Telehandler excessive pin wear

[Farming4Fun]

I’ve got a Manitou MLA628 (pin and cone) with pins that seem to be made of cheese. They were moderately worn when I bought the machine 350 hours ago but now have plenty of play. My old Matbro had pins that seemed to hold on much longer. I grease more regularly than manitou say too, is this likely just to be a manitou issue or am I missing something here?

 

[ACEngineering]

I’ve got a Manitou MLA628 (pin and cone) with pins that seem to be made of cheese. They were moderately worn when I bought the machine 350 hours ago but now have plenty of play. My old Matbro had pins that seemed to hold on much longer. I grease more regularly than manitou say too, is this likely just to be a manitou issue or am I missing something here?

Genuine Manitou pins are actually harder than matbro, they are heat treated so surface is harder than centre. Some have got very expensive now so people often make there own from soft EN8 or what ever they can lay there hands on.

People often make the mistake of not replacing both pin and bush which one or other may only be worn a little but a slightly egg shaped pin or bush will return wear back to its original state very quickly.

Also if the fixed bosses holding the pin are loose it will hammer the pins and bushes to death quicker, the worse one for this on MLA is the tipping link to headstock pin.

Other common ones to wear are bottom lift ram and self leveling ram.

Matbros you could leave to get alot of play on before needing to do something about it. Manitou you cant cause the bronze bushes are all 2.5mm thick not 5mm.

On the whole a manitou if it's right will stay far tighter than any matbro for alot longer, with the added bonus manitou and certainly MLAs rarely crack booms or welds etc unlike all matbro models which they all loved to do in one place or another and often multiple.

If your uk I can help you with any manitou issues or parts you need.

 

[Fendtbro]

I’ve got a Manitou MLA628 (pin and cone) with pins that seem to be made of cheese. They were moderately worn when I bought the machine 350 hours ago but now have plenty of play. My old Matbro had pins that seemed to hold on much longer. I grease more regularly than manitou say too, is this likely just to be a manitou issue or am I missing something here?

Can’t help with what pin and bush material Manitou use but I used the long pallet fork pin off Jcb, for the matbro loader on the fendt here. It’s really hard as Jcb can make hard steel. Not sure they use the high grade pins throughout the rest of the teleporters? But the excavators will have proper hard pins. As for bushings I had the rubbish Matbro Brass bushings line bored out to take pattern cat loading shovel bushes which are very cheap and very hard. Almost 5k hours and everything still tight.

 

[Fendtbro]

Genuine Manitou pins are actually harder than matbro, they are heat treated so surface is harder than centre. Some have got very expensive now so people often make there own from soft EN8 or what ever they can lay there hands on.

People often make the mistake of not replacing both pin and bush which one or other may only be worn a little but a slightly egg shaped pin or bush will return wear back to its original state very quickly.

Also if the fixed bosses holding the pin are loose it will hammer the pins and bushes to death quicker, the worse one for this on MLA is the tipping link to headstock pin.

Other common ones to wear are bottom lift ram and self leveling ram.

Matbros you could leave to get alot of play on before needing to do something about it. Manitou you cant cause the bronze bushes are all 2.5mm thick not 5mm.

On the whole a manitou if it's right will stay far tighter than any matbro for alot longer, with the added bonus manitou and certainly MLAs rarely crack booms or welds etc unlike all matbro models which they all loved to do in one place or another and often multiple.

If your uk I can help you with any manitou issues or parts you need.

What.. teleporters still use soft sacrificial bushes??! What a load of nonsense

 

[ACEngineering]

What.. teleporters still use soft sacrificial bushes??! What a load of nonsense

Yeah they do, sold some jcb 541-70 pins and bushes today and the 2 for the main boom to chassis pin are bronze

 

[ACEngineering]

What.. teleporters still use soft sacrificial bushes??! What a load of nonsense

Tbh the worse bushes are tension bushes, hardened steel with a split in them that closes up once fitted.

Matbro and JCB used them alot.
A cheapo way to make a machine with out requiring a final line bore after welding boses in. As the tolerances on the bushes are massive compaired to a solid hardened bush common to diggers etc.

Tension bushes always move and wear the welded in bosses so when replaced there never as tight in the hole or on the pin as they used to be.

 

[ollie989898]

Tbh the worse bushes are tension bushes, hardened steel with a split in them that closes up once fitted.

