Our 12” excavator bucket was pretty used up and needed some love.
I don’t have any good before pictures, but I’d been having troubles with the bobcat style bolt of tooth holders always coming loose and shearing bolts.
The bolt on tooth idea does make for a bucket that can be easily converted from a toothed bucket to a smooth bucket-but in this case it just wasn’t working.
Not to mention that the bucket had so much hard material run through it the cutting edge that would be a smooth cutter was more like a worn out scalloped edge.
Here it is with all the worn out junk cut off and a new cutting edge that I cut down from a bigger cutting edge tacked in place.
And here’s the new cutting edge and new tooth holders/shanks all glued together.
Then, because I like having a toothless bucket when I’m working close to other underground stuff, I made this pin on smooth “tooth “ with some new teeth and a fresh piece of cutting edge.
Another issue I have with the bobcat bucket design is the wear protection for the heel and bottom of their buckets consist of flat strap that runs the wrong way and IMHO sucks, especially in hard material.
I didn’t have a lot of time to properly address this, so I cut up some old cutting edge and made some side pieces that help at least stop the welded seams on the back side of the bucket from getting worn any more.
And here it is all glued up and the cheek cutters bolted back on.
And it was none too soon that it was repaired, because immediately after it had a trench to dig through about 150’ of caliche. 😄😄🙄
