Another one of Deano's brainwaves

[Dean Lofthouse]

There'll be no need for all that anyway, there are two big pumps on it, there'll be adequate flow when I pipe them together

[Dean Lofthouse]

Got it somewhere near, spent this aft washing it off, cleaning out and befitting the fuel tank and piping up the hydraulics. All I have to do is wire up the engine and relief valve to the control panel I made.

Hydraulics have been a nightmare converting spurious threads to bsp

[rowan lee]

Looking good anyways Dean. Is that two pumps side by side in second last picture or just one? Looks pretty beefy irrespectively. Will you assemble some kind of linkage system up front for the splitter or just bolt it on?

[Dean Lofthouse]

Yes there's two pumps which I've piped in together with a single return, the other two pipes on the left are what supplied the steering so I will use them as you say, to power a lift ram to pick up and put down the splitter on some sort of linkage

[Dean Lofthouse]

Finally got it back together, wired up the control panel I made and surprise.. It works, filled up with diesel, filled up with hydraulic oil everything working as it should.

Just need to hook up the splitter to see how it runs it, should be able to do that in the next few days or so.

[Dean Lofthouse]

Attached splitter and gave it a try, no problem with speed whatsoever, infact I'd say it was faster than when on the loader.

 

Only problem is when I tested pressure by seeing if it would blow off the relief valve on the splitter which is set at around 3000psi. It got fairly close then stalled the engine. I think it's too much for the engine to power the two pumps together at full pressure.

 

What I may do is put in a 1000 psi relief valve to return on the smaller of the two pumps so it is taken offline as the pressure rises and goes to one pump operation. Sort of like a dual speed system.

I could also put in a spool valve so I can run it on either one pump or two depending on what I'm splitting.

 

The other problem is the low hydraulic light comes on when doing a full 1.2m stroke. Because the ram is so big it uses a lot of oil out of the relatively small hydraulic tank.

Other than that it's brilliant, once I've repiped it, the next job is mounting the splitter which with a lift ram three point type attachment. Should be fairly straight forward as you can see from the photos.

Just one thing, if anyone is thinking about doing this, unless you are very clued up on electrics and hydraulics or you have a mate that is and owes you big time, I wouldn't try and take it on

[Breezeblock]

if you fit a lower pressure valve you will need to fit a non return valve in the feed line or it will dump thru the lower pressure side prv

[Dean Lofthouse]

if you fit a lower pressure valve you will need to fit a non return valve in the feed line or it will dump thru the lower pressure side prv

 

I have just realised that thanks

 

I am also thinking that if I use the smaller pump instead of the bigger pump as the high pressure pump it would have less effect on engine revs when working at full pressure ?

[Dean Lofthouse]

Success!

 

It works like a dream now, very fast ram speed and even when it touches the Log and dumps the second pump it still a good splitting speed, really pleased with it.

 

Hydraulics look a bit complex but it's really quite a simple circuit. One of the pumps is set at 500psi the second is set at 4000psi and it works a dream, the engine revs hardly change

[Scott Walker]

Well done Deano, I wish I had your brains.