I knew that I’d be wanting the hydraulics working fairly soon, and that’s a complicated system that requires some planning, and design work. The components are also expensive, so I wanted to buy used wherever possible to save some money.
I had heard of a salvage yard that had lots of miscellaneous steel and farm items where I might find some hydraulic components. My wife is always up for a trip, so I delighted her in a trip to the junkyard! I had a great time looking at the wide variety of items there, and eventually found a couple of pumps that looked promising, so after a bit of negotiating, we were off.
I ended up with this pump, it seemed about the right size, the price was right, and it seemed in decent shape.
Now, guys that design hydraulic systems for a living are going to cringe, but I really didn’t know any specs on this pump, and research I did on it didn’t turn up much either. Since this was also a learning process, I decided to go with it.
At this point I realized I needed to learn more about hydraulics, so I borrowed a text book from a student that had just finished a hydraulics class at the university and I underwent an accelerated self-taught course in hydraulics. Between that and some google research, I felt I knew enough to keep moving forward.
I went onto eBay, and found a 3 spool valve body for a decent price. I knew I needed at least 2 spools, 1 for up/down, and another for tilt left/right. The third is for future expansion of functionality.
Here you can see the valve body and it mocked into position. I also took the time to finalize the battery placement, seat mounts, and starter solenoid placement.
After this I spent a lot of time thinking about and planning the hydraulic system.
