Conclusions: Well the new rims are each about 4 lbs lighter than the steel rims, which only saves me about 16 lbs on the total. That’s better than nothing, but I’ll be installing a new set of tires soon so we’ll see what that gets me. Another thing to note if installing 500 rims on a 450: the lug studs on the 450 are a little shorter. It still works, but there are no threads to spare.

As you can see in one of my previous Foreman posts, I run an auxiliary light on the rear…comes in handy when winching or reversing at night. This is one of the single most handy items on the ATV, so I use it often. However, if you’ve seen any of my riding posts on this site, you know it’s not uncommon for my machine to see service in deep water. The poses a problem for the incandescent light. As seen below, the light I’m using is not a sealed beam, it has a small, replaceable bulb. When water is introduced to the hot bulb, the result is failure. Subsequently, I found myself replacing bulbs regularly.

Solution: After having found and installed some LED work lights on the headache rack on my truck, I decided one of these lights would be the perfect solution. The LEDs of course are sealed and the components are water resistant; all I’d have to do is drill a small drain hole in the bottom of the rubber housing. Furthermore, the light is brighter and only pulls about an amp and a half draw.

Well, it’s that time again…time to post the 3rd Annual East Camden Expedition that took place in early March 2012. This year produced some wild rides, magnum cooking, and fun shooting, all with minimal casualties to machine and personnel. By the way, if you missed the 1st or 2nd Expeditions, click here to catch up on those as well as many other cool rides and trips. This year’s Expedition was extended to four days. I’ll start this off by outlining the crew, in alphabetical order, then you’ll see an awesome slideshow documenting some of the carnage. I’ll follow up with Part 2 which will contain live video footage.

Brad

Brad’s an expedition veteran, having attended all expeditions to date. This year he unveiled his new CanAm Renegade which saw many miles on this trip. With a fully snorkeled machine, he took to the water like a fish. Surprisingly, aside from a broken bumper and an over-wheelie or two in the creek, there was no major incident. Unbelievable…

Brian

Another expedition veteran, attending all the trips, Brian is usually the first one on the scene at camp when the rest of us arrive. This year he put his classic Honda 350 FourTrax through the paces, including a nice swim. It’s become an expedition tradition for someone to drowned their machine. Last year it was Chris…this year was Brian’s turn.

Chris

After last year’s expedition, Chris was hooked. He showed up with machines and fish cooker in tow. After drowning his ATV last year, he vowed not to make that mistake again, so this year he unveiled a Max Amphibious 6-wheeler. When those of us on four wheels were carefully avoiding deep water disaster in the creek, he easily motored by us…laughing.

David

A newbie to the Expedition, David fit right in.  He cut the Ranger XP no slack in going where the 4-wheelers went (even if it meant wheels up…). Fully snorkeled, he had no problem in the deep water which was everywhere on this trip.

Moore

After having experienced the 2nd Expedition, Moore was a guaranteed player in the 3rd Annual…even if it meant altering his career, or any other trivial things. This year he brought back the Recon, which performed surprisingly well in the dunes (at this point, why am I constantly surprised with the performance of this Recon on these trips?). He also spent some time in (and out of) the saddle of a Grizzly 600.

Nick

OK, then there’s me. Am I the one responsible for organizing these yearly travesties, where unexplored terrain looms in the distance, where only eagles and angels dare to fly, where both man and machine come together and leave exhausted and heavily worn? No, not me…it’s Nick Black. Enough said…

Nick Black

Philip

And last, but certainly not least, Philip. LOL Where do I start? This was Philip’s first Expedition experience. He may have been a green-horn at the start, but he was balls to the wall all the way. He very, VERY narrowly avoided deep water disaster on his Kodiak 450. However, on the last night of the trip, Philip-Pinot-Grigio learned what it meant to destroy a primary on an automatic transmission. I’ve never seen a belt roasted like that…

Now for some good stuff. Check this out:

Stay tuned for Part 2: Live Video

Later, I also decided to upgrade my hand grips with a set of ODI Rogue Lock-On Grips. I had bought an old Foreman for parts a few weeks before and it happened to have these new ODI grips on it, so now was a good time to transfer them over to my machine. Everything worked out great. I love the soft grips and the hand guards are awesome.

Main Clutch Basket & Ring Gear

I begin the repairs by draining the engine oil, putting the ATV up on a jack, and removing the front mud flaps and other plastic components that may be in the way. Then I remove the oil lines from the engine to the oil cooler. And finally, I remove the clutch case cover and expose the internals of the engine. Note in the picture below, the centrifugal clutch has to be removed prior to removing the main clutch. Sometimes it requires a special puller to remove the centrifugal clutch center before the clutch drum will slide off, however, sometimes you can use a rubber mallet and lightly persuade the drum to push the center off of the shaft which is what I did here.

