The day was hot, the sun beat down on the ground, not a drop of moisture to be had, dust in the air. I was thinking that maybe a long sleeve shirt would have been a good idea! Carol and both had hats anyway.
On the auction block were cars, trucks, back hoes, trailers covered with tools and supplies, farm equipment: red, blue, green, orange, and even an old worn out road grader, a big one, that the rancher used to keep his 4 miles of road cleared of snow in the winter. Everything that you needed to work in such a secluded place. We were there to take a look at a backhoe attachment for my Kubota tractor. We found it at the bottom of the hill with the rest of the scrap metal and another backhoe that had seen better days. It became obvious that the auctioneer was going to sell the stuff on the higher ground first before they made it to the backhoe I was interested in... it was going to be a long day.
The model 1199 backhoe attachment I was looking at was manufactured by Long Mfg. Co in North Carolina in the 1960s I would guess. It was sitting forlornly under the trees, two hydraulic cylinders missing, its hoses falling apart from so many years of exposure to the sun light, the paint peeling. Although it was standing pretty straight it looked like it was on the verge of falling over. I felt that it would make a good winter shop project if I could get it for the right price - a new backhoe attachment is over $12,000 so I was thinking somewhere in the area of $1,000 was my limit with another $1,000 for repairs.
As luck would have it the Long backhoe attachment was the absolute last thing to be auctioned off, it was about 4:00 pm, we had been standing out in the sun since about 9:00 am, were about fried and had been hoping for a bit of energy for a couple of hours. Finally the moment arrived, I auctioneer asked for $500, then $250, then $100... I bid $50 and immediately someone else bid $75, we went back and forth, $25 dollars at a time, but in the end I won with a bid of $425. I looked at it again, shook my head and wondered how intelligent of a decision this was... and now I needed to figure out how to get it home. One of the other bidders told me that he had one of the missing hydraulic cylinders on his pile of steel, I ended up giving him $5 for it.
Tuesday morning we called a neighbor and borrowed their trailer, loaded the Kubota on the trailer and filled the old blue pickup with tools, rope, chains, railroad bar, scrap lumber, everything I could think about to get this thing loaded.
We got back to the ranch about 10:00 am, it felt even hotter than the previous day. Carol had prepared for the day, with several bottles of water, or so we thought we were prepared. A job that I thought would take a few hours morphed into a long day of hard work, I thought I was going to Ralph from the heat and exhaustion on several occasions. With two cylinders missing, the oil had been drained so there was nothing keeping the cylinders in a static position, so it would flop around like a wet noodle when we tried to get it hooked up to the three point hitch on the tractor and then it flopped flat on the ground. We did judo with it for a while and finally I took off the bucket, then the arms that supported the bucket and provided the digging geometry, then the stabilizers, hydraulic cylinders and hoses. The pins were over an inch diameter and had frozen in their bores from years of inactivity requiring the use of a large sledge hammer and a drift pin (a piece of steel about 5/8" in diameter, I bent it!) to knock them free. As we got the pieces free I would rig them up with chain to the tractor loader and Carol would operate the tractor and put the pieces in the back of the old blue pickup. Even with the tractor it was back breaking work!
We continued to judo the main part of the backhoe for at least another hour, but finally we got it hooked up to the 3 point hitch, loaded the tractor with backhoe attachment onto the trailer and headed for home. I was sweating profusely! The sweat continued to pour out of me for the next 45 minutes even with the AC going full blast and then when I dried out I was extra sticky and dirty, oh man, I was covered with grease, oil and dirt from head to toe!
We just parked the pickups, unloaded the tractor and returned the trailer. We left all the stuff in the back of old blue (until this morning.) The shower felt wonderful, Carol and I went out to the Bugling Bull Restaurant for supper as neither of us had enough energy to cook. Moose Drool was well received!!!
Gear head notes:
I got a good chance to look over my purchase today. There are no bent pieces, nothing out of alignment, all the valves operate freely, all the hoses need to be replaced, one cylinder needs to be refurbished, I need to purchase a cylinder to operate the bucket, and of course there is some rust. I am planning to have all the painted pieces sandblasted and I will prime and paint them before reassembly.
neat. contact your resident backhoe operator for some tips in service and use!
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