You have my sympathy! Years ago I started leaving a bit of pc around the edges of my tank, not cleaning it out completely. After a while there was a fillet around the bottom/side seam that seems to have stabilized in size with about a 4" radius. My theory is that mixing wears away at this fillet but then pc remnants build it back up. It definitely minimizes leaks. Any method that involves less cleaning also involves less work. Before I "discovered" this, I used to just slap wads of paper on leaky spots to dam the flow. Once mixing starts then leaks seem to disappear. With the attached top on your mixer it would be difficult to get to at least half of it for this method.
Possibly your best solution would be to replace the tank, which is not too expensive, and reuse the rest of your mixer. For the leaking differential the solution would be to replace the seal but that is fairly intense and if you can find a cheap rear end it might be easier to just replace it. I recently replaced the differential in my #1 mixer and it wasn't that hard. I happened to have one that I could remove from a parts truck, so I got by cheap. In your case unless the oil in the mix gets to be objectionable, I would just keep using that rear end until it won't spin the blade any more.
Tow mixers seem to develop leaks rapidly, especially if made with a galvanized cattle tank as most of them are. When I made my first mixer it started leaking after a few loads and I determined that there were two problems. First, the unsupported bottom of the tank flexed from the weight of the mix being tossed around by rough roads, and secondly the blade turbulence was causing the bottom of the tank to vibrate. Metal fatigues quickly when repeatedly flexed, especially relatively hard rolled sheet metal. Of course these tanks are not designed to do anything except sit in a pasture and contain water, so they are not built to handle what we do to them.
The first thing to do to prevent cracks is to support the tank with a sheet of 3/4 plywood (or similar) so the bottom isn't flexing as much from the rough road. I even went so far as to glue the tank to the plywood with construction adhesive. Another solution might be to raise the blade higher from the floor of the tank so the turbulence isn't as intense down there. Ideally a thick plastic tank instead of the metal one should solve the whole issue.
spaceman All opinions expressed or implied are subject to change without notice upon receipt of new information. http://Starship-Enterprises.Net blog at http://Starship-Enterprises.Net/wordpress/
On 6/3/2011 10:39 PM, JUDITH WILLIAMS wrote:
Please forgive me for whining but my mixer is a disaster. It is so leaky it takes a long time to fill. And there is a lot of oil coming out of that gear, more than normal I think.
I'm not asking for help or anything, just a little sympathy. I keep thinking I'm almost done with it and it wouldn't make sense to try to get a new one but I really still do have a lot left to accomplish especially if I use papercrete with the plaster on both buildings which is what I want.
I'm sure it will all be OK. I did a good job patching it up this time. It only took 3 loads to start leaking again. I found using the adhesive gutter patch and a coat of roof patch worked pretty well. The problem is the road I drive on is bumpy so whatever I use is broken after a few spins around the block.
Follow progress on the new project at http://www.papercretebyjudith.com/blog
More papercrete info at http://squidoo.com/papercretebyjudith
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