Harbor Freight trencher, did it survive the pond build.........

well howdy welcome here once again to the double m farm the pine construction project is done for this year and i've had some questions about the trencher how it came out of it did the harbor freight trencher survive the three-month pond build which was if you watched any of the pond construction on the channel it was definitely more than this thing was designed for i mean just based on the name it's a trencher that's what they're designed for to dig a trench berry water lines very electric lines we branch them out and dig stumps with them then we go on to other things and digging ditches cleaning out ditches and roadways with them we do a lot of things with them i say we all of us owners of towable trenchers we dig things that they really weren't designed to if this thing was designed to do more than be a trencher not just this one but any of the towable trenchers if they were designed to be more than a trencher they would be called a towable mini excavator but that's not what anyone calls them that's not what any of the people that build them call them because that's not what they were designed to do but us being human and stingy and cheap we'd buy as cheap as we can and try to make it perform like an expensive machine and by golly if you take your time and do it right it will perform like an expensive machine so did the harbor freight trencher little red as we affectionately call her here on the homestead did she survive the farm pond project short answer is yes she did what did we break well if you watched any of the videos you know this cylinder here the boom cylinder started leaking so i had to shut down the project for a day and uh take it apart replace the rings i got to paint that too i scuffed it up taking it off with a pipe wrench i didn't have a spanner wrench and i used a big pipe wrench and scuffed it all up so i got to repaint that for it rust too bad but i replaced the o-rings put it back together it was less than an hour job man it was a super easy job easy cylinder to work on and the great one of the great things about this machine is the cylinders are all the same size you can take them off move them around even the one under there if you go on the harbor freight website to order a cylinder there are no there aren't four different numbers one two three four it's just one cylinder they're interchangeable that was a great way to design it and i'm sure most of the other ones are probably designed the same way i'm not sure but if they are it's it's really neat makes it simpler but anyhow replace the o-rings i can't say that that was because of the big pond project that could have happened at any time it just happened to happen while i was digging the pond the bucket a lot of people talk about the buckets being weak and breaking uh in case you don't know i'm in almost the end of my fourth year will soon be going into my fifth year with the harbor freight trencher and that bucket's as straight as it was the day i bought it and i have really done some massive digging with it uh i'm in the foothills of the blue ridge mountains with nothing but hard clay granite rock well if you've seen the videos you know i've done some hard digging i did lose that tooth the pen came out and that tooth came off have a video of that i found it with a metal detector and went up to the shop and got a new pin and replaced it so i wouldn't consider that a break um but that did happen during the pond project none of the other pins let's see this pin right here quit taking grease the pen that was here quit taking grease but i had ordered some spare pins from harbor freight a month or so back and when i tried to grease it during the project this pin would not take grease it had gotten so packed boys oozing out now i got it greased so well but it uh it had gotten so packed with mud that i couldn't get grease to go in so i just pulled the pin put in a new pin and kept going the pin i pulled is in the shop soaking i i've been soaking it in various degreasers and uh other detergents to try to get the mud out of it so it'll start taking grease again then i'll just keep it for a spare uh what else did anything else break uh the only other thing really that i broke was if you've seen any of my videos you know i made these sleeves well i didn't make them it's four inch square steel tubing and i just cut them about a little over a foot long and welded one there and that's how i store my outriggers and that one's fine you'll notice this one's gone and you'll notice i only had it welded one two three four five let's see one two three four five places and the way i broke it is one day while i had stopped digging degrees had to boom up and i was going to swing the boom around so that i could get to the two grease fittings back here well one of my fittings is missing i just stick it in there and grease it but that's another story but when i swung it around i didn't realize i didn't stop to think i had the outriggers in their storage i had stopped and was going to move it and i had the outrigger in the storage so it was sticking up like that this piece right here was sticking up like that so when i swung the boom without paying attention it hit it and just the hydraulics are strong enough to just break that off my welds weren't strong enough i'm no professional welder i can generally make it whole i don't necessarily make it pretty but when that hydraulic hit it it snapped it off clean as a whistle so i've got it in the shop i'm going to uh grind it down grind the paint off and weld it back on and then repaint it so that actually broke but that wasn't the machine's fault that was my fault the motor never had a problem with it never had a problem with the hydraulics i keep my hydraulic fluid clean i have not changed that filter yet that's still the stop filter and it's five years almost well four years old so i definitely need to get that done you can get those from napa it's a volkswagen filter if you run up to nafta and give them the number that's on there tell them you want a replacement for volkswagen filter number so and so i can't remember now what it is but uh they'll give you a napa gold filter that works perfect uh the motor the engine the predator engine never failed me during the entire three-month project of building the pond and the only other thing that it didn't break that came close i guess you would say was this outrigger which would be in the storage sleeve if i hadn't broke it i did bend it very slightly if you'll look it won't even hardly show up on camera there is a slight bow don't know when it happened i know it happened sometime during the pond project because it wasn't like that before i started the pond project but during most of the pond project this thing stayed muddy so i didn't notice it until i pulled it back up here to the shop and hosed it off but you can see hopefully right there is a slight curve a little bit of a bend and i know a lot of people have welded gussets and bracing on here i've never done it because i've never had the need to because i've never even come close to bending them uh i always listen to the machine and if it starts grunting and groaning too much i back off and i've never broken or bent anything until that and i'm telling you if you didn't watch any of the pond build you can go back look i did some hellacious digging with this thing so did the harbor freight trencher i.e little red survived the uh pond build the answer to that question is 100 yes and i'm letting her rest right now i've got her cleaned and greased up she's resting because i'm getting ready to put her back to work before the winter hits too hard it's november here i've got a wash out my road right there where this catch basin is running over and crossing the road during the heavy rain and i'm going to re-dig that catch basin out and bury some pipe i've got it laying over there i'm going to bury it across the road and let it come out on the downhill side so it won't wash the road out and i'll be using the uh trencher and dunphy the little mini truck with the dump body to uh to do that project i'll try to get that on camera for you so that is the uh result of the towable trencher and uh yes it did survive the pond build so i appreciate you joining us here on the double m farm and i look forward to talking to you again real soon

Channel: DMF Homestead (Henry & Marie Cox)

Views: 25,872

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Id: n-R7S5fhN14

Length: 8min 45sec (525 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 06 2021