I recently bought a little BX25 and after about a half hour I was moving the belly mower with the bucket and heard a disheartening clunk. The cross tube on the loader had a previous repair that I didn't see. It split all the way around the repair. What would be the best way to approach this repair? Is there a repair collar or a jig to weld it back up?
Tube cracked on LA240
- Thread starter Rob28791
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North Idaho Wolfman
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No way I would trust that tube now.
And normally I refrain from critiquing peoples welding skills, cause I ain't the best….but I gotta just say WOW, those are some ugly welds in that first pic…….
The cross tube looks to be bent towards the bucket so my guess is that curling the bucket with heavy loads has caused the fatigue failure over time. Break out ratings are quite a bit higher than lift ratings but I have no idea if the loader is designed for infinite life if used properly. For steel, if the stress is kept below 50% of the yield stress you can expect infinite life.
If you were handy with metal, and you had enough play to be able to slide a tight fitting thick wall interior pipe on that and then beef up the outside obviously better than what you bought it with that would also be a consideration, assuming nothing is fed through the inside of that tube.
Metal work by Ray Charles.+1,000
No way I would trust that tube now.
And normally I refrain from critiquing peoples welding skills, cause I ain't the best….but I gotta just say WOW, those are some ugly welds in that first pic…….