Weeeeell… I know it’s been a while now but I put my bender on the front burner and got her up and running. I had a few issues, some my caused and others hose guy caused but it’s done on that part now.
So I got all the hoses made up and installed them. Then put fluid in it. Turned it on to cycle it and nope, nada happening.
My pump came off of a hydraulic lift table years ago. I tore it apart and used the motor/pump for my first bender. Then I stripped it down and sold off the bender but kept the hydraulics. It was an older bender and I couldn’t bend thick wall 1/4” DOM in it without blowing the arms apart.
So I used one my buddy had which I loved. It had whole inch die radius instead of 5.5” crap. There’s a reason I don’t like half inch dies. So my new one is a JMR that’ll bend heavy wall stuff.
Now the hydraulic pump has an electric solenoid spool that when charged allowed fluid to bypass the pump and let the table come down using gravity.
This is where I fawked things up a bit. The pump had this spool post sticking out and like a fumbass I thought it’d be nice to cut it off flush with the bolt head not thinking that there’s a fawking moving valve inside the post. Now the fawked up part is I don’t remember when I cut this thing off as my first bender has been disassembled for creeping on 15 years now. Yeah, I had my buddies for years and did all his tube bending as he doesn’t understand how to use it properly. He wouldn’t sell it to me tho so I finally gave it back and started this one.
Fast forward to now, for some reason I had removed the spool threaded insert and just put a threaded plug in there. So when I turned it on to cycle, it was just bypassing internally.
So, no sweat as I have a twin hydraulic lift table (my cousin got two of these from his work in new condition for $12 each. I took one and he kept one. Few years ago I talked him out of his for free as I regretted tearing the lift table of mine down as I really liked the adjustable work height specially when I raced dirt bike hare scrambles and worked on my bikes) so I took the spool post out of it and put it in my bender pump and it worked.
Luckily I found my old cut off spool valve. I think I’m going to tig weld a cap on the face of it to hold the parts in it and stop any leaks. Then I’ll be able to put the spool valve back in my lift table pump.
What the spool valve looks like
What the one looks like I cut the post off of
As far as I can see parts are not available for it and a new pump is $200 I’d prefer not to buy when this pump works great still.
