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 

(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 

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.

[pycoed]

Very interesting... I have a front driveshaft U/J (same double U/J configuration) gone on my Zetor 7045, along with knackered bottom & probably top knuckle bearings. Can't steer to the left, reliably! Eventually (after replacing multiple worn steering joints around the power assisted steering, I diagnosed that the knuckle bearing(s) had failed allowing the rollers to pile up in one direction. Not having any flat concrete or even really flat hardcore to jack up the front - this took a bit of doing!
The Zetor has shim set taper rollers (booo!) but each trunnion housing has six holes, two of which function as jack off points (hurray!), so removing them should ( ha!) be OK. I then have to remove the outer races, there are large Welch plugs sealing the outer races top & bottom, but I don't know until I start the job whether there are drifting grooves to punch out the races or not, therefore it will probably involve some upside down welding & multiple profanities for the bottom one.
Currently awaiting parts to arrive from Czech Republic.
 

 

[awemawson]

In this picture it probably looks much as it did, but the Cowl and Bumper have had their second coat - just in time for me to spruce up ready to greet the next two pairs of cottage guests. In the flesh it looks better coverage. I remember when painting the flail mower it wasn't the easiest colour to get coverage without runs !

A few days drying now before re-fitting

[awemawson]

Pycoed that looks to be an almost identical arrangement - actually it's not that different to series Landrovers.

Good luck with the changing of the bearings - I supose the rollers are acting like a sprag clutch !

[awemawson]

Yesterday I refitted the Cowl and Bumper leaving all bolts loose. It's fit will need adjusting on these bolts to match the hinged engine cover and engine side cover to get the various gaps and angle correct.

Of course the hinged cover is badly shown up by the newly painted bits, so I have removed it and hope to sand blast and paint in the next few days.

Meanwhile the pivots for the hinges needed attention. Originally there were bushes riveted onto both moving halves with a grooved pin as pivot and a clip to retain in. The bushes had rusted to the pin and come loose, and the clips were in a sorry state. Redesign called for. I've turned up a 12.5 mm wide brass hex spacer to be the same width as two bushes, and bored it for a 12 mm shoulder bolt which eventually will be retained by a self locking nyloc nut. This involved slicing the original bushes off with an angle grinder - should work fine.

So next job lug out the big sandblaster.

[russ57]

So, you will be attaching the 'keep it genuine' label with a fabricated part....

-russ

[awemawson]

Neither the ‘keep it genuine’ nor the ‘Moving parts inside’ labels were available from the usual dealers, so I put a plea out on the Facebook Vintage JCB group for help. I had a reply from a senior JCB executive who is sorting some out for me 

[WeldingRod]

Oh, that's beautiful in soooo many ways! 

Sent from my SM-G715A using Tapatalk

[awemawson]

I set out this morning with the intention of grit blasting both sides of the two parts of the engine cover.

Dragging out the Hodge Clemco 1440NC blast pot for the first time in years and putting it all together wasn't entirely straightforwards. Firstly the claw fitting for the blasting pipe where it goes onto the pot had a claw broken off  They are a tough plastic and I'm surprised that it broke. Never mind, I have an extension pipe that has these fittings on each end - steal one. OK end replaced. Sensibly this fitting has an additional safety feature of a stainless steel wire peg that stops the fitting uncoupling - it's spring loaded and should engage as the claw fitting is rotated to seal, but no it wasn't going to. Some faffing about and bending and it went home - OK couple up the breathing air filter. Another claw fitting feeds it and these seal by compressing a rubber washer in each half. Having not been used for some time the rubber was rather hard -in the end I had to lay the filter on its side and use my entire body weight (not inconsiderable!) to compress the rubber while turning.

OK its together get on with it ! Started off quite well but then things became erratic - the pot wasn't building up pressure. The 'pop up' valve that drops to let sand enter from the hopper, and should seal when the dead mans handle is closed, wasn't sealing. After much head scratching I convinced myself the the valve itself must be damaged - so remove it for inspection. This involves removing all the sand crushed glass through a 'mud hole' inspection port and unscrewing an 1-1/4 BSP pipe leading to the valve. Eventually I got it out and to my untutored eye it looks fine.

