My New Performance Super Major Story.

[Ian H]

Nah, he was just having a laugh. Had a little bit of a chat. He was surprised at how old it was, but if it works and does the job...

Anyway, latest development is I got the backhoe on. It's an old McConnel PA44 dating from the early '70's I believe. I got it all hooked up and the hydraulics connected up to the tractor and had a little play. It is not as slow as I expected. This may be down to the tractor being a NP model, which I believe has a higher capacity hydraulic pump compared to previous models. The slew in particular was rather quick, despite narrow pipes being specified as OE to restrict the flow. Even on fairly low revs the relief valve on the tractor would open on the slew.

1,200rpm seemed adequate for a decent digging speed, but of course out of curiosity I thought I would try it at max rpm to see how fast it could really go. Well it felt like a kind of initiation ceremony - got anointed in oil. That's right, I burst my first hose... Still better now under test rather than when working for real. Many of the hoses are old and could do with replacing, I do have equally old spares, so the policy is to take spares and replace them as and when they blow.

As It happened this particular hose I did not have a spare for, but a replacement was ordered and quickly arrived so all is well. Anyway, at least it will dig as fast as ever I want it to. I think the power arm deserves it's own thread!

[Old Hywel]

I’ve recently replaced almost every hose on a mid-seventies International Wainroy digger. Cost: roughly £1000. While it may seem bonkers spending so much on a machine that age, I’m now fairly confident that I won’t finish each day smelling of £50 worth of oil.

[Billy26F5]

Burst hoses are always irritating, but often it does work out better to replace doubtful hoses sooner rarther than later. I think all Super Major's have the same hydraulic pump, which is different from earlier pumps. What is different is the gear ratio, as the NP PTO is slower the PTO to pump gear ratio is such to try and match the previous overall ratio for the pump. NP tractors also all have the later relief valve, enabling sustained 2500 psi, this valve appeared shortly before the NP was introduced and often mistakenly said to be a feature of the NP only. Would love to see this backhoe.
Sandy

[Ian H]

Here is the McConnel PA44 mounted on the tractor:



As you can see it can be fully offset to dig parallel to walls, as well as increasing the reach.

I kind of made it into a backhoe loader:

[Billy26F5]

Looks good like that, hope you can easily swap between that and normal as you need. Neither are very heavy implements but they will add up to considerable extra weight. Be careful not to overload the loader as there's nothing holding it onto the back.
Sandy