I rode the KLX up to the start of the new trail and got to work. The club has purchaced a machine designed to build single-track trails and my job was to go along behind the machine and smooth out the "hump" that is formed in the midle of the trails by the tracks of the machine. Here I am with a McCloud, a sort of rake/hoe that is a common tool of trailworkers and forest fire fighters:
This is the trail building maching. It has a blade in the front as well as a backhoe type digger:
The guy in the front is brushing out the route in advance of the trail machine.
This give you an idea of the condition of the trail after the machine has done it's work. It does take a skilled operator, though.
We were making pretty good progress when the hydraulic pump sprung a leak. Since everything operates via hydraulics, this pretty much brought work to a hault until the pump could be replaced and the hydraulic fluid tank topped up. Big Mike is the club president and also the guy who does all the maintenance on the club equipment, so he took off to get a replacement pump, and I took off for home.
Big Mike, before the pump failure:
Once I got back it took Steve Corey and I about two hours to change the pump out in the field. The spare pump was a used one that we had bought from a guy in Canada that also has a Morrison Trailblazer. The spare pump had a housing with different fittings on it...so we swapped all the internals and the end plate between the two pumps.
ReplyDeleteIt worked like a charm. Steve ran the machine for about 30 minutes to check it out that evening and it ran all the next day with no issues.
The machine is designed to be repaired in the field, but replacing the pump which is inside the 10 gallon hydraulic tank was a pretty big job to do out in the woods.
Thanks a lot for your help Gerry, despite the mechanical issues we still got a lot done that day. Saturday we made it to the road!