A quick recap on this amazing neighbor: The one who gave us a few cords worth of logs after their property was logged, gave us two generators from his brother who passed….and now let us borrow this splitter his brother owned. Not sure of the brand, but it’s a solid unit. It has a 9hp Subaru/Robin engine, a side table and it goes both horizontally and in Dennis Mode®️. I hooked it up to the quad and brought it up back for a few test splits this afternoon: Dennis Mode®️ Did a few test splits; some knotty pine, hemlock and knotty birch. It went through everything no issue. I did notice the bolt that holds the wedge to the cylinder is broken, so when vertical, the bolt will pop out. We have to run into town tomorrow, so I’ll get a new bolt & nut to repair.
Many times those bolts break because the end of the ram does not seat against the wedge the way it should when pushing into a log...the ram should be transferring it's pressure directly to the wedge without loading the bolt...the bolt just keep things lined up, and it also pulls the wedge back when retracting. If that unit has much time on it, it may need some shims put in to take the load off the bolt when splitting. I had to shim things quite a bit on my old Huskee based splitter.
I agree with the suggestion of adding some shims, the bolt shouldn't be taking that much of a beating. Also, well done on making the repair before returning it. That's a great way to be neighborly. I was always told by the elders in my life that you should return borrowed equipment in better shape than when you got it!
Thanks guys! I unfortunately had some trouble with the bolt today. Long story short, the holes would not line up between the cylinder and wedge. I could get the bolt about 3/4 of the way in and that was it. Tried spinning it with a ratchet and tapping it with a hammer. Since it’s not my splitter, I didn’t want to go crazy with force. I have a feeling drilling it or a partial disassembly will take care of it. I’ll talk to my neighbor about it. I have two bolts, two nylock nuts and two standard nuts so that should help things! I opted to keep the splitter horizontal and split a good amount of white pine and spruce. My lovely wife handled stacking duties. The weather looks wet tomorrow and we are having some family visit. Hoping the weather holds next weekend so we can get after it again.
Looks like a nice shady place to split. Nice work. Wish my wife would help… more. What about using a smaller diameter bolt?
From the picture it looks like the hole needs drilled to the same diameter of the bolt to clean things up...looks like a bur there?
Thanks! Weather was just about perfect yesterday; rain today unfortunately. A smaller bolt could totally work. I’ll ask my neighbor what he wants to do.
From what I can tell, the holes aren’t lined up perfectly between the cylinder and wedge. Wondering if unbolting the lower part of the wedge would let me turn it slightly…
That's a possibility...did you try running the ram out to different positions (full extension?) to see if that helped? It looks like that bolt goes in vertically? You could also pop the pin out of the other end of the cylinder to adjust it up/down, get bolt in, then pop pin back in. Another thing that comes to mind is that there could be dirt in the pocket? Maybe knock the wedge off and see if things need cleaned up in there to seat properly?
If you pop the pin out of the cylinder put a long thin board under it that is long enough to act as a lever to lift/lower the cylinder
Had that thought myself...may need a lil encouragement (but at risk of boogering a thread or two a lil too)
He’s got the old bolt… raise the cylinder Taper the tip, drive it in to align it all up from the bottom. Drive the new bolt home. And don’t be slow with it. Like one smack drive it home. he won’t bugger the threads that way. If they do, hit it with a thread chaser (not a die) . ETA: maybe even just get a piece of 1/2” rod that’s longer than the bolt shoulder. Like the full length of the wedge hole. Taper it. And drive it in from the top lining everything up. the drive the bolt home in one strike of the hammer.
