The whole thing reminds me of the "I won't buy another (insert a brand) here truck because the flimdoodle broke on my 10 year old one. That brand is junk!"
Harry K
Troy-Bilt 27-Ton 160cc Log Splitter from Lowes
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The whole thing reminds me of the "I won't buy another (insert a brand) here truck because the flimdoodle broke on my 10 year old one. That brand is junk!"
Harry K
Alan Smith
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amen
fidiro
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Well, if you had "ready" it correctly I had said it was out of warranty in either this thread or the link I have posted in my sig.
I know it is out of warranty but this is an issue with the design and hope that it will be in a recall to prevent this from happening to everyone else.
No the customer is not always right but when there is currently a 5 year old cylinder with the same exact issue being fixed by TB what difference does 2 years make to decide not to get replaced. Warranty is only 2 years they are both out of warranty. TB just decided to make right with one and not the other.
Again, this is not a warranty claim. What I was after was a recall to this cylinder that may blow open on some of yours that also have one and wouldn't have to go through this.
Thanks for jumping down my throat on this one but think about if you had this issue and the replacement cylinder is almost 500. I'm sure some of you will just dig in your back pocket and there will be enough to just buy the whole splitter again and I'm happy for you but don't judge others income.
And this is not a home depot special at 1300 with the cheesy plastic fenders and training wheels it was bought from a dealer for 1700to be road legal. Look it up at a dealer not lowes or home depot.
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Jredsjeep
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i can see both sides of the story but i would tend to agree with fidiro on this one. this was not a wear item or an obvious case of abuse. this was a catastrophic failure of high pressure system. they admitted to it being an issue and have changed the design.
to be properly designed the metal should never get anywhere close to failure with full pressure on the system. depending on the system you usually want a safety factor of 2-10 where you could load the system 2-10 times the factory pressure and parts should still not fail.
this does not look like the case, he know the splitter was out of warranty. he never claimed the splitter failed in warranty. this part did not wear out, get modified or beaten/abused/neglected. it failed from the factory and you can clearly see were the metal broke out.
manufacturers do recalls on vehicles and power equipment when there is a defect in their manufacturing process or design. even though this might not be a high failure rate it is a problem that can cause serious injury.
have you ever seen the movie fight club.
first you take the average cost of an out of court settlement as X, then you take the cost of doing a recall Y. If X is less then Y we don’t do one.
i am just paraphrasing but you get the idea.
to be properly designed the metal should never get anywhere close to failure with full pressure on the system. depending on the system you usually want a safety factor of 2-10 where you could load the system 2-10 times the factory pressure and parts should still not fail.
this does not look like the case, he know the splitter was out of warranty. he never claimed the splitter failed in warranty. this part did not wear out, get modified or beaten/abused/neglected. it failed from the factory and you can clearly see were the metal broke out.
manufacturers do recalls on vehicles and power equipment when there is a defect in their manufacturing process or design. even though this might not be a high failure rate it is a problem that can cause serious injury.
have you ever seen the movie fight club.
first you take the average cost of an out of court settlement as X, then you take the cost of doing a recall Y. If X is less then Y we don’t do one.
i am just paraphrasing but you get the idea.
BlueRidgeMark
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John R
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And if it is "junk" it is a problem that was found and fixed long ago according to the OP. so why is he bad mouthing _all_, including the current ones?
Harry K
John R
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If they (MTD) fixed the problem, they owe it to their customers that have the older ones a fix too.
If they reworked it because of a safety issue.
Course this is IMHO, and most company's look only at the bottom line.
If it were me and I got hosed in the face and eyes with hydraulic fluid like the OP did, MTD would be dealing with my lawyer and not me.
If you blew a tire would your lawyer be calling Good Year too?
I'm not trying to make light of the situation and say it isn't dangerous and once again I'm glad that nobody has been hurt. But, you are running a "machine" that is putting out 20 some ton of power. There is going to be some risks of failure.
BlueRidgeMark
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BZZZZT!
Wrong answer.
Whether there's good cause to sue over a tire failure depends on why it fails. If the tire manufacturer does a sloppy job of putting together their tires, they are at fault, and liable for damages. If it's because the tire was abused by the operator, it's his own stupid fault.
