Soooooooo......
Imagine that... it
works!!!
I still never got my last fitting that I ordered (it should be here Tuesday
). I got tired of waiting and went over to Cline's and pieced together an obnoxiously intricate arrangement of steel fittings to get to the suction hose.
With that together, I finished the hose pass-thru hole in the front of the bed and finished mounting the tank. Ran the suction and return hoses and filled the tank with about 2 gallons of fluid. I only put in 2 gal because I was worried that I had the In & Out lines on the pump backward; and I knew that when I did this it would be a huge mess in wasted oil when I pulled the suction line off to switch them...
So I started the truck, built air pressure, engaged the PTO shift, and let the clutch out expecting to hear a screaming / angry pump. But, it turns out I can read directions good enough that it was hooked up correctly.
I cycled the valve w/ the winch disengaged and let the system purge itself of air. I checked the level in the tank and figure that the entire system took about 1 gallon of oil. So I filled the tank to a comfortable level; the total system oil capacity ended up being about 8 1/2 gallons, far less than the 10 that I figured.
So I spooled some cable out in the driveway and engaged the winch. Get this: I even had the motor ports hooked up correctly in regard to valve handle position. Handle back equals line in, handle out equals line out. I was just sure I'd screw that up, too.
Put my pickup in the lot next door and hooked up the winch line. Works great. Pulling power seems almost unaffected by load. Had my pickup in 4wd / Park and just drug it. I know this isn't really a load but I wanted to see how the line speed and engine load would change with resistance. It seemed to be affected very little. Engine rpm linearly affects line speed; max allowable rpm is 2500 limited by the pump. Now I need to find a way to max the winch / system out to check for limitations...
Here are some pics. I took a short video showing some of the testing/playing that I was doing; as soon as Youtube finishes the upload (
soooo sloooooowww...) I will post.
Enjoy.