Bogieman

Hi Stephen, 

Yes, I was aware that you were having some staffing problems.

Pete and Bob at Strathbogie have been doing their best to help, in fact the gearbox and pump is with them just now. Fitting a new gearbox would be a solution, albeit an expensive and unnecessary one as we can easily fit new bearings, they're simply standard open ballraces, but the major problem at the moment is the fact that we can't separate the pump from the box.The hollow splined shaft which takes the drive from the gearbox to the pump has been machined down at both ends to fit inside the bearings, and is attached at the pump end by an internal bolt. So far it has proved to be impossible to find a socket with a thin enough wall to fit inside the shaft and loosen this nut. Strathbogie don't have one, and neither do I. They have been in touch with the pump manufacturers to see if they have any suggestions. No doubt Special Tool No. abcxyz999!

They have done this job on previous occasions, but have never come across this problem before, the shaft has always been free to move, not bolted in place. Turning down a splined shaft to fit into a ballrace seems an odd engineering practice, why not use either bearings that fit the shaft or a shaft that fits the bearings in the first place? It almost seems as though they just use whatever happened to be on the parts shelf at the time, so that no two machines are necessarily the same.  Shades of old Massey combines!

Once the box was split, incidentally, it became obvious why the bearing had gone.  No oil!! The machine is about 3 years old, and I must admit I've never checked the gearbox oil level. Presumably it was full when new, otherwise we'd have been at this stage a long time ago. I never saw any sign of oil leakage, but there is a theory about where it went. The oil level plug on the side of the box doubles up as the breather, so is it possible that the oil, when hot, exited via the breather? It could have done so very gradually over the years and mingled unnoticed with the sawdust. At any rate the box will be getting refitted with the filler and breather plugs swapped over, and the level checked on a regular basis.

Hopefully back in production shortly.

The pump is held onto the box by four bolts. The pump shoukd then just pull off.  The tapered pump shaft has a male spline coupling that is held pn by a 8mm(?) Nut and tab washer.  This male spline slides into a femail spline in the gearbox. It sounds like you have been unable to pull the pump off the gearbox because the male spline coupling is solid inside the femai coupling? And you are now trying to undo the 8mm nut though the femail spline, from the inside face of the gearbox? 

I cant see how it could run for 3 years with no oil, but.....

Can you email [email protected] with a couple of pictures of the inside of the box to show lack of oiL.  Please state serial number. I will forward to Farmi to see if they will supply a gearbox FOC. Its worth a try, you never know.

Nb. Please don't reply to me via arbtalk as I find it all but impossible to use, hence not beeing aware of your post.  I think the new arbtalk layout stinks and is far from user friendly compared to its old user friendly workings.