A Light Recovery Trailer from Downunder

[Sam Scholz]

Hi all,

With some trepidation, I made a start on disassembling the front end. After hunting around a bit I managed to find a socket that would fit the 2 3/8"AF nut. It was 3/4" drive which I was not confident about. Anyway, after 3 meters of cheater bars and bending my 36" pipe wrench handle, I decided to add some heat.

LRT Remove steering pin heating nut 10 2023.JPG


It is easy to add too much heat such that the material softens so that it can 'pick up' or broach inside. Despite some sniffing around, I have not been able to find the temperature range for mild steel where beyond that is very little to be gained but lots to lose when using heat to expand some material to loosen it. Anyway, that is what happened!

LRT Remove steering pin nut destroyed thread 10 2023.JPG


In the end, I had to cut the nut off. So sometime will be a major bolt re-building job.
Next job was to remove the steering pivot bolt. So I added some pressure, around 20 tons, I estimated. Plus some sledge hammer encouragement all without any action.

LRT Remove steering pin pressing the pin 10 2023.JPG


So time to add more heat, carefully. It didn't help that I did not know the design of the pin which was still out of sight. So, as seen below, I managed to get the whole frame/pin assembly up to about 200deg C. Note that I removed the chains and porta-power as they would not handle the heat real well!

LRT Remove steering pin heating the pin bracket 10 2023.JPG


Then removed the fire, refitted the porta-power and applied a good lot of pressure. The main caution I had was around a chain breaking and bits flying off like shrapnel. I added several wire ties to act as whiplash arrestors. The chain was 5/16" Herc-alloy with a working load of around 1.2 tons. Then six legs gives around 7 tons. Then I wandered into the safety margin, which is around 200%, while standing well back. A pause, then sledge hammer applied. Nothing. Stepped away, added a bit more pressure, waited, hammer again. After a few cycles of this, applying the hammer to the enormous hex head of the pin under the frame, without any warning, the whole pin flew out the bottom the the frame with a great crash!

LRT Remove steering pin sudden release 10 2023.JPG


As it turned out, there is a large diameter 1 1/2" long section under the head of the pin where all the tightness was. Wow! I'm glad that job is done.
One more job done.

Enjoy.
Sam.