The Craftmans Shop > New from Old
It's BIG, Yellow and digs holes! JCB 3CX Project 8 is joining the Tractor Shed
awemawson:
Continuing chasing minor oil leaks I recently attacked the oil seals for the offside front drive shaft. There is a seal in the end of the front axle casing, and another where the shaft goes into the steering knuckle, with a dual UJ unit between them.
To get at the seals the shaft has to be removed, involving removing the final drive sun / planet gear box, and releasing the steering knuckle from it's top and bottom taper roller bearings. These bearings are mounted on pegs on a pair of trunions (upper & lower). Although in theory it is simply a case of unbolting the four retaining bolts from each plate and pulling them off invariably they are stuck fast and apparently the lower one can be a right b....r to get off. Well mine was no exception though the upper one wasn't too bad.
Seeking help on the Facebook JCB group I was given all sorts of suggestions, but what worked for me was removing the upper trunion, inserting suitable packing where the peg seats, and bolting it back up. As I tightened the four bolts it pushed the lower trunion just enough to open a gap into which I could use a cold chisel as a wedge to remove it completely.
There are two varieties of steering knuckles - an early one that needs the taper roller bearing pre-load setting by shims, and a later version where 1 mm of preload is pre-set in the machining of the part. Fortunately mine is the later version, as wedging with cold chisels would inevitably ruin any shims.
Once dismantled it was a case of lifting the inordinately heavy knuckle off with my nice Epco engine hoist, pulling out the drive shaft, polishing its oil seal bearing surfaces with 400 grit emery cloth, replacing the seals and putting it all back together.
A simple little job this one that took a full day last Saturday from 07:30 to 18:30 working straight through and no stopping for lunch !
Still - no weeping seals now :thumbup:
(There was a precursor to this job - repair the steering system on the Epco hoist. It has castors at the rear that are joined by a bar to keep them in phase, and this bar is moved by a steering handle allowing fine adjustment of the cranes position. Mechanism was seized and the castors were pointing at odd angles as one had a pivot shaft that was no longer vertical. Repaired involving oxy-acetylene big hammers and grinders !)
awemawson:
So having fixed most (I hope) of the front end oils drips (there are still a few at the back end but nothing too major) time to turn to things cosmetic. It's generally in not too bad condition in the paint work department but the radiator cowl and what they call the bumper below it could do with painting.
Now I have a big tin of RAL 1007 'JCB Yellow' machine enamel paint left over from refurbishing my 6 foot grass fail a few years back - is it still viable and do I have a suitable primer? Have to do a test.
Now there are a whole variety of slightly different yellows on this machine, and it obviously will have faded since built in 1995 but JCB did change their yellow at one point so there is 'early and late' - no idea which mine is. So I prepared two pieces of 1.5 mm steel about 6" square, cleaned them up with a rotary wire brush followed by brake cleaner, and sprayed them with Red Oxide Primer (Brundles best!) which was all I had. After the mandated 12 hours drying before re-coating I then sprayed them with the RAL 1007 quick drying machine enamel.
Leaving them over night there has been no reaction between the two paints so that is the first test passed, and as for colour match it all depends which bit of the machine you contrast it with - but it's certainly acceptable !
So when I'd done my chores this morning I started removing the radiator cowl and under bumper. Nothing too complicated. Front bucket needs to be fully up for access, so this was done and the safety prop fixed in place on the lifting cylinder. Then essentially it's all held together with only four M16 bolts (24mm hex). I thank the day I decided to buy my Milwaukee 1/2" drive impact driver. These bolts were amazingly tight and with normal spanners it would have been a two man job stopping the nuts rotating further away than an arm span!
The 'bumper' really is a guard under the main hydraulic pump and has a horizontal 'shelf' that had half a field sitting on, and caked to, it :bugeye:
OK so the clean up begins - scrapping the bulk of the muck off I first attacked the bumper interior with a needle gun (everybody out - I can make a noise) but I got rained off - this was not forecast :(
So I'm taking a break while the weather sorts itself out - hopefully back to it soon.
awemawson:
The sun actually came out briefly after lunch (Scotch Egg) so I was able to carry on. The bumper / oil pump cover thingy got pretty well stripped to bare metal as its paint was flaking badly - needle gun, stripping disk, and wire cup wheel. The cowl I went to bare metal on the rusty bits but tried to feather the edges to avoid a complete strip down. (This may have been a mistake as despite feathering the areas show up in the primer.)
A full 500 cc spray gun cup of Red Oxide just finished the job.
Ready for Yellow tomorrow unless I decide to fair the 'feathered' bits - I'll sleep on it.
hermetic:
That machine is begiimimg to look Good Andrew! I keep thinking I really need one..................
Phil
awemawson:
Thanks Phil.
Up early doors this morning to get a coat of yellow on the Cowl and Bumper so that I could be cleaned up and presentable before I had to deal with the two sets of cottage guests that are leaving this morning. All done and dusted by 07:30
Again 500 cc of paint used - you'd not think that there was that much surface area but obviously there is ! When it's dry and I can properly inspect it I'll decide whether I'm going to put a second coat on.
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