Clutch Cover Removed

Centrifugal Clutch Removed

Once the centrifugal clutch is out of the way, you can remove the main clutch by first removing the springs and outer portion. This exposes the main nut, and once it is removed, the basket will then slide off the shaft. The whole thing goes back together in reverse order.

That covers my repairs to this thing. Next round of posts will be the upgrades!

I removed the tie rod end from the steering knuckle, marked the threads on the tie rod, and removed the end. The aluminum ends are bad about seizing on the steel rods, so I painted the threads with anti-seize compound and installed the new end…then repeated the process on the other side. The inner ends were still in good shape, so I’ll squeeze more life out of those for now.

Applying Anti-Seize to Tie Rod

New Tie Rod Ends

So while I’m at it, I figured it would be a good time to go ahead and overhaul the front brakes. The brakes still had a good handle (like having a good pedal), but it wouldn’t actually stop. This is an indication that the drums are rough and without a good, smooth surface the shoes will not have enough to grab. That’s what my problem was here. I pulled the drums to inspect everything. The good news is that everything was still sealing good, so there was no mud. However, due to age I had one frozen wheel cylinder and a few adjusters as well. So I ordered new drums as seen below, and I went ahead and ordered all new wheel cylinders.

New Brake Drum Next to Old One.

Once my tie rods and brakes were squared away, I put the ATV back on the ground and proceeded to set the toe of the front wheels. The easiest way to accomplish this is to place the ATV on level ground and fasten the handlebars perfectly straight. You’ll see in the photo below that I use tie straps to hold the handlebars straight.

Then it’s just a matter of measuring and adjusting. First measure across the rear of the tires, center of one tire to center of the other, and note the distance. Then measure across the front of the tires, center to center. If the front measurement is greater than the rear, it’s toed out. If the rear is greater, it’s toed in. Some ATV’s require a certain amount of positive or negative toe, and some require it to be equal with no positive or negative toe. I don’t recall off hand what the Foreman required, but I set it appropriately and tightened the lock nuts on the tie rod ends and called it finished. It drives great, and with the new brake job, it threw me over the handlebars the first time I hit the brakes. That’s exactly what I wanted!

Stay tuned for the next round of repairs…

This R40 is equipped with a rear trencher and a 4-way push blade for back filling. After reviewing the situation, we knew the first order of business was to raise the blade and trencher so we could tow the machine out to the gravel road for loading as the ground was much too soft to back the truck and trailer up to the machine where it sat. We disconnected the hydraulic line to the lift cylinder on the blade and used a come-along to winch it up.

Once the blade was up, we moved back to the trencher. The hydraulic line to the lift cylinder on the trencher had a quick-connect coupler, so it was easy to disconnect the line. I used the front-end loader on the tractor to raise the trencher while Philip held the fitting open so the hydraulic pressure could release. Once raised, we chained it up to the roll bar. Then we hitched the machine to the tractor and Philip towed it onto the road while I steered.

I then positioned my truck so we could load it up. Again, using the tractor, Philip pushed while I steered it up onto the trailer.

The trailer had a long tail on it, and given the weight of the machine when coming up the ramps, it provided enough leverage to raise the rear of my half-ton truck. Subsequently, the brake on the truck was of no affect and the truck skid a few feet as seen below.

Once secured, I set out on the road with the machine in tow. It was a weighty load for my small truck, but it handled the load just fine. Once we arrived at our destination, Philip used the tractor to pull the Ditch Witch off of the trailer as I steered.

We looked the machine over. First, I checked the normal wear points, such as any pivot pins, sprockets, teeth, etc., and overall, it is very straight and tight. It shows to have fewer than 2k hours, and the hour meter is functional. This seems to support my conclusions on the overall condition. In fact, the only wear I could really find on the machine was the tires, one of which is coming apart. The previous owner indicated that there was a drive problem, which is probably why it hasn’t been used in five or more years. We located a broken drive chain from the transmission to the drive components and rear hydraulic pump. That’s likely to be our drive problem and should be a fairly easy fix given there is nothing more serious that caused the chain to break. We then attempted to run the engine. We did actually get it to fire a few rounds, but only on two cylinders. The engine is the classic Wisconsin four-cylinder air cooled unit. Having set out in the weather for half a decade allowed for some moisture to get into the two rear cylinders and seize the valves. This should also be a relatively easy fix as long as the cylinders are in decent shape. Philip has already begun work on this his first equipment project.

I believe this machine would be a handy addition to a good equipment collection, or a start to one. Typically, you can rent a trencher cheaper than you can own one, but when the price is a bargain, like this one and like mine, it’s a good unit to have. The R40 is a sizable machine, about twice a big as my 2300. It has enough weight to easily handle the trencher, blade, and then some. It has provision on the front for a backhoe attachment, which includes the mounting points and the hydraulic hookups. The machine has two hydraulic pumps, one driven from the crankshaft and one driven from the transmission. I think this is going to be a fun project and a fun machine for him.

Until next time…

So on Day-3, things really got crazy on the trails. Everyone knew it was our last ride before departing for home that evening, so it was wide open balls to the wall! Some had to cut out early, the rest of us stayed to have every last bit of available fun before heading back to civilization. Amazingly there were no casualties, aside from me taking a roll in the creek and Chris having to be towed back to camp after floating his machine. It’s all documented in the slideshow at the bottom of this post.

Here are some screen caps from the slideshow posted below:

I’ll soon be posting the 3rd Annual Expedition from 2012…

It seems I have more pics of us cutting fire wood than anything else, nonetheless it was needed to survive the 20° nights and cold wind…

With camp provisions squared away, we set out for a hunt with the dog…

The next day it was too windy to hunt, so we engaged in some recreational shooting activities…

Our last night we had a pretty good ride, but after getting lost miles from civilization with temperatures rapidly dropping, no one was in the mood to take pictures.  However, after happening upon a rather oddly shaped tree, I couldn’t resist fishing out my camera and taking a few shots.

That wraps it up. Until next time…

After the local hydraulic shop, in a state of incompetence, screwed up my short lift cylinder, I decided to rebuild this one myself. Rebuilding the long cylinder is no easy task for two reasons. One: Due to its location within the mast (not to mention its weight), it is heck to remove and reinstall. Two: It is also more complex than the short lift cylinder as the long cylinder has a feed tube with all the associated bushings and seals. At first glance, there’s no logical strategy for getting it out, and since my service manuals don’t cover anything to do with the mast, I’m flying purely on what I hope to be at least a moderate level of competence in terms of my skill level. Nevertheless, I endeavored to persevere.

Since I figured the mast would have to be raised at some point during the procedure, I had to work on it outside the shop. I began by removing the hydraulic line attached to the feed tube. Then I removed the nut that fixes the feed tube to the top stage of the mast. You’ll note that I’m using a manual ratchet instead of an air wrench on this because the nut is self locking, and often times if an air wrench is used, it will destroy the threads because of the high rate of speed.

Hydraulic Line Removed from Feed Tube

Removing Feed Tube Nut

Might I add, the humidity level that day, and throughout most of the project, had to have been 200% if that’s even possible, which explains the somewhat foggy photos and my drenched shirts. Moving on… Next, and before loosening anything else fixture-wise, I decided to loosen the gland nut while the cylinder was still firmly in place. I didn’t have a wrench big enough, so the next day I borrowed a large chain wrench which did the job nicely.

Feed Tube Nut

Loosening Gland Nut

Next, I had to raise the mast so I could lower the junction block at the top of the feed tube through the second stage of the mast. For this I took my Clark lift and raised the carriage on the Allis lift until the second stage of the mast begun to raise. This was NO easy task. The Clark lift would barely handle the weight. To make matters worse, the junction block is slightly offset and refused to go down through the hole in the second stage. Careful not to bend the feed tube, I pried and hammered a bit before logic struck at which time I decided to loosen the bottom mounting nut on the cylinder (exactly like the top nut on the feed tube). This allowed some wiggle room, and alas, it dropped through and the top of the cylinder was now completely free.

Feed Tube Junction Block

Raising the Mast

The next step in removing the cylinder was to finish the bottom mount and unhook the bottom hydraulic line, but first I made certain the mast was safely suspended. Don’t let the compact size of this machine and these parts fool you; this stuff is very heavy. The machine weighs about 13,000 lbs, and the mast components are made from very thick and very heavy steel. There is literally a ton of weight hanging above me here, so safety is very important. I used a strong, heavy-gauge pipe to hold the mast up, then I chained the top portion of the mast for a backup safety mechanism. I also had the carriage double chained.

Safety Check

When attempting to unhook the hydraulic line from the base of the cylinder, it became evident that there was not enough room to maneuver the wrench in the tight space. So I decided to unhook the line back at the hydraulic valve. This would give me slack enough so when I removed the cylinder I could pull the base out far enough to use the wrench to remove the line from the base of the cylinder. Back at the valve, I also had to unhook and move the hydraulic filter to have enough room to work at the valve.