Reassembling it all I did a test while the pot was practically empty and the top shield removed so that I could watch the valve operating. Well it wasn't ! It was only being driven feebly. Now the 'Dead Man' or Remote valve should operate it and it must be jammed and dismantling is not an easy task due to the way it's been plumbed in - all connections are on knuckle joints and easy to remove EXCEPT the one fixing it to the blast pot.

At this stage I'd blasted one side of one panel so only quarter of the job 

So I packed up the blast pot for attention later and attacked the panels with paint stripper - the good stuff that actually works but makes your hands tingle through thick rubber gloves. Now this paint stripper is good stuff but blasting is far better as it puts a micro texture on the work that greatly aids adhesion. Also it's horrid messy stuff to clean up. BTW HOW are you supposed to neutralise it as it must linger in crevices. I used masses of industrial thinners on a rag as this is what the paint is thinned with.

So at last - paint them - a coat of red oxide primer applied.

Just to make my day even better the paint gun decided to clog up just as I was finishing - I ended up putting brake cleaner through it to unclog it for next time.

[edward]

I've stripped a couple of bike frames (steel and aluminium) with methylene chloride based stripper. Scrubbing with fairy liquid, hot water and scotchbrite a few times then rinsing with hot water seemed to get it off pretty well. The steel one got a coat of phosphoric based rust converter before paint and there hasn't been any breakthrough for a couple of years now. The ali one I just polished and that seems to have survived quite well too.

[awemawson]

Thanks for the info Edward.

Well Saturday continued to be an unmitigated disaster - The primer that I sprayed had gone on far too dry and was lumpy - I contemplated rubbing it down with wet and dry but in the end decided to start over.

So Sunday was taken up with paint stripping the two engine cover panels - this time I used the same methylene chloride based stripper but instead of scraping it off I used the pressure washer which was quite effective. I blew them off with an airline to dry them ready for another session this morning with the electric wire brush and stripping pad to get back to bare metal once more. What a waste of time and materials 

After several test sprayings and altering pressures and viscosity I got a satisfactory finish. Years back I made a simple 'viscosity meter' comprising a piece of 3/4" copper pipe blanked off with an old penny (240 to the £ !) with a bit of 1/4" copper pipe soldered in a hole in the middle of the penny. A bit more 1/4" pipe soldered on as a handle and I'd dip it into the diluted paint and time how long it took took to run out. This gave consistent mixings from batch to batch and was very handy. I see that plastic versions are now available on eBay - too late for today but I've ordered one 

So the primer can harden for a day or two as I'm busy tomorrow - there are a couple of insects that will need pulling out !

[Pete W.]

I hope that you won't think this input too far off topic but it does refer to cleaning stuff of metal panels.

I house some of my workshop 'bits & pieces' in a steel cupboard with adjustable shelves.  The cupboard originally served in an electronics factory and was used to store soldering flux.  In configuring the cupboard for my use, I rejected a shelf on which liquid flux had been spilt.  There's a sticky patch of mostly dried 'stuff'.

I now need to use that shelf to replace another shelf that got bent.  It was in another cupboard that rests on the workshop floor and I inadvertently leaned on it while attempting to get up from a kneeling position.  A casualty of anno domini!!!  I don't have the panel beating skills required to 'unstretch' the front flange!

I was told, years ago, that all fluxes are either toxic or carcinogenic so I've had the polluted shelf in quarantine for a few years now.

I did wonder whether a domestic steam wallpaper remover might deal with the problem.  Or maybe just hot soapy water?

Any helpful advice will be welcomed.

[awemawson]

Pete, personally I'd scrape as much off as possible while dry and wash the affected area with boiling water. I doubt that the quantity is sufficient to be too worried by it.

