baking plates are aluminium and the drum ends are aluminium and kevlar. It was still a tough slug breaking the nut loose with out damaging the the drums.

[Eugen]

Heat from a small torch is one of those things I always do now on larger nuts. Seems to always help allowing for much lower force to get the nut loose, and compared to bolts it's a much smaller area that needs to be heated.

I very much like posts like this, much to be inspired by skills and experience.

Hope for a non-eventful assembly when the parts are fixed.

[JSinMO]

@Spike188 Making the tools you need in house is quite impressive! Now the trick is to remember where you put them next time that job comes around! I have a drawer in the bottom of my tool chest I try to keep specialty and one off stuff in. If I don’t put it in there then there’s a good chance I won’t find it!

[Toolslinger]

@Spike188 Making the tools you need in house is quite impressive! Now the trick is to remember where you put them next time that job comes around! I have a drawer in the bottom of my tool chest I try to keep specialty and one off stuff in. If I don’t put it in there then there’s a good chance I won’t find it!

I was working on the JD300 a couple years ago. I don't remember what the job was other than being in the fuel system, but I knew my folks had done it in the past once, or twice. I also flat out knew they had made/modified a tool to get at some fitting, but I couldn't find it. So I proceeded to make/modify a wrench to do what I needed. Afterwards, I made a tag for it, and walked over to the custom wrench spot to hang it up. Leaned over to hang it up, and an identical wrench was hanging there with a neatly labeled tag from the last time. I swear, those two wrenches were just about identical. Why I didn't find it when I looked is a mystery. Apparently though, my father and I have the same sence of wrench design...

15 or 20 years from now, I'll probably end up with a third...