I am starting to look for a forklift for around the shop. There's one on ebay that has brakes that do not work, are they hard or very expensive to fix? I know nothing about forklifts.
Item number: 140174039210
It's about an hour away from me, or should I keep looking?
I'm looking for cheap.
I can fix almost anything, unless you need some exotic special tool. ( although I have made some of them.)
I rent out part of the building to a guy for storage, and am looking to put some pallet rack over there, so there's a second reason for a forklift.
The things that make them hard to work on is either getting to the master cylinder buried way down in the bottom (unless the designer was nice to you) or getting to the wheel cylinders to work on them, since forklifts are heavy by design and are hard to jack up. You may need a
20-Ton "Toe Jack" to get a grab on a corner and lift it, then lots of wood cribbing to hold it up.
And parts can be cheap (swiped off a car, and readily identifiable by the counter man) or radically expensive custom items used only on that model fork truck depending on who designed the forklift. And if you get really lucky, new parts are no longer available, and you have to rebuild what you have or adapt something to fit.
If you can't figure this stuff out first, don't buy. Brakes are important, even if you aren't moving fast you are still moving a whole lotta mass.
That is a hard surface only forklift. Probably about 2500 lb max capacity (small counterweight at the rear)
Put that sucker in the dirt...and it will sink like a rock.
Brakes are moderately easy. Its most often the master cylinder, which is easily replaced.
Its got a good name, Clark, with a good support network.
The price is right. Its small enough to be trailerable without a hell of a stout trailer. Probably weighs 4500 lbs or so.
If its the brake cylinders or shoes, you will have to remove both front wheels and drums. This requires jacking or blocking up the front of the forklift to get the front wheels off the ground. Parts can be cheap from aftermarket places, expensive from Clark.
That size forklift WILL pick up a Bridgeport. Barely. It can get a bit scarey when the rear end starts to go light on you. Having a friend stand on the rear helps.
Price is right. Fix it up, resell it if it doesnt fit your needs, buy another bigger one with the proceeds.
Would be my first choice...but they come up regularly and if you decide to buy and fix up the Clark then sell...you can pay cash for a good one similar to the above.
Gunner
Political Correctness is a doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical liberal minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.
From the picture it looks like a C30B that was last manufactured in the early 70's or a C300 that was the less expensive model when they came out with the C500's later. It has a flat head Continental Red seal engine that can be expensive to rebuild today.
The brake shoes are located inside the differential housing. To get to the brakes, tilt the upright back as far as it will go, then stack wood blocks under the bottom of the upright *outer rails* and tilt the upright forward to lift the front wheels off the ground. If there is a considerable amount of wear in the trunion rings. and brass bearing that wrap around the differential housing, then it may have too much wear to lift it this way. This is very expensive to repair if the parts are still available. If it lifts off the ground then you can check out the brake problem.
This model has an inching cylinder. that is located on the transmission control housing on top of the transmission under floor plate.
When you press the brake pedal the fluid from the master cylinder pushes a 5/8" u-cup forward about an inch or so inside an inching cylinder. This in turn moves a lever that goes through the transmission housing and dumps the pressure to the transmission packs to put the transmission in a neutral position.
This allows you to push the brake pedal partially down in order to rev the engine and raise the load at a higher speed while the truck coasts.
This is a common wear problem and until the cup and piston move to the end of the stroke the fluid doesn't go to the wheel cylinders. Brake fluid leaks and can be seen running down the front of the differential housing. There is a kit available to rebuild that includes the cup, actuator rod, spring, clevis pin, and cotter pin. This is the cheap repair if that is the only problem.
Under the differential below the position where the brake drums are located there is a hole on each side. If automatic transmission fluid or brake fluid are dripping from either hole It gets very labor and parts expensive from here.
To get to the wheel cylinders and the brake shoes, remove the lug nuts and remove the wheels. Behind the wheels will be five or six bolts with
3/4" heads that are 1/2" bolts about 1-1/4" long that will need to be removed. If the upright is stable on the blocks then it can be raised up using the engine to run the hydraulics.
Behind the upright on the front of the differential housing you will see
3/4" nuts on the end of the approximately 8" or 9" studs that run through the differential housing that will need to be removed. Some nuts will be under the differential so be sure you remove all the nuts and lock washers. Make note where these studs go through the differential housing as the same housing was used on solid tire units such as this and pneumatic tired units. There are more holes in the differential housing than studs an if you don't reassemble it properly the axle end will be too low to remount the wheel because you have put it together for pneumatic tire use.
Carefully take the brake line loose and leave it drain the fluid from the master cylinder so you can refill it with fresh fluid later. When all this is loose then you can shake the axle end and it should feel as if it can be pulled out of the differential housing.
The axle end is going to be surprising heavy because behind the axle end where the wheel was bolted on is a sun gear the diameter of the housing, inside that there is a bull or drive gear to rotate the sun gear, this bigger gear and extended shaft that will go almost to the center of the differential and is the axle shaft that goes into the spider gears inside the differential itself.
It has a spline that carries the brake drum on it, inside the differential that holds the brake drum on with a snap ring. The shoes and wheel cylinders are behind this drum.
If you can pump the brakes up so the unit will stop and the transmission disengages but the unit looses the brakes (pedal goes to the floor) after sitting for a while (say a 1/2 hour) then the adjusters are bad.
The brake adjusters are bolted through the backing plate for the brake shoes and are not serviceable and must be replaced. I don't recall ever seeing a pair of brake shoes worn out on these units because the brakes have a four to one advantage stopping the unit. The adjusters either go bad or the wheel cylinders wear out and start to leak that ruins the shoes. Forget brake cleaner.
The axle end pulls straight out of the differential but is heavy enough that I would put a choker (nylon or 5/16" wire rope) around the housing at the same place that 1/2" x 1-1/4" bolts were removed. Hook a come-along at the top cross bar of the outer rail of the upright and pull until weight was neutral and axle end could be pulled straight out of differential housing. That gets one side exposed to repair.
When this truck was new and under warranty , not rusty, estimated time for and experienced mechanic with a background on Clark Equipment could do a brake job in 8 hrs.for a non-smoker and not talkative, with all the tools within arms reach for both sides in the field. ;-)
This is all the factory would pay if well documented and all replaced hardware parts could be returned to the factory if requested and had to be requested within a six month period. After that you could discard the worn parts and the AFA (Authorized Factory Adjustment) was paid if the factory felt it was warranted.
Inching cylinder was a separate repair.
The larger scrap iron was easier to work on many times. At least you weren't on your hands knees all day, many times where it was the most out of the way place that was available, say out in the gravel or on hot blacktop outside.
After all it is in the way inside and not making any money.
Most places will charge time and material for these repairs today.
Political Correctness is a doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical liberal minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.
No, I passed on it. Many thanks to RLM for the step by step on how to fix it. I'll save that, and if one of these comes up again maybe I'll go for it. Right now too much work to take on another project.
See new post on B & S grinder for my current project.
Not really sure, I'll take a guess and say the TM's are PLC controlled while the MM are mechanical or pinball relay style. I did look a little bit for that answer but could not find anything.
I've got scans of the operation and parts manual for the micromaster. Apron controls on your machine look different but I wonder if the hydraulics in the base are the same.
Randy, I emailed you a direct link to them on my webserver. The two scans run about 10MB each. Most isp's mail servers would refuse to accept files that big.
Let me know when you grab them. I'll take them down afterwards, I'm running out of space allocation on that server.
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