log splitter question.

[Chris Sheppard]

Bad to see from the photos, but as Andy says, a few photos from further back would help.

 

Looks like it's fitted with anti crush/length stop. when it's running and auto returns, it should hit a stop bar when it gets back to it's rest position (or hits a length stop) and that should divert the oil back round the circuit rather than keeping pumping into the ram.

 

Sounds like it's returning and not diverting so it's still trying to fill the ram with oil and because it can't and it should either blow the relief valve or, in the case of a small petrol engine, possibly stall the engine if the releif valve's set quite high.

 

Hope that reads better than it sounded

 

More pics would definitely help

[treequip]

Thanks, why does it stall the engine?

I will get more pics.

 

The valve defaults to the port to close the ram, the mechanism is supposed to knock the valve into neutral at a pre determined point ( you should be able to set this)

 

That's not happening and the pressure relief valve is set higher than the engine can muster so it stalls.

 

Is it the original motor or has someone adjusted the pressure relief to get through those knotty bits?

[Hodge]

I have altered the pressure relief valve and it now returns and does not stall the engine. I have put some wood through and it works fine but I will adjust it if needed and see how it goes. Thanks for the replies everyone.

[windfall]

I have since had a play with the relief valve on one of my splitters, managed to set it so the motor is understress but just up from stall. It's made a massive difference to what it will split!

[Peter]

Just a word of caution, if you set the prv too high it can damage other components, particularly ram seals. Many of the mass produced rams are only rated to 210 bar, but the powerpack will more than likely put out more than that. The prv is there for a reason.

[Hodge]

Cheers Peter, I have set mine low.

[windfall]

Cheers for the heads up. I'm chancing it though ;-)

[treequip]

Just a word of caution, if you set the prv too high it can damage other components, particularly ram seals. Many of the mass produced rams are only rated to 210 bar, but the powerpack will more than likely put out more than that. The prv is there for a reason.

 

Not to mention damaging the structure of the machine, I have on on the bench art the moment that's been "over used", it needs a lot of welding and some beefing up because it's got the PR screwed right in.

[Hodge]

could i just put a log splitter valve block on instead of the one thats on it? ive seen them on e bay and they look more straight forward than mine. i would take off the all the stuff on mine and replace with the up down stop model, this way it would stop the ram where i want.

[Chris Sheppard]

could i just put a log splitter valve block on instead of the one thats on it? ive seen them on e bay and they look more straight forward than mine. i would take off the all the stuff on mine and replace with the up down stop model, this way it would stop the ram where i want.

 

Can't see why not, though losing the auto return might make it slower to use. If it's got auto return, it should have anti crush, which means it should be fairly straight forward to stop it mid stroke if that helped any?

 

Would need some more pics though.