1987 JCB 3CX Sitemaster 2WD

[Slooby]

Seeing as my thread over in the Backhoe/Loaders section has rapidly (d)evolved from me asking a couple of specific questions into a Project thread, I thought it might be wise for me to shift it over to here.

Right, so the machine is question is a February 1987 'Black Cab' (Project 5 or 6?) JCB 3CX Sitemaster 2WD with Extradig and unusually a JCB Q-Fit quick-change fitted on the front loader, S/N: 325564/P/S. Annoyingly the dry-break hydraulic couplings have been taken off the front and I only found a single male and female set in the cab with some extra pins.

While somewhat over excitedly awaiting its arrival I ordered up a selection of fluids to top up and perform a service, along with a filter set for said service (although now I have the machine I seem to be short one fuel filter. I also got a litre of Tractol 927 cold galvanising paint and some Tractol JCB Yellow machine enamel in at the same time

This is how the machine looked on arrival:

[Slooby]

On initial inspection it is not a bad looking machine, there's tiny weep from the gearbox (output shaft seal) onto the trans brake, and a similarly small weep from the steering ram but they seems to be it from the leaks point of view.

There front 2wd steering axle needed some attention as there was play in the drag link pins/bushes and the same on the steering ram pins and bushes, the whole axle front axle shifts fore and aft about the pivot pin.




I've rectified this by making up some spacers out of 500 grade High Molecular Weight Polyethelene (aka HMWPe and Cutting Board grade, 1000 grade is more typically used for engineering, but I have stacks of the cutting board material at my disposal as my Sister and Brother-in-law have a business selling them from the family home) and we shall see how they fare. If they fall apart I'll bite the bullet and re-shim the front pivot.





A replacement set of pins and bushes for the steering drag ling and ram are on order from Vicary

There's quite a bit of rot where the beacon is attached on the roof that will need addressing one day, but the beacon is siliconed on so it's not letting any water in for now. The rust was obviously caused by the beacon bowing the thin roof skin there allowing water to puddle. But other than that the cab is in great condition.

The offside rear window is missing its sealing rubber so I spent an evening trawling ebay for the right section seal and have some on order



When I looked at the photos of the machine before I bought it I missed that both rear tyres had nasty splits in them, so they will need replacing sooner rather than later:




The fronts are low on tread, but are less of a priority because they are unlikely to fail on me while I am using the machine for what it was bought for

I have also realised that I am missing the rear boom lock plate, the front loader arm safety strut and a cap for the kingpost, another call to Vicary is on the cards.

[Slooby]

The machine only came with a single 18" trenching bucket on the excavator arm, but I struck it lucky and managed to pick up on Saturday, from a machinery trader over near Ashford (not Kent Tractors), a 24" digging bucket and a 60" ditching/grading bucket for £100




They may have a little bit of rust that could do with cutting out and welding in some fresh metal, but with a new set of bushes and grease nipples (again on order...) they are perfectly serviceable for what we need right now.

The front bucket is quite heavily worn on its front edge from I guess shifting muck around the farmyard for most of its life, I have a plan to get the heavy engineering firm next door to make me up a bolt on blade to remedy that.

[Slooby]

Flush with the success of the bucket purchase I have been busying myself the rest of this weekend removing the cab floor matting so I can scrape out all the mud trapped beneath it and then give the whole floor a good wire brushing followed by some rust stabilisation with phosphoric acid then a good coat of the Tractol 927 followed by the JCB yellow. I'll also tackle all the areas underneath the roof which I am jacking off the tub for access.

It was a Bit of a mission but I got it out in the end without breaking anything. It was fairly crusty beneath it but on first inspection there didn't seem to be any holes in need of attention.

With the floor mat out, I then removed the rest of the matting over the wheel arches, below the back window and either side of the steering column. To get the matting off I had to remove all the cab securing bolts, all bar the two rearmost came undone with a bit of brute force, but as you can't get a socket on the rear nuts and can only use the open end of a spanner I had to grind the nuts off...I managed to get one of the bolts out and the shaft was very corroded as was the whole back section of the cab.

