Just an update. The gears have come, they fit, and fit surprisingly well. Next project is going to be to scrub the "varhish" off of the existing gear hubs and shafts on the lathe. It probably would have been happy to sit there undistrubed for another 75 years, but it's in the daylight now.... Anyhow, I started on this hydraulic puller, but the plates have not come. FedEx says they have come. I was here all day... So an early update lest I forget by the time that gets sorted out.
Step one was to take the cylinder all apart so I could use it for testing, as the end won't go in my spindle bore. This has escalated to my larger set, the 10 ton set, not sure if I knew that before, but it's still the 1.50mm pitch on an odd diameter that's not SAE or Metric. So I put that barrel in the lathe, pointed a threading tool at the peak of the threads, and "followed" them by hand until I figured out how to read the paper printed chart that came with the gears. Perfect. Dead nutz. Then I set about grinding a tool to chase the threads on this puller, which have had a hard life. (Both of my porta power sets came from Northern Hydraulic. So it's been a good life.... The thread has a crazy big, part flat, part rounded root, so the threads are just about incomplete, although not quite. Why did they do that? I dunno. Better tool life with a bigger flat and two radiused edges int here? And dead sharp peaks. Wow. They've gotta be making their own inserts, or you can buy mass produced inserts to make chitty threads? Well, I expected no less, that's why I studied them going in. So I ground a tool to fit as best as I could with any practicality, and took out all the paint and the dings, got NO complete strings, and ALL the paint is gone. That's as good as it gets in a practical sense, and I did not thin the tube any more than it was. (Another reason for "custom" thread form?) Still pulling the lathe by hand, because A, I'm a chicken, and B, I don't have a live center big enough to catch the open end of the barel, so I just had it up on a drill chuck. That'd probably wreck something under power. And the setup and settings are proven. And life is good.
So, the "other" thread, the female thread... Life is not good any more. Because that's a non standard thread form (even though it's thankfully a standard pitch), normal internal threads are gonna be a problem. So I set about grinding another threading tool (technically, the back end of the first one), to do the inverse of that. First a look at the factory "toe" that screws on there in case you want to set up the toe jack function. Sure enough, those threads are cut (visually only) about two thirds as deep as they oughtta be, with an "as cast" flat on the peak of the threads, and to a very pointy valley. Whatever they did, they did it on purpose.......... So I basically just made up a thread boring tool that's dead sharp (less a touch with a fine stone) to match what they did.
Proof of concept? Absolutely, since I'm not qualified to invent new thread forms. You can see the rubber bootie that was supposed to protect those threads is swolen big enough to fit the new thread protector inside of it... Just how it came out of the box. (Both of my pullers came that way, it's not compatible with the oil (which I think was kerosene) that was leaking out of them right from new. Anyhow, so since I was gonna need to verify my calculations/estimations/wild arse guesses to get these two threads to match with a "better than original" arrangement, making that thread protector was a no brainer. If I didn't need a test piece anyhow, I wouldn't have bothered.
And then the old kingpin (see the grooves in it? There was a bigger set in the metal bin, but some ijut didn't think about the grooves when measiring for diameter...) That pilot snaps over the end like the factory feet or rods do, and is really not "needed". The flat foot would work just fine. But this one fits tightly and will hold the whole arrangement mostly in place, so that one arm is still available to pump the pump. I might as well do that, since I don't have the important part yet....
I'll try to remember to get a picture when the plates get done, but unfortunately I'm not sure what the timeframe on that is going to be. Besides, that's gonna be anticlimactic as that's the least of it. It's just a plate with a threaded hole in it, and two pulling studs.....
