Hooking up a wood splitter to a 350C

MarkW · Post by **MarkW** » Fri Oct 21, 2016 10:51 am

Hi all,

I'm trading some junk I have laying around for a 3 pt hitch wood splitter. I haven't seen it yet (picking it up this afternoon) but I would like to power it with my 350C. It has been modified somehow to be a stand alone instead of the 3 point, but I was wondering what might be the options for hooking it up to the hydraulics on the crawler? Any thoughts on "best", "easiest" and/or "cheapest" way of doing this? I am planning on having the splitter be separate and just running hoses as I have a somewhat dedicated wood splitting area and have no need for it to be attached in any other way.

Thanks!

Mark

mini kahuna · Post by **mini kahuna** » Fri Oct 21, 2016 1:45 pm

do you have an aux line at the rear of your 350, if you have/had a backhoe you would have it.
without the line I am not sure where you could tap into the system
you will need a pressure into splitter valve and a return.....also have to make sure your splitter has open center control valve.

CuttingEdge · Post by **CuttingEdge** » Fri Oct 21, 2016 2:49 pm

I am not sure you would honestly want to even if you could do so easily.

I had this kind of set-up for awhile while I waited for my grapple trