"Garlic wrote:

Beauty! That is an industrial work of art. All that nice, shiny, sharp, square metal.

Just great!

When you know all the time, sweat, blood and tears it took to get to that point, you can't help but sit back and enjoy it for a few moments.

It'll be handy to have than hydraulic hollow ram setup. You'll find all kinds of uses for it you didn't know you had: Opening tight jar lids. Slicing soft tomatoes. Shredding cheese for an omelet. Frying perfect eggs. Opening sticky doors. Lighting your way at night so that mashers don't bother you.

It'll no doubt be the handiest thing on your key ring.

Nice progress. You'll be ready to start on that 36A before you know it.

Pete.

GP, you forgot the most important feature of that equipment, which is that chicks love that sort of thing. My wife pushed past the flowers and unprompted romantic anniversary surprises ("all that stuff..." or something to that end she said) and wanted to know all the specs on the tooling and how soon she can start pushing dirt around with the machine.
I have at least four hubs to press on this machine, and I have the 3J to do too, so that's another four, so my cost per hub is definitely going down.

Gary, I bought a 20t Hydrafore ram and hand pump with a pressure gauge for about 300 clams from ebay. I think it's about Harbor Freight quality so hopefully it will hold up. If it does, then I'd say I'm ahead, especially since none of the rental places round here have this tooling, and Milton Cat don't rent tools either. Like you, I decided the heat method wasn't going to cut it, with the risk that I would have to go back in there if it came loose.

Chuck, good points - new yoke, and ball is tight : ) Surprisingly snug in the socket too. New grease pipe, banjo, etc. etc. This side was full of water so nothing came apart.

Scott, I pressed the inner hub on tonight - all of about 1 minute, most of which was taking the photo! I pressed it up to 5000psi / 350 bar per the photo and it definitely sneaked further on the shaft, maybe 1/8 of an inch. It's on there now. I bought a 3/4-16 x 13" bolt and had my guy turn down those adaptors so the base of the ram had something decent to press on, and the thinner adaptor fit nicely on the end of the hub. I used the retaining washer on the end of the bolt. That porta-press is really nice - no straining or feeling like it's going to blow up, just half a dozen pumps and it was there.

Thought in the back of my mind was to maybe get an old cap nut and weld an adaptor to it and then another 3/4 bolt to that, so that it will pass through the hollow ram. I'll have to peek in the serviceman's reference to see if there's a picture. I'm guessing Cat's adaptor is a threaded unit to screw straight on to the end of the axle. Not sure how many tons a welded nut would be good for? (It won't be my "welding" so it's going to be better than about 400# ; )