I am so glad you started this thread Brett.
Your chipper is very similar to my Morbark and all those big pieces look so familiar. It is nice to see it disassembled and see that it isn't such an impossible job should the same misfortune happen to me. Got my fingers crossed.
I recently got our knives flipped, but now we have a annoying little ticking sound. We have been running it and it hasn't gotten any worse. I have checked to see if a knive was hitting the anvil. Has plenty of clearance from what I can see without tools or a flashlight and I can't duplicate the noise by spinning the drum by hand.
I finally called the dealer today and talked with the head mechanic about it. He said it is probaly a knive hitting the anvil a little but you can't hear it unless the clutch is engaged spinning the drum at a higher speed. He said what probaly is the problem is when the bolts were tightened down a knife or knife(s) move a little closer to the anvil because the bolt holes in the knive are not quite the same diameter as the hold down bolts. Have to hold the knive back and in place, then tighten and torque it down. I kind of had a feeling this was the problem cause we didn't do that.
He also suggested to check for a bent knife as they can bend if they have been in the machine for a long time. He said this bent knife thing can happen and does like what happened to Brett but it is not a regular occurance.
Just a side note, when we were flipping knives we also were changing oil, air filter and other regular maintence. I was going to repack or regrease the drum bearings. This was last week. Well being the niny pinny worry wart about this chipper. I called to see if the grease we had on hand was good enough. Nope, nothing I had would be good enough. Any grease will work of course but Morbark has a special grease they recommend and you can't buy it over the counter locally. Morbark has a special high temp grease that is used in the tub grinders and they like the same grease to be used for drum bearing. I ordered a few tubes and will repack the bearings another time.
We were talking about torque wrenches that go up to 300 lbs for torquing these drum bolts. I bite the bullet and got one from our local parts store. An SK 3/4 in. drive that torques up to 600 lbs. It was on sale in their tool catolog. $478.00 bucks and no shipping. Good thing too, that thing is long. I about fell off the chair I was sitting on when they brought the box out. But you figure a long 3/4 breaker bar with a cheater on it would be about the same length.
Check out the pic. That is a 4 foot yard stick laying next to it. Expensive, hell yes it was, but at least I felt better when we were torquing down those knife bolts to proper specs. Come Tuesday when I get back from a little weekend get away we are going to recheck and redo those knives first thing.
I always do better the second time around. Practice makes perfect.
If I ever buy an aircraft carrier
I can give the maintenance guys a tool to torque some big bolts
Brett, hopefully when I get back you will have your machine up and running. Good luck, big project like that always seems to take more time and effort to complete than what you think it will.
I am out of here for beer and brats at the German Fest in Milwaukee Wis. Been a long week. We got hit with a little wind storm on Monday and have gone non stop since then. atleast it didn't hit today
sorry