Matbro and JCB used them alot.
A cheapo way to make a machine with out requiring a final line bore after welding boses in. As the tolerances on the bushes are massive compaired to a solid hardened bush common to diggers etc.

Tension bushes always move and wear the welded in bosses so when replaced there never as tight in the hole or on the pin as they used to be.

A sign someone is making too many machines and need to cut corners to get them out the door to meet demand. Probably not an issue for the first owner but leaves them wonkier than an elephants trunk after 5000 hours.

I'd be concerned such practices aren't extending to their other machine ranges, also.

 

[Fendtbro]

That explains why teleporters are floppy rubbish after just a few years then. That sounds like cheap jack engineering that’s purposely designed to sell spare parts at extortionate prices. Excavator pins and bushes will usually do 20k hours with literally zero wear if greased properly. Our cats have been great for staying tight and the shock loading is 20x what a forklift will ever see. Just upgrade to excavator components and they should see you out.

 

[ollie989898]

That explains why teleporters are floppy rubbish after just a few years then. That sounds like cheap jack engineering that’s purposely designed to sell spare parts at extortionate prices. Excavator pins and bushes will usually do 20k hours with literally zero wear if greased properly. Our cats have been great for staying tight and the shock loading is 20x what a forklift will ever see. Just upgrade to excavator components and they should see you out.

Cat machines would appear to be built properly but their business model is to absolutely cane you for genuine parts. That said, the people I know who have them have stuck with Cat machines forever and won't buy anything else.

 

[ACEngineering]

A sign someone is making too many machines and need to cut corners to get them out the door to meet demand. Probably not an issue for the first owner but leaves them wonkier than an elephants trunk after 5000 hours.

I'd be concerned such practices aren't extending to their other machine ranges, also.

Cost cutting It's been going on for years, if theres a cheaper way to get it built a company will normally take it.

 

[ACEngineering]

That explains why teleporters are floppy rubbish after just a few years then. That sounds like cheap jack engineering that’s purposely designed to sell spare parts at extortionate prices. Excavator pins and bushes will usually do 20k hours with literally zero wear if greased properly. Our cats have been great for staying tight and the shock loading is 20x what a forklift will ever see. Just upgrade to excavator components and they should see you out.

The average telehandler pin is only 50mm, so of your comparing to a digger all 13t machines I know are on 65mm pins so that helps but yeah you cant beat the solid hardened bushes.

The only telehandler that had them from factory everywhere that I know of was the Redrock handlers I sold.
They had solid hardened bushes the whole length of pin then a cap bolted to each end of pin so it can rotate but not slide out. Yeah the down side was it had a TON of grease nipples often 3 or 4 per pin but they didnt wear much.
It just cost alot to built it that way.

 

[Fendtbro]

The average telehandler pin is only 50mm, so of your comparing to a digger all 13t machines I know are on 65mm pins so that helps but yeah you cant beat the solid hardened bushes.

The only telehandler that had them from factory everywhere that I know of was the Redrock handlers I sold.
They had solid hardened bushes the whole length of pin then a cap bolted to each end of pin so it can rotate but not slide out. Yeah the down side was it had a TON of grease nipples often 3 or 4 per pin but they didnt wear much.
It just cost alot to built it that way.

That sounds overengineered. Don't need more than captive case hardened pin held in line bored thickwall bosses with hardened bushes pressed in with 15-20 ton. Job done. Standard cheap excavator stuff. Every machine should have autogrease as the saving in grease and future damage more than pays for it. What was the deal with Redrock handlers? why did they not take off?

 

[ACEngineering]

That sounds overengineered. Don't need more than captive case hardened pin held in line bored thickwall bosses with hardened bushes pressed in with 15-20 ton. Job done. Standard cheap excavator stuff. Every machine should have autogrease as the saving in grease and future damage more than pays for it. What was the deal with Redrock handlers? why did they not take off?

The handers were ditched and sold to manitou after redrock went bust in 2009 as the new company didnt want to continue with them or support existing models.

Manitou do not support the old redrock models either and were only interested in the proto type which they made and called a MLA 630 for a couple years before pulling the plug on it and scrapping it. Parts and tech support for the mla 630 is particularly bad, they will all be approching 10 years old now if any are still working so manitou will very soon i suspect cease almost all parts supply for them i bet.

