Anyone know who made this dump bed hoist?

[Ranman72]

I will likely try to do it myself after it warms up, I will let you know if I run into any issues.

it is like anything else for the first time 

take it apart one piece at a time and pay close attention (pics along the way help) to the direction of any and all parts 

you will be surprised how easy it will be 

[Stoffregen Motorsports]

 

No one can tell me who made this dump bed assembly, no one has even tried to guess.

These types of companies have been bought, sold, absorbed by larger companies, gone out of business. It's so hard to tell who built these things. But then even if you were able t find out, it was so long ago that they probably wouldn't be able to help you anyway.

 

I also have a dump truck, it's a 1979 K30 Chevy Dually 4x4 and it has an old hydraulic dump bed on it, so I know what you're going through. Never could find anything about the company that built mine either.

[wayno]

Well I know what is wrong, this thing sat way too long and appears the top of the barrel rusted.

Is there anything I can do about this, will honing it possibly work?

The seal don't look that bad, but it is a little rough inside, not terrible rough, but it sure isn't smooth, I can hardly believe that camera got this photo in semi focus.

[nl320what]

Been doing Lowrider Hydraulics for awhile, these shops are around still and can rebuild under $100. 

 

Also could locate new cylinders also depending on size, dont need a 10ton cylinder so you could reconfigure slightly too.

 

https://www.norwesthydraulic.com/

 

http://www.tacomahydraulics.com/

 

Is my Fav----> https://www.northerntool.com/

[wayno]

I have already asked about new cylinders and was told rebuild what I have.

Been doing Lowrider Hydraulics for awhile, these shops are around still and can rebuild under $100. 

 

Also could locate new cylinders also depending on size, dont need a 10ton cylinder so you could reconfigure slightly too.

 

https://www.norwesthydraulic.com/

 

http://www.tacomahydraulics.com/

 

Is my Fav----> https://www.northerntool.com/

[Rick-rat]

You could probably hone out the top to where the O-rings on the cap are set, it should stop the leak, wouldn't hurt to try. The rust may affect the piston seal, you could give light hone all the way down  

[wayno]

You could probably hone out the top to where the O-rings on the cap are set, it should stop the leak, wouldn't hurt to try. The rust may affect the piston seal, you could give light hone all the way down  

 

It's going to need to be honed all the way to where the piston was on the bottom of the cylinder in the bed down position, that bottom 3 inches is clean, everything from there to the top end has rust pitting.

If it will not work with less leaking than it had, I will need to figure something else out.

[Stoffregen Motorsports]

The only way to know for sure is to measure it. If the pits are deeper than about .005", then you probably can't hone it.

 

Do you have someone that can hone that long of a cylinder? I know shock companies can, but your average machine shop won't likely be able to.

[flyerdan]

If you can't find a hone with the depth required, I'd fab one up from a small can that would fit inside, like a tomato sauce can, some all thread and pop rivet some strips of wet/dry in layers so the rivet heads are covered and work the bad area, feathering side to side.  Then clean it up with some strips of scotch brite and diesel.  That's cheap and easy and can be whipped up with stuff you already have laying around (if you're a packrat bodger like me).

If the rust is at the top of the cylinder, that would mean that is would be from moisture in the air and not water in the system, so it shouldn't be as deep; it might clean up with the scotchbrite alone.

[wayno]

This likely happened from moisture in the air and sitting years in one spot out in the weather, the engine in the truck suffered rust damage also, but that was so bad the piston could not get past the rust, water sat in #4 cylinder for years.

 

What I did yesterday evening was use my Dremel with a cable extension and a fine brass wire wheel on it, basically I rested the wire wheel on the surface lightly and moved in and out, I could not press very hard because it is only an inch round wire wheel with very fine strands, all it really did was remove the rust color, it is still rough inside, I can catch my finger nail on the edges of the rust pits, I don't really know how rough it is farther down as I can only reach in a few inches with my finger.

 

I guess I was thinking of the type of hone like the ones used to do brake cylinders, I am never going to be able hone out the rust pits, but the seal is 3/8ths inches wide, so I guess I am hoping if I can smooth it out in there a little that the new seal will seal a little better than the old one did, this thing worked fine it just leaked after coming to a stop and resting on the fluid inside the cylinder, then it leaked, it didn't squirt out as it was rising.

