Salvage - Hydraulic Pump

I was just tearing down an old log splitter (I got it for $60) to use the mechanic bits for a hydraulic press. The cylinder may be worth what I paid for the whole thing. It may not. LOL. The control valve was leaking, but when I started tearing it apart I found it was not leaking. There was a cracked fitting. Ok. That's easy enough. Its not even cracked at the valve. it was cracked (and broke off during disassembly) at the next fitting a wrench may just take it out when I get to it. I spent a good half hour cutting the cylinder out with water running on one side while I cut the metal straps and braces on the other side with the torch. Hopefully I didn't cook any seals.

Anyway, I got to the pump and it was one of the easiest components to remove. I unscrewed the belt tension adjusting screw, and it slid right out. Nice... until I started scraping the gunk and dirt off to finds that they had used a steel drive pulley, and welded it directly to the shaft of the pump. Sigh. Looks like its going to be the hardest part to repurpose. The only thing I can think of is to find a way to clamp up the pulley on the mill, and spiral mill the hub out hoping I have enough shaft left to be useful when it finally comes free.

I'd just reuse the pulley, but its got a huge chunk out of one side. It would eat belts.

The old Briggs gas motor was pretty rough. That's ok. I plan to use a continuous duty electric motor on it anyway.

Reply to
Bob La Londe
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Well, I finally took it off yesterday. It was yesterday's project. The pump was mounted to a plate. No big deal except the plate was under the pulley. The plate was to big to mount in the vises I have on my mill table (I do have larger vises) and the pump hung down to low from the plate anyway.

I mounted up two pieces of 1/2 x 6" aluminum flat bar in the two vises on the table. Then I placed the pump hanging down between them with the plate it was mounted to resting on the aluminum flat bar.

Now here is where it started to get tricky. I slid the flat bar up against the pump as firmly as possible, and tightene

d the vises on it. This limited the pumps ability to spin. Then using 2 sets of welding clamps I clamped the pump mounting plate to the aluminum flat bar such that the spokes of the pulley rested up snug against them. A third one acted as a stop against a third spoke. Then I programmed a simple spiral drill routine (interpolated spiral milling) down to a depth of 3/4". With a slow speed and a slow feed on conventional clockwise spiral milling I began removing the weld. The feed and amount of movement of the pump pulley was limited, but the feed and cut kept pushed it up against the welding clamp stops as well. At about 0.6" deep I heard a snap and stopped the cut. When I retracted the mill and brushed the chips and oil out of the pocket I was was surprised to find that the mill was still in useable (for hack jobs) if not perfect condition, and the snap was probably one of the bits of pins and flotsam that had been wedge in the hole to fill the gap between the pulley bore and the much smaller spline shaft coupler that was on the shaft. I had completely cut off the weld and was able to pull the pulley off with a puller and a wrench. Then there was the matter of the spline shaft coupler that was on the pump shaft. It seemed to have one or two tiny bits of weld melt on the back end, but I wasn't sure it was actually welded to the shaft. I pressed it off with the hydraulic press and had a very dirty, but pristine spline shaft remaining on the pump. As near as I can tell no weld actually managed to penetrate the shaft at the top or the bottom. It seems that just friction and crud were holding the spline coupler on the shaft. If it wasn't for that huge gob of weld in the way I might have been able to just pull the whole nasty mess with a puller.

For those of you with Facebook: Video and images:

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Should still be near the top. Just look for the video showing three sets of welding clamp handles sticking towards you.

"Bob La Londe" wrote in message news:oqs38t$690$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me...

I was just tearing down an old log splitter (I got it for $60) to use the mechanic bits for a hydraulic press. The cylinder may be worth what I paid for the whole thing. It may not. LOL. The control valve was leaking, but when I started tearing it apart I found it was not leaking. There was a cracked fitting. Ok. That's easy enough. Its not even cracked at the valve. it was cracked (and broke off during disassembly) at the next fitting a wrench may just take it out when I get to it. I spent a good half hour cutting the cylinder out with water running on one side while I cut the metal straps and braces on the other side with the torch. Hopefully I didn't cook any seals.

Anyway, I got to the pump and it was one of the easiest components to remove. I unscrewed the belt tension adjusting screw, and it slid right out. Nice... until I started scraping the gunk and dirt off to finds that they had used a steel drive pulley, and welded it directly to the shaft of the pump. Sigh. Looks like its going to be the hardest part to repurpose. The only thing I can think of is to find a way to clamp up the pulley on the mill, and spiral mill the hub out hoping I have enough shaft left to be useful when it finally comes free.

I'd just reuse the pulley, but its got a huge chunk out of one side. It would eat belts.

The old Briggs gas motor was pretty rough. That's ok. I plan to use a continuous duty electric motor on it anyway.

Reply to
Bob La Londe

I spent a lot of time machining a spline broach to mount a pulley on a salvaged splined shaft pump. When the die-cast pulley loosened after a few years I bought the $100 keyed shaft pump I should have the first time.

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-jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

I spent a lot of time machining a spline broach to mount a pulley on a salvaged splined shaft pump. When the die-cast pulley loosened after a few years I bought the $100 keyed shaft pump I should have the first time.

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-jsw

I'm having fun. Basically I'm turning a log splitter into a dual acting hydraulic shop press. I've found spline shaft adapters. I'm probably going to with with a direct drive 1750 RPM electric motor and an oldham style coupler.

Sadly I found a nipple snapped off in the control valve. Hopefully removing that won't be quite as big of an adventure.

Reply to
Bob La Londe

Greetings Bob, In case you are not familiar with them I would like to mention a tool made for removing and tightening nipples. It can be found in the plumbing section of practically any decent hardware store. The tool is made from hex stock that has had one end turned and knurled with a very coarse knurl. In the center of the knurled section a groove is machined that holds a knurled cam. When the tool is inserted into a piece of pipe and turned the cam grips the inside of the pipe. These tools work very well and are cheap. Eric

Reply to
etpm

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Reply to
Jim Wilkins

Called an inside pipe wrench.

Reply to
clare

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Eric & Jim,

I like to think of myself as a tool guy. I have to be honest though. While I have seen that tool before I didn't know what it was. Thank you.

Bob

Reply to
Bob La Londe

So you're aware, there are some for PVC sprinkler heads, too. Lots of those get knocked off so they made what looks like a long-handled tapered reamer to remove the broken stub in the below-ground tee.

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Reply to
Larry Jaques

So you're aware, there are some for PVC sprinkler heads, too. Lots of those get knocked off so they made what looks like a long-handled tapered reamer to remove the broken stub in the below-ground tee.

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Well, I bought a set of the inside pipe wrenchs... and they didn't work. Oh, they might have if there was a decent size stub of pipe left, but the part broken off was only a few threads long, and the tool just didn't bite in properly. So, I bought a set of ez-out style pipe stub removers and it worked perfectly. About the same price. I had to gently set the remover with a hammer, but then an adjustable wrench easily turned it out.

Reply to
Bob La Londe

So now you have both sets, for next time. This is A Good Thing(tm).

Reply to
Larry Jaques

So now you have both sets, for next time. This is A Good Thing(tm).

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Yep. I thought the same thing. Best part is they don't cost much.

Reply to
Bob La Londe

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