I had today up at Andrew's farm working on the Hymac; photos to come later when I have resized them, the plan was basically to strip off the dipper arm as I suspected that it may have cracked on the fork. In the event this turned out not to be the case although I suspect that the machine has a non-standard pin fitted through the fork.
Happy that she was not cracked I turned my attention to the removal of the dipper arm ram; I have a re-con ram that was ready to go straight on, the only issue encountered with the removal of the ram was that the pin securing the cylinder (a piece of bent wire) proved to be awkward to take out, my thanks to mechman Norman who helped out with this.
Once the wire was out the pins easily knocked out and Andrew lifted the ram off using his JCB Tele-handler; looking at the old ram the bushes were well worn due to too much grease (none, dry as a bone) to be expected for an old nail I suppose. Anyway we lifted the re-con ram on only to be faced with a new problem, the ram eye was too wide for the dipper arm!
The re-con ram was from a 580BT but at sometime in the past for whatever reason Hymac must have altered the width of the eye
this only left two options; one to remove material from the wider eye, or two remove material from the dipper arm boss. After discussion with Andrew it was decided to remove material from the dipper using his 9" angle grinder and slitting discs, this was done with no real detrimental weakening of the boss, and the ram was duly fitted.
I did test the digger out although she leaks oil from one of the two flexi-hoses which are well knackered anyway; while I was there I checked the thread and length of these two hoses and will get some new ones made ready for fitting at some point in the future, it was 6:30 gone by the time I left there so a good days work done, I will post photos once they have been resized but a good wash and bed are calling.
Jeremy