I actually have a hone that barely opens wide enough, but it is not near long enough.

I am hoping whatever I do don't make it worse, I guess if I cannot get this thing to seal or at least leak less I will have to go about this differently, if I cannot fix it and it continues to get worse, I will likely convert over to a single larger cylinder in the middle that uses around the same oil flow as the two cylinders did combined, I may not understand that kind of stuff so if my thinking is flawed in respect on how large a single cylinder should be just tell me how I should figure out the cylinder size.

[wayno]

OK, the first thing I tried to was get the nut off the end of the shaft that holds the seal on, well I broke an inch and a quarter socket trying with the impact and it didn't move, then I tried this huge crescent wrench I have with a sledge hammer, I could not move it, I gave up, then I called Seal Source Inc and asked if it had to be off for them to match the seal and guess what(easy guess), it has to be off and they cannot remove it for me, I looked at my seal real close and it actually looks good to me so I set this part aside.

Next I went to the auto parts store and started looking for a hone that would do the honing, they were all too short but I found one that expanded to 2 3/4 inches and bought it, then I went to the hardware store and found a chuck that would fit into my small Dewalt impact that I use as a screwdriver and ratchet wrench with adapters, I have bits to use it as a drill also,  the chuck and the hone just make it to the end of the cylinder barely connected to my impact, I squirted some oil in the barrel of the cylinder and on the lightest setting for the hone I started honing away, I did this for a while, cleaned it out and looked inside, then repeated it a few times, new oil every time, after a while(I wasn't spinning the hone very fast) I cleaned it out real good and looked and felt inside, both ends looked awesome but the middle appeared to be the worst, I got a long screwdriver out and lightly felt how rough the middle felt, it wasn't terrible so I stopped honing.

next I squirted some hydraulic oil inside the tube and used my finger to spread it out around the whole end, then I put some more on the piston end and I slid it in and tightened it up, then I put my finger over the fitting hole and tried to move the piston shaft, I could not get it to move far unless I took my finger off the hole, I called it good.

I installed it on the lift assembly, connected the hose, went to the lever and started trying to lift it looking for leaks the whole time, it took a while before anything happened(air in the cylinder) but it finally started to rise and the safety lever fell, I could see no leaking, I dropped it all the way down and then lifted it up again and it went up faster than I had ever seen before, it also went farther than it had ever went before, and so far no leaking.

I believe the reason it would not go up farther in the past is that once it got to a point that cylinder leaked so bad that that cylinder quit lifting and the other one kept rising till in bound and the whole thing stopped, well now it goes all the way(full throw) to the top, it went so far I started looking around to see if it was hitting anything new.

I am pretty sure the other cylinder has rust in it also if this one had rust, but it doesn't leak at all, I got real lucky this time and it worked out, but I am a little worried about taking the other one apart because I might not be so lucky with that one, should I take it apart???

It works great now, better than it ever has since owning it, I got real lucky.

 

I probably should pull it apart because the shaft I worked on looks clean of oil/fluid while the one I have not touched has a film of oil/fluid on it even though it does not leak yet.

[Rick-rat]

Good job Wayno, as far as the other cylinder goes, as they say, if it ain't broke don't fix it

[Charlie69]

Good Job Wayno!

 

We would have to weld an extension to a ball hone in order to reach some of the places we would have to hone when I worked as mill mechanic at the Bagdad open pit copper mine.

 

http://www.brushresearch.com/product-line.php?line=1

[wayno]

Thank you guys

 

I think I am going to have to take the other one apart as if there is rust inside it I want to take care of it before the seal gets ruined, I am so lucky that the seal wasn't ruined on the cylinder I did, as I said there is a film on the good one that the one I fixed doesn't have now, I have everything fresh in my mind, so I may take it apart tomorrow.

Fact is it only took me 10/15 minutes to get the one I fixed out and when I put it back in I used cotter pins instead of nails and I greased the joints also, I can likely do this other one faster as long as it is not worse than the one I fixed, maybe fixed is not the proper word, it functions without leaking so far, I cannot really say I fixed anything, I just made the conditions inside the barrel better for the seal.