Alternatively - don the Hazmet suit, and build a Chernobyl style containment sarcophagus 

[awemawson]

I didn't think that I'd get much done today - it's my birthday and apparently you have to do 'special things' on birthdays  So we went round Newhaven Fort which was quite interesting. Apparently the last troops billeted there were Ukrainians in the late 1940's helping us with UXB bomb disposal. Rather ironic in the current situation.

 Anyway we got back in time for me to be able to rub down the engine cover panels with very fine emery paper, blow it off and spray the first coat of top coat JCB Yellow RAL 1007. Let's hope I don't have to strip THIS one off !

Doesn't look to bad for a first coat - it can sit for a bit before the next one.

To resolve the paint gun setting dilemma I gradually worked up in  thinners dilution until I got a decent result - this being 75 ml of thinners in 400 ml of paint. As I mentioned I've ordered a 'viscosity cup' and not wanting to use my iPhone to time it with painty hands, and having a vague recollection of having had a 'school lab timer' I went searching and sure enough there it was it a cupboard. A bit like an old fashioned alarm clock - genuine clock work, with an arm to start and stop it and one to reset it. A bit rusty but fully working. So this saves searching eBay 

Anyway have a picture of the engine cover panels in their first coat:

[hermetic]

Happy Birthday Andrew! What paint system are you using, acrylic, machinery enamel tractol etc etc? I go by the rule of thumb taught to me many moons ago, mix to the consistency of creamy milk, then stand back and let it have it! Looking good, when you have big flat areas on a panel try to get the biggest area of flat horizontal, much less risk of runs! I used to be rather expert at runs, The guy who taught me the above used to say, " I see you've got the curtains up, swags an all"
Happy daze!
Phil

[tom osselton]

Happy Birthday Andrew have a great day!

[awemawson]

Thanks chaps.

Yes Phil I'd much prefer to set the panels horizontal, but as I'm doing both sides that's not really feasible. All the edges and corners that they would rest on are visible when on the machine.

The paint is an alkyd based machine enamel, and although specified as quick drying it's not quick drying like cellulose paint was where panels were handle-able  within minutes. It needs several days to fully cure - manufacturer says 21 days for fully hard but touch dry in 15 minutes.

[awemawson]

After lunch I managed to get the (hopefully) LAST top coat on the engine cover panels. I'd been hanging around for a plumber who was coming 'in the morning' only to find he'd been called to an emergency leak at Biggin Hill airport - he should be along later but at least I got my spraying done!

There is one 'droop' but it's small and on the inside - after all any critics need to be able to find something to grouse about !

[hermetic]

I put the black on the lathe today, awful colour to spray, reflections and the like, I have to spray with the doors open as I no longer have extraction, all in all it went well, but the paint pigment has clumped (don't know why, its not old)and I had to double filter it, but the second coat went on really well, used 2 spray guns, gravity gun for underneath so the cup didn't get in the way. Much more difficult than the Colchester, which of course was all in pieces!, No matter, it is done now, and I will probably build it up, and then put another coat on the bits I chip!
Phil

[awemawson]

I sprayed some black today as well Phil as it happens! Just the chaff guard for the radiator and the top of the air filter and only using a rattle can so cheating really.

Yesterdays yellow is hardening up nicely - looks as though a bit more thinners would have been better and a bit of over spray in places - I may polish it a bit with some 1200 grit wet and dry  but I'll experiment on the underside first !

I fitted new M8 captive nuts for the chaff guard and and the bolts retaining the engine cover to the cowl so hopefully the engine cover panels can go on for a trial fit tomorrow to let me adjust the cowl rake angle to suit. But being a Friday we have two couples departing, two couples arriving and a swarm of cleaners needing attention !

[awemawson]

So at long last it's all back together. Assembling the two part engine cover hinge in situ was a bit fiddly trying to avoid scratching the new paint, and I did scratch a bit but it's now all there and can be left for several days to fully harden. At that point I'll decide whether to touch up the bits or not.

 - so now I need to sort that sand blaster out !