 

[Fendtbro]

Interesting.. how many machines did redrock build? Were they not bigger heavier than average? ie the future! If the frame was strong and the running gear bought in what made them fail in the market?

 

[ACEngineering]

Interesting.. how many machines did redrock build? Were they not bigger heavier than average? ie the future! If the frame was strong and the running gear bought in what made them fail in the market?

There were a few models, the most common being the TH280S similar in size to the Matbro TR250 / MLA 628 kinda sized and no heavier.

They did make a 5 ton lift machine too Model TH500 think that was around 12ton mark unladen.

They lacked the finishing touches basically to compete properly with the major competitors, had they been a little more refined and finished and possibly a little more hydraulic performace they might have done better.

I'm not exactly sure of the reasons they went bust but i was told it was due to money invested elsewhere which took a hit when the banking crash happened in 2008ish

Its all a long time ago now, Oct 2009 they went bust exactly the same time manitou stopped production of the MLA 628 oddly enough This gave JCB a clear path with next to zero competition for the TM310 for many years, the manitou MLA 630 whihc was redrocks proto type didnt come about till 2012ish and only lasted about 2 years in slow production at best before they called it a day on it, then it took till about 2018/ 2019 for manitou to sort themselfs out with there still current MLA 533 model.

Hense why the JCB TM became so popular as they more or less had the pivot steer market share to themselves for years.

 

[mf7480]

There were a few models, the most common being the TH280S similar in size to the Matbro TR250 / MLA 628 kinda sized and no heavier.

They did make a 5 ton lift machine too Model TH500 think that was around 12ton mark unladen.

They lacked the finishing touches basically to compete properly with the major competitors, had they been a little more refined and finished and possibly a little more hydraulic performace they might have done better.

I'm not exactly sure of the reasons they went bust but i was told it was due to money invested elsewhere which took a hit when the banking crash happened in 2008ish

Its all a long time ago now, Oct 2009 they went bust exactly the same time manitou stopped production of the MLA 628 oddly enough This gave JCB a clear path with next to zero competition for the TM310 for many years, the manitou MLA 630 whihc was redrocks proto type didnt come about till 2012ish and only lasted about 2 years in slow production at best before they called it a day on it, then it took till about 2018/ 2019 for manitou to sort themselfs out with there still current MLA 533 model.

Hense why the JCB TM became so popular as they more or less had the pivot steer market share to themselves for years.

Arguably the JCB TM became popular because they're brilliant

 

[ACEngineering]

Interesting.. how many machines did redrock build? Were they not bigger heavier than average? ie the future! If the frame was strong and the running gear bought in what made them fail in the market?

No one really seems to be able to answer the qty of handlers redrock actually built probably cuase they didnt even know themselves
I sold 5 brand new TH280s machines i can tell you that, plus 1 other sold locally but via another dealer but only as a result of my demo. (customer was too slow after his demo and i sold machine elsewhere) I actually ended up doing all the warranty and servicing work for this one even though i hadnt actually sold it.
Very few dealers sold multiple machines most only sold 1 or 2 as they would not commit and put a machine in to stock for demo like i did.

This was the last demo machine i bought back in April 2009 so one of the last few built. Probably only just arrived off the lorry in that pic i suspect.
Its still out working, the farm my dad used to work at before he retired in recent years bought it new. I doesnt work very hard these days so i dont see it very often now.

 

[ACEngineering]

Arguably the JCB TM became popular because they're brilliant

With next to zero competition it wasnt exactly difficult for them though was it

 

[ACEngineering]

Interesting.. how many machines did redrock build? Were they not bigger heavier than average? ie the future! If the frame was strong and the running gear bought in what made them fail in the market?

And here is another example in near enough the exact same spot in my yard 10 years later in Sept 2019. A little battered but not too bad really. These were the last 2 i sold new both in April 2009, this one below has gone back to ireland i think? unless i got them the wrong way around and this one below is theone my dad used to drive??? Slight difference in exhaust colour and how they did the change over taps for the hyd locking/aux couplings but otherwise exactly the same.

 

[Fendtbro]

They look nice machines.. Impressive a small Irish company put them together. What a pity they never got going.. What breed of running gear is in them? Don't really rate jcb in the axle department and do they still pull their own headstocks apart? Also are the compensator rams not in your eyeline to the forks?