Filter Moved Back from the Valve

Disconnecting the Bottom Hydraulic Line

Finally, the heavy cylinder was ready to come out.

Now that the cylinder is removed, it is time to disassemble the components for inspection at which time we can also take measurements which will be needed to order the new parts. We place the cylinder down where we can easily work on it and remove the main gland nut, and then the main ram easily pulls out of the bore. Then, using the same chain wrench, we remove the feed tube gland from the ram, and the feed tube pulls out. Then, although it’s not pictured, we removed the feed tube gland which proved to be extremely stubborn to slide off the tube, but a long pipe and a sledge hammer did the trick.

Loosening Feed Tube Gland

Removing Feed Tube from Ram

Once everything is apart I can begin measuring the components to place an order for new packing. I couldn’t simply measure the old seals because they had completely disintegrated. This explains the hemorrhaging, and it also explains how rainwater was entering the hydraulic system. Nevertheless, I took measure and proceeded into the office to do what the incompetent local hydraulic shop said was impossible: find new seals. After approximately one Google search and three minutes of viewing an online catalog, I easily found the parts I needed and placed the order. Since my application has a feed tube involved, it required the most expensive packing kit. This is largely due to the addition of bronze bushings and extra seals. However, it was still much cheaper than anything the local guys could have ever came up with and I was happy to find the parts. Now, on to the business of reassembling the cylinder…

First we took the feed tube gland and knocked out the old plastic bushings and replaced them with the new bronze bushings that came in the kit. We used the hydraulic press to install the new bushings:

Installing Bronze Bushings

Reinstalling the gland back on the feed tube proved almost as difficult as removing it. We used a brake cylinder hone to reach precisely the correct inside diameter of the bronze bushings, then we used a buffing wheel on a Dremel tool to polish off any scars on the chrome feed tube. After that, we were able to slide the gland back on the tube with moderate pressure. Then we installed the feed tube back into the ram, and after installing the new wear ring / guide band,  we reinstalled the ram back into the cylinder. Once completed the final step was to install the new oil seal and dust seal into the main gland nut.

New Oil & Dust Seals for Gland Nut

With new oil and dust seals in the gland nut, it’s time to install the nut back onto the cylinder, and it is a tight fit over the feed tube gland and ram. To keep from destroying the new seals, we placed a spacer on top of the gland nut and then used two bolts through two flat bars and threaded them into the top of the feed tube gland. This slowly pressed the gland nut onto the ram without damaging the seals. And that concludes the assembly of the cylinder.

Installing Gland Nut

Cylinder Assembled

Now, before reinstalling the cylinder onto the forklift, we needed to paint it. Jose uses a wire brush to strip all the old paint off. Then he masks off the chrome before applying primer.

Stripping the Old Paint

Applying Masking Tape

To conclude, I come in behind him with a new coat of gloss white industrial enamel. We then reinstall the cylinder in the same sequence used to remove it. The final step was to refill and bleed the hydraulic system and give the machine a good scrub and wash.

Applying a Coat of Industrial Enamel

Finished and Back in Service!

Everything worked out great bringing us to the conclusion of this project. My Allis-Chalmers ACP 80 is back to work and running great.

Until next time…

This truck has been setting up for a few years and obviously needs some work to return it to roadworthy status. I’ve always wanted a winch truck for loading heavy equipment, and this one is larger than anything I imagined owning (you can see a much smaller version of winch truck that I also bought last summer here), but the price was right and the bed is in good shape for its age. Very cool old rig.

So once purchased, the first order of business was moving this monster. At first, I checked into getting it running and driving it home. However, upon close inspection I found the brakes, as well as other components, had taken a beating from the weather and it would take more time than I had to get it going. I thought about hauling it, but I didn’t have access to the type of trailer that would likely be required. The most viable solution was to have it towed. I called a local towing company and we immediately got to work. Concerned that the rear brakes may be stuck, we opted to tow it from the rear…

Once we got it rigged up, we hit the road. Since the yard at my shop isn’t quite big enough to have much non-running equipment present, I decided to have it towed to my friend’s property until I have time to get started on it. We had to get it into some tight places to reach its final parking place.

It was a tight squeeze for the wrecker to back out of the road we dropped the Mack on, but he got it done. Once the wrecker let it down, we used a 2006 Caterpillar D3 to move the truck into place. I jumped up into the cab of the Mack to steer. Below you’ll see some pics and a video clip of the process.

There are a few projects on the list before the old Mack, but once I thin some of those out, we’ll move it to my shop and get started. Until then….