A hydraulic cylinder failing because it was just too flimsy for the designed usage is the manufacturer's fault.
firewood guy
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Just looking at all these splitter problems.. Why would any MFG weld trunions to a cyl wall? The heat incurred in the welding process would not only affect the cyl wall integrity but would likely leed to an out-of-round condition ..not good for pistons/seals/wipers! I have my own issues with a "new" Northstar 37-ton unit.. anyone have experience w/ model M1114K? I am running their 4-way wedge wings and in two weeks or about 40 cords have actually warped the I-beam. I suspect the steel is of import origin (can anyone say china?) But I must say that Northern's cust service and warranty support is 100%. The machine has some design issues, but we use it to split the nastiest wood I've ever known .. Red Gum Eucalyptus. Way tougher than Elm crotches or Black Oak stumps. The wood is stringy to the 100th power!!:bang:
Jredsjeep
ArboristSite Operative
firestone sure got a call a few years ago and yes they did do a major recall.
fidiro
ArboristSite Guru
Since you say it's been fixed long ago can you tell me when because I have only been reading about the newer ones sold this summer that have extra weld around the trunion.
So, I'm curious how old some of yours are and does it have more weld or is it just the same amount of weld as mine? Honestly more weld will probably just blow farther out on the cylinder wall
If you read the last posts on the other site about this there is actually someone saying that now there is even more weld creating a square around the trunion, WHY all of a sudden is this being welded even more?
I'm not a welder but it makes sense that if you heat the cylinder wall it may distort and weaken so everyone with this design needs to keep alert.
fidiro
ArboristSite Guru
Amen, I couldn't have said it better myself. Thank you
fidiro
ArboristSite Guru
This machine is rated for 27 tons so why didn't the seals/hoses go before the cylinder. The seals/hoses and even the engine should be your "some risks of failure".
This info is being spread to let the ones with this same design keep an eye on it to try and avoid serious injury. If this info never made it to the net for everyone to read about you would be running this machine blind without knowing this risk involved. If you prefer not to read about the risk, or just don't want to care about it, and put yourself or others around the machine at risk then that is also a choice you have to make. But the info is here to read with pics to show the damage of failure, for everyone.
If I read about it before it happened to me I would be more alert about this situation and hope this is a lesson learned for some.
I don't know when it was 'fixed'. Mine is almost 2 years old and has a beefy square weld.
It really doesn't matter _when_ as long as it was fixed. My point is that bad mouthing any piece of equipment for a component that failed but has been fixed is not warranted. You want to bad mouth them, fine, just bad mouth the ones with the weak component. No, I don't think my TroyBilt is the be all/end all of splitters and had I had more money I would have moved up when I bought one. They seem to be a good, serviceable thing and are hardly "junk".
Harry K
fidiro
ArboristSite Guru
I'm glad you trust yours enough not to worry about it blowing but I don't see the point of spreading extra weld around just to weaken more area of the cylinder trunion. You may keep splitting with that design without worries, that's fine as it has not appeared to have any issues but I have been talking about the design where the weld is what mine shows, little weld and not enough cylinder wall. I never said the design like yours with extra weld is also junk, as you say, as I do not have any experience with one like yours. I have only been reading about the ones showing up with extra weld for just about a month, but now your saying you have yours for two years now.
Mine has little weld and I can say it's a flimsy junk cylinder that was obviously changed for safety reasons and has not been recalled. I can say this because I own one and it is what the pictures show and the oil bath I had was something to remember.
I say keep using yours, forget about this issue and don't worry about a thing and let my design get the attention it needs to keep others safe and keep the oil from contaminating our planet. I know you want to defend yours but if it failed like mine did would you just sit back and do nothing.
For every one that reads these threads and is worried about staying safe then keep alert and keep others away while operating just in case you have one ready to blow. It has been said here on the other thread and on a welding forum, that welding cylinder walls may distort and weaken cylinder so more weld concentrated on the same area will heat up cylinder more and may do just that. So stay safe.
fidiro
ArboristSite Guru
Wow, 2 weeks and 40 cords. Someone keeps busy splitting. I ran probably 40-50 cords through mine but it took me about 6 years to do that much. Almost finished splitting the last cord for this year and mine took a dump
Glad to hear your getting yours taken care of. I almost considered the harbor freight splitter before I bought this one and I didn't because I was almost sure it was all China made parts, but I probably would still be splitting with it today though if I would have just ordered one. It would have been 400 bucks less too for the 30 ton. I guess I wanted to keep the money flowing here but got the short straw for doing it.
John R
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Guess if I had bought a TB splitter, I'd defend them too, when I decided to buy a splitter I looked at them all, and knew the TB was a poor design at best.
You just can't weld something to the side of the cylinder and expect it to hold up.
Have you ever seen any other hydraulic cylinder used on any other piece of equipment set up this way? There's a reason.
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