straightening the Excavator H link

[Frank S]

I don't think I took a before picture of this thing but suffice to say it had about a 4inch twist in it from end to end

I heated it in the forge for about five hours using about 125 lbs of charcoal heat loss and difficulty in fe4eding the charcoal directly under the part was most of the problem I know how to make it better just couldn't take another day or two to do that
For one thing the part was so big I couldn't fit the hood down tight or use the door plate I had cut to close the front opening


You can't see it in the picture but there is a dull glow to the H link along the center and flanges I am using the curl for the bucket of my backhoe to twist the link straight




Flattening the other damaged links while I had the forge going

[hemmjo]

Impressive. Never ceases to amaze me how guys can tear up equipment. I guess if they don’t own they don’t care.

[Francis4344]

Will the heating change the strenght of the H-Link?

[Frank S]

Will the heating change the strenght of the H-Link?

Not enough to have any effect on it since I only got it to a very dull glow. Just hot enough to allow me to return the pin locations to parallel. using the curl of my backhoe. The H link is always in compression when digging and only in tension when the bucket is dumped anyway. So as long as the pins are not allowed to come halfway out again there should be no difference in performance than a new $4000.00 link