While I have been busy at my day job I have not had time to escape to the Poclain and Hymac; however working in an engineering based company does have its advantages and I got two new dowels made to fit in the place of the old ones that help keep the Poclain slew box in position.
While I only got one out during my last visit there are actually two dowels, must say that I was surprised that these were made from soft metal, an easy test for this is to try and file the surface with an engineers file, if the file cuts the material it is soft if it does not cut you know it has been hardened.
The only difference that I specified for the new dowels was that the old ones had an M8 thread sticking out to which a nut and washer held the dowel in place, I have arrowed this on the one photo, I simply asked the engineer to drill and tap the dowel M8 at least 20mm deep and I have since inserted a suitable set pin with some 'nut lock' on it that I will cut to length once I am back at the digger.
I had the two new dowels made out of EN24T which is suitably tough enough to do the job you can see the micrometer measurement for the old dowel and the new ones; the old one was roughly 16.35mm so that's well over 0.5mm wear, I had the new ones made to 17.00mm although I suspect they may be a loose fit
however there are ways around that so when I next get up there I will try and get them fitted, either way I will apply some 'bearing fit' type adhesive to help keep them in place.
If you look at the old dowel you can see there is a slot in the one side; this is merely a relief to prevent the dowel from compressing air trapped underneath the head thus making it harder to fit, the ones that I have had made have a simple relief ground onto them.
Jeremy