Having emptied the cab of trim I then cleaned up all the operator controls of the years of dirt soaked in hydraulic fluid. I also had a good look at the front loader controls levers as they were very sloppy to use.





Worst of the rot at the front:



And the rear:

[Slooby]

Before tackling the lifting of the cab off the tub, and the wire brushing I had a good look at the controls for the front loader, I noticed a lot of play in both levers when I first drove the machine so knew that they needed attention.

From this first pic you can see that both levers are falling to the back and cab side rather than sitting upright:



The plastic in the UJ cage is heavily worn where the brass pins locate and the bushes in the outside lever mounting arm were not in the first flush of youth either

Then in this view it's clear that one of the rod ends didn't leave the factory looking like it does now:



Wiggling the rods around showed that, bar the rod with the rather sick end, there was a bit too much play in the yokes that run into the pistons on the valve block.

So I took the opportunity to disassemble the levers, remove the defective rod end, take out one of the clevis pins and the outer lever assembly.

Stripping the lever assembly down the pivot that mounts to the 'tree' is bushed, however the lever arm pivot isn't. Having a dig around on the web I eventually discovered that the rod ends and clevis pins that are a circlip type are made by Dunlop, they are also imperial size and thread fittings.
I found that I could order them through these people: https://www.onlinebearings.co.uk/ who rather handily also sell amongst other things 'Oilube' sintered brass bushes. The Rod End is a 5/16 UNF righthanded thread swaged retained ball type (DIG312-RH) and the clevis pins are 5/16" (NBI312). The large bush was actually made up from two I discovered when I pushed it out with sockets in the vice, the closest size is a 5/8" bore, 13/16" OD and 1 1/4" long, I may need to turn it down. For the lever arm pivot I bought a bush 5/16" bore, 7/8" OB and 5/8" long, I'll need to ream out the lever arm pivot hole to take it and possibly add some shims to make it nice and tight. I will also need to 'discover' a new 5/16" rod from a bolt...

This is how the removed outside lever pivot assembly piece looks with the bush pushed out:



The state of the plastic UJ:



And then, of course, the dead rod end and worn clevis pin:



Finally, another thing I spotted was this:



It tends to help if there is more than 1 screw out of the 3 holding the hand throttle lever in place!

[essexpete]

Crikey get into it there!

[Slooby]

Umm yeah...

I have a habit of going a bit nuts on doing stuff to get things closer to my standards in the first few weeks of ownership! It's on OCD thing...

Sadly I've found some holes in the offside rear corner of the tub so some welding will be needed at some point, but for now I'm just going to lather it in the cold galvanising paint to keep it in check for another time.

[Slooby]

After stripping out the cab I managed to get through two straight crimped wire cup brushes (don't bother with them, they maybe be cheap but there's a reason for it...and when they start to fail they fail fast and you discover later that most of the bits of wire flung off end up half embedded about your body) on the angle grinder cutting back the rust, before switching to a far more effective, (and aggressive) longer-lasting knotted wire cup brush. To get under the lifted cab I used a finger sander that my dad had bought a while back it was a little quicker and less tiring than hand sanding but did rather eat belts.

Anyway, the result of all this labour over a day and a half was this:










The rot is at its worst at the back where there are some holes, I'm not tackling them this time round. This is purely to make sure nothing gets any worse over winter and before we put it to work

[Slooby]

Having mechanically cut back the rust as best I could I then got to Jenolite'ng (phosphoric acid) the hell out of everything bare metal converting good old iron oxide into far more stable iron phosphate. Then I got to covering all that bare metal in Tractol 927 today which brought me to this:





Now I need a dry day to get some top coat on

[diggerjones]

I bought a 3cx grey cab at the start of the year. I'm enjoying your thread