We finally got some room cleared for more pallets and started splitting more wood. This stuff has been sitting for a few years and has some fungus on it but the inside looks ok. Not great wood, but lots of it. I didn’t realize it had been sitting so long or I would have done it up sooner. We started running the splitter and it was moving faster than I remembered. I looked at the pump and sure nuff, it’s bigger than I remembered. It’s listed as 14.1 gpm, but the two stages are 13/1.8, so it should be 14.8 gpm total. Either way that puppy was movin’. We split a nice pile in the 10-15 minutes we had before dark. Tomorrow will be stacking and more splitting. There’s probably 8 cord of that older maple to split up and maybe a cord and a half of ash on the trailer. Then we can get to the main pile of probably 30-40 cord. I have been adding loads to it for a while and can’t pile it any higher or push it back any more with the bobcat. It has to go. I will try to get some pics/video tomorrow. I do need to put a lighter spring in the splitter valve, because it is quite difficult to hold the lever in the “go” position.
I often question if I'm either slower than I remembered or the splitter is running exceptionally well.
I got the spring replaced. It’s a night and day difference with the effort required to move the lever. It required serious effort to move before, probably because of some lawyer… I can easily move it with a finger tip now. The grease in the detent was some china junk and looked dirty, so I cleaned it out and put some hd red tacky grease in it. I’m happy. The black spring is the old one and the silver spring is the new one. Now for some more splitting.
I split for a while tonight and it took a while to get used to the new spring. The feel of the lever is amazing. I used to slam my hand into it to help it move and still had to push pretty hard. Now it moves with a fingertip. It feels like this… 7.1M views | Reel by THE-LOWDOWN.com I still find myself hitting it too hard, out of habit, but I am getting used to it. You don’t realize how draining it is to hold a lever until yo don’t really have to hold it. One finger keeps it fully tipped in the forward direction, and one finger moves it to the retract detent. I also added a knob to the lever because it was not comfortable to hold or operate as just a metal rod. My old Cross valve had a nice knob on the end and was easy to rest your hand on. I decided to use a golf ball because it won’t freeze to a wet glove in cold weather and is more palm friendly. I drilled out the golf ball a bit undersized and pressed it onto the rod with the old plastic cover extending below to prevent wet gloves from freezing to the rod. I’ll get pictures tomorrow. The release pressure for the detent has been set at about 100 psi to reduce wear on components, and I didn’t see any visible wear on the detent components when I had it apart.