 

This is what I used to hone the barrel, it was made to do up to a 2 3/4 inch hole, it is just long enough(11 inches) to get to all the rust in the barrel, the last few inches at the bottom of the barrel is where the piston was at rest and there was no rust there at all.

They had a hone at the auto parts store that would have done the whole barrel, it was huge and looked scary to me, it looked like it would just start taking metal out of the cylinder barrel like it was butter, it had 3/4 inch stones(3 of them), and it was over $40.00 with tax, I found this smaller one above for less money and it didn't look near as aggressive, I would rather have to hone longer than screw it up. 

[flyerdan]

A lot of times they use the good Loctite to secure the nut that holds the piston to the shaft, so it needs to be heated pretty good before trying to get it off.  You really don't need to remove it unless the gland seal needs replaced, as the only way it will come off is out the back or cutting the T sleeve off the front.

Glad that you managed to get such good results without spending a fortune; you probably don't need to do the other side, but since you're already set up for it and it's relatively easy it would be good to have a look, just for peace of mind.

[wayno]

My plan is to take it apart today and have  look, if it has no rust I will just put it back together and call it good, if it has rust I will do the same thing to it that I did to the other one.

[wayno]

Well I pulled it apart and it had very little rust, and what was there was on the very end of the cylinder barrel where I don't even have to lift it as the debris falls out long before I get that high, never the less I lightly honed the end area and then put it back together, it works fine also.

It appears I smoked the relay, I don't seem to have a lot of luck with relays.

[Stoffregen Motorsports]

Sounds like you got it working properly. Does it bleed off anymore? Or does it hold firm? My dump bed bleeds off and raises slowly so I wonder if this would be an easy fix for me as well.

[wayno]

Sounds like you got it working properly. Does it bleed off anymore? Or does it hold firm? My dump bed bleeds off and raises slowly so I wonder if this would be an easy fix for me as well.

 

It's like a different dump bed now, before it puked oil when I stopped raising it, it may very well puked while raising it just not as bad, I always took it to the same height as it would not go any higher and used the brace bracket to drop it onto too release all the pressure to stop it from puking oil, I don't know if it bled off because I didn't want to leave puddles of oil everywhere every time I raised it.

Now it doesn't puke oil, yesterday I raised it and then marked the shaft and I didn't see the mark disappear, but it didn't appear to be dropping and I forgot to look at the mark when I lowered it.

It also raises faster and goes up WAY higher than it did before, I have concluded that I did not have to re-position the brace seat like I did, but I will leave it where it is as can get to everything easily to work on it so I don't see the point, the reason I re-positioned the seat was because it would not go any higher, the reason it would not go any higher was because that bad cylinder would leak past the seal but the other one kept raising and the assembly would bind, I thought it was because of the way I attached the flatbed to the rails and how I mounted it to the frame, but now I suspect the more I kept raising it the worse the seal was leaking, the slower and it would raise and it would raise less distance(stroke got shorter and shorter) as it was raising slower so the leak would stop it sooner, I hope you understand what I am saying.

Once I fixed it( :lol:), it would go all the way to its full height/stroke and abruptly stop, but things started to hit other things like my license plate and tow plug for the trailer lights as when I mounted both of them it would not go that high, but as I mentioned before the debris falls out long before I get that high so I am not going to worry about that right now.

OK, when I did what I did to fix my issue with the leaking cylinder my thought process told me if I took too much out of the cylinder barrel honing it the seal was not going to make a seal, that is why I didn't buy that very large hone that could have reached the end of the barrel as I was a few inches short of getting to the end the way I did it, my thinking was the seal was 3/8ths inches wide, so I thought take all the sharp edges sticking up from the surface in the barrel that I could easily catch my finger nail on and call it good and see what happens, so far it has worked, I didn't take much metal at all out of that barrel/cylinder, I just tried to make it smoother when I ran my finger over the surface I could reach, it still didn't feel smooth by any stretch of the imagination, but before it was very rough and I could easily catch my finger nail on it, afterwards it was way harder to find places to catch my finger nail and when I could it didn't feel like as solid of a catch, I had the hone set at its loosest setting, put motor oil in the cylinder and went at it for quite a while stopping every minute or so to check for hone marks and hone mark angles, when I was done I could still see lots of places where the hone had never touched because of pitting, but it felt smoother so I called it good, I GOT LUCKY!!!, at least so far I have.

The colder it is the slower it raises, and it has been cold around here for a while, the day I fixed( :lol:) that first cylinder it was 35 degrees out and I was being lightly snowed on, I am hoping as the temps rise it will work better/rise faster than it does now, we shall see if it keeps working after it warms up.

[Stoffregen Motorsports]

Sounds great. I think I'll add this to my list of things to do once spring happens and I need my dump truck.

[wayno]

Sounds great. I think I'll add this to my list of things to do once spring happens and I need my dump truck.

It kinda depends on why yours is leaking down, if it is losing fluid out the shaft then it may be the seal, if it is dry but leaking down it may be in the valve on the pump assembly, mine was rust inside the cylinder barrel from sitting for years out in a guys driveway.

Keep in mind that everything I got from that guy had issues, one of the dump bed assembly cylinders leaked as there was no bed on it to cover the motor/pump assembly/cylinders as it had rusted away and he had cut it all off the rails, the motor on the TommyGate I got from him was frozen solid in its bushings, once I got it apart and cleaned it up it worked great for the most part(relay had to be fixed), and the 1986 Nissan 720 Z24 engine had gotten water into #4 cylinder from sitting out in the weather without the hood on it, I suspect the water gathered in the middle sunken part of the airfilter housing and made its way into the cylinder, it had been in there so long that the piston could not get by the rusted area even after dragging in in gear down the road, I even drug it backwards, the Knapheide flatbed rear piece that is supposed to drop into the bed pockets, well the legs(4 inches) that are supposed to hold it in place are completely rusted off, the front and sides were alright as they were used, but since the flat bed had a TommyGate I suspect that piece sat leaned against his shed and rusted the legs off.

I am not bitching about all this stuff as I got it for free, and I have salvaged a lot of it and am going to be using it, but yours doesn't sound like it has sat the way this stuff has, especially since it sat in an area that gets a LOT of rain and he lives in the woods, trees surround his property, they have closed I5 in this area because it was under water because of so much rain, you live in CA where they don't get the kind of rain totals we get, it rains a lot here, especially the last 10 years, the weather has changed here, moss grows on everything, I should know as I pressure wash for a living and spend my days outside in the weather.

[wayno]

I talked to the guy I got all these parts from yesterday and he said the box he cut off the dump bed assembly was a Knapheide box, but he had cut it off and scrapped it because of rust, so I went to the local Knapheide store in Troutdale OR and parked it out front, I lifted the bed before going in and then entered the building and asked for the guy I was told to ask for, the guy happened to be the one I talked to on the phone, he walked out and looked at it first then went inside, in a matter of minutes I had a crowd around my truck, half a dozen people came out to take a look at it, I guess they had never seen one on a small truck.

One guy that looked at it was helpful, he went into his office and came back out a little while later with a place he was sure I could find the cylinders I needed, all I needed was stroke(collapsed and extended), bore, and mount eye type/size, the outfits name is,  http://www.surpluscenter.com/Hydraulics/Hydraulic-Cylinders/Single-Acting-Hydraulic-Cylinders/

I thanked him and left as everyone had went back to work.

[flyerdan]

Link doesn't work; it's probably the same one I posted way back on page 1.

[wayno]

Link doesn't work; it's probably the same one I posted way back on page 1.

Your right, you did supply that link on the first page and I replaced my non-working link with yours, thankyou.

 

When you supplied that link I had not taken my cylinder apart yet, I had not a clue what to look for and still don't, I have no idea what most the numbers mean yet(1.5X13X1), but I will eventually learn out of necessity, I expect in the end I will have to call them and talk about what I need on the phone with a tech, I have most the measurements needed or I can get them now as I understand what is needed, before I just measured the outside of the cylinder housing(across and length), and the shaft across, I did screw up and I didn't measure the inside diameter of the tube when I had it apart, but it is around a 1/4" less than the outside diameter.

I still don't know what my hose connection type is called, the guy at Hydraulics Inc called it custom, and both sides on mine are different, the hose connects differently, one has a fitting, the other side doesn't and this was pointed out to me at Hydraulics Inc. 

[distributorguy]

I'd be pretty surprised if they didn't use a very common, inexpensive cylinder.  I just looked at a bunch of similar ones at Northern Tool, all priced at $99.