It’s been a while since I’ve last updated here. We had a bit of a setback in the Fall and then Winter weather hit and we didn’t spend any time on the hoist, so there hasn’t been anything to share.
First the unfortunate setback. In the last post I showed the hoist working under it’s own power, which was certainly a significant milestone. However, once it started flowing hydraulic fluid around the system, we discovered that the boom extension cylinder, the largest and hardest to get to, was leaking … a lot. Thus we had to pull the boom apart to get that cylinder out and ended up having to get it rebuilt. Here you can see the removed boom and cylinder on the truck bed, and all the sawdust we had to use to clean up the mess.
It was no easy task getting the boom out, the main pivot pin, on the upper right in that picture, turned out to be bent and was very comfortable where it was, but we did manage to get it out and remove the boom (by strapping it to a tree and backing the truck away from it).
Once the cylinder was out, we could see that the rod was well pitted on the end, which probably destroyed the gland end seals. So we sent it out to be rebuilt.
Despite the setback, once we got the cylinder back, waited for some decent weather, and reassembled everything, including the freshly painted boom extension, everything was back up and running. The hoist has even got use on a couple of jobs. Here are Mike and Charlie pulling a 200′ deep well pump.
We’re currently working on building some outriggers. Without them it can only really be used on wells in nice flat locations, so the outriggers will add stability and leveling ability. Looking forward to providing more updates soon!