Mulching - "The Daily Grind"

[treemuncher]

Like Tones, I prefer damp conditions. Nothing worse than a sunny day with dry conditions where I can't see the head in front of me. I always run extra discharge guards on my heads that keep mud and chip spray on the windshields to a minimum compared to stock. If I'm in the tracked machine, I have continued to work with over an inch of rain falling on me. When it gets too slick, then I will stop. It all depend on the jobsite conditions.

I had a clicking noise last night about 15 minutes before shut down. I thought that I had picked up a logger's cable at first but no imbalance and continous clicking. Turns out I wore out one of my hardbars of the liner and partially ate it. I had rebuilt this head maybe 1,500 hours ago. I has eaten a lot of gravel and rock in that time. I guess it was due.



I can't get in there to cut, grind or weld with the roll in the way. I got started on dropping that, today. Not a fun task, especially out in the heat on a remote jobsite. At least it's not too far from home.

 

[mowingman]

Like Tones, I prefer damp conditions. Nothing worse than a sunny day with dry conditions where I can't see the head in front of me. I always run extra discharge guards on my heads that keep mud and chip spray on the windshields to a minimum compared to stock. If I'm in the tracked machine, I have continued to work with over an inch of rain falling on me. When it gets too slick, then I will stop. It all depend on the jobsite conditions.

I had a clicking noise last night about 15 minutes before shut down. I thought that I had picked up a logger's cable at first but no imbalance and continous clicking. Turns out I wore out one of my hardbars of the liner and partially ate it. I had rebuilt this head maybe 1,500 hours ago. I has eaten a lot of gravel and rock in that time. I guess it was due.

View attachment 361285

I can't get in there to cut, grind or weld with the roll in the way. I got started on dropping that, today. Not a fun task, especially out in the heat on a remote jobsite. At least it's not too far from home.
View attachment 361286

Damp works for me, but not wet. Dust is ok, IF, the A/C is working properly. We usually have the dust conditions here in Texas.

 

[treemuncher]

The jobsite got wet again and I really did not want to try to do this repair in the field with lots of mud. I pulled the head off of the machine and took it home. At 10k lbs, it is a beast of a mulcher.



Good thing that I decided to bring it back to the shop. The right side bearing was the worst that I have likely ever pulled. The pulling bolts on the housing started rounding off so they could not be pulled back out, a regular screw type puller would not remove it and the torch came into play. That still did not get it off although it did start to move. Yesterday, I went to HF and got their 10 ton hydraulic puller - nice unit, but barely budged it. A bunch more torch work, shock hammering while the puller was fully loaded and air hammering....I finally got some movement. Just a little at a time until the puller was at max displacement. Reset and continue. Eventually, I did get that bearing off and the housing is still intact. It's a really good thing that I did bring the head home. This was not an easy "in the field" job.



Finally, after 3 days of work, I finally have the rotor out of the housing and the housing is flipped up into work position, chained down on the trailer. Looking through my records, I rebuilt this housing about 1,000 hours ago. The section that let loose looks to be the original wear plate so that has nearly 4,000 hours on that surface. The super thick wear bars are the ones that I put on when I rebuilt the unit. My stuff should be good for 10k hours in wear rate comparison, maybe longer.



I do not know how I would be getting all of this done without the Menzi. It sure is a handy tool to help with major repairs. Flipping this housing about would have been really sketchy with the forklift. Not much of an issue with the Menzi.

 

[treemuncher]

The culprit that refused to let go but the shaft is still perfect. Patience is a virtue.


Midway through the removal process.

 

[BC Placer gold]

Nice work!

 

[treemuncher]

Well, I caught this at a good time. Nothing below the liner was worn away. I tested the original liner and that appears to be common mild steel. It drilled like butter. It cut the same with the plasma cutter and I ran a cutoff disk to make the new bottom line as I did not have quite enough chromium coated hard steel to fill in all of the original 2 strips. The bottom strip still had a lot of material left so I snapped a chalkline and set out with a cutoff disc where I needed the new bottom weld line. I will grind out the rest of the welds in the AM and get ready to install the new pieces.




I still had this piece of 3/16 on 3/16 left over from another rebuild on the FAE head. Although extremely expensive, this stuff wears for a super long time. 3/16 chromium carbide laid over 3/16 hot roll - weldable, bendable and easy to cut with the plasma cutter. Not so much with a wheel! The edges of the housing did not have as much wear as the middle section did so this will fill in the worst of it. 60" wide by 6.5" plus anothe 5.5" cut off will be used. This leave 15.5" on either side that I will likely hardface to extend its service life.

 

[treemuncher]

Head bound down on the trailer in repair position


Replace the worst worn area with hard plate. Used mig hardface wire to rebuild the original liner that I did not have hardplate available for.


Assembly time. Good thing that I have that orange rotator fitting, otherwise there was no way that I could have put it back together alone. Makes spinning a heavy load effortless.


2 new main bearings. No sense in putting anything used back into it when I have this much labor in.


Although not pictured, I rebuilt the worn areas of both skids with mig hardwire, new hydraulic return line, rewrapped the existing lines with any needed spiral wrap and installed new rear guard materials before taking it back over to the machine. Ready for service.

 

[treemuncher]

Finally dry enough to get a day in before the rain chased me off again. The after shots were about 2/3 through the day. I did get to enjoy watching a full grown bald eagle join me on the jobsite but I was unable to get a decent pic of him. He was likely cleaning up my leftovers of furry or scaly critters consumed during operations. I enjoyed watching him more than the vultures.

There is an untold number of hardwood stumps hiding in there along with tops and lots of ruts from previous logging operations.




Same area, a little to the left of the first set of pics

 

[HarleyHappy]

I can only imagine how many snakes and other wildlife that have gone through that machine.
I remember bush hogging in my property in TN and I mounted a rifle mount because the coyotes would come running, every time I lit the hog up!

 

[Tones]

One time on a job I cleaned up a small heap of trees then stopped to have some lunch,looked back and about a dozen Kestrels were flying of with stuff in their beaks. Curious about what they were taking I had to check it out. A nest of Red Bellied Black snakes had called the heap home. They are on the list of the world's most deadliest snakes but only while they're alive. That day they became bird tucker.
It also proved how environmentally friendly mulching trees is.

 

[davo727]

Finally dry enough to get a day in before the rain chased me off again. The after shots were about 2/3 through the day. I did get to enjoy watching a full grown bald eagle join me on the jobsite but I was unable to get a decent pic of him. He was likely cleaning up my leftovers of furry or scaly critters consumed during operations. I enjoyed watching him more than the vultures.

There is an untold number of hardwood stumps hiding in there along with tops and lots of ruts from previous logging operations.
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View attachment 361812

Same area, a little to the left of the first set of pics
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View attachment 361814

That have a separate powerpack/ engine?

 

[treemuncher]

That have a separate powerpack/ engine?

No, it does have a splitter box on the rear of the engine that drives the 4 main pumps. Fan, travel, accessory and mulcher pumps. It has the Cummins QSL 8.9 engine.