Hydraulic Seals for Old Farmhand F10 Loader

thingiverse

I own an old 1954 Minneapolis Moline UB with a roughly equally old Farmhand F10 loader. Recently, I replaced hydraulic cylinder seals for the third time in just a few years because they blew out again. These replacement parts are notoriously difficult to obtain and have lightweight construction that doesn't provide a good tight fit, resulting in poor performance. Fed up with these subpar replacement parts, I thought it was worth trying my hand at 3D printing my own replacements. Using some old seals as a guide, I designed new ones in Fusion 360, creating both piston seals and a rod seal for the grapple fork cylinder. So far, I have replaced the seals in three of four cylinders: the front grapple one and two main cylinders. Since installing them last summer, they've been working alright, but I did need to re-do the rod seal once to get a tighter fit because it was leaking. Since I only use this tractor for an hour or two each month, that's still relatively low usage, so we'll see how long they hold up. I mainly use it to move around bales weighing under 1000 pounds. The temperature range has been quite extreme - from about 95F (35C) to -15F (-26C) - and while the seals were a bit stiff and sticky at low temperatures, things loosened up once they warmed up. If you can find decently made seals that fit correctly, that's still the best option. However, if you're struggling to find anything that works right, 3D printing your own might be worth considering. I'm not the first person to try this - a guy in Australia successfully did something similar and his success gave me some extra confidence that it could work. You can check out his design on Thingiverse: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1392316 FYI, my cylinders have an inner diameter of 3.0 inches. If you use these files, please double-check all dimensions carefully to ensure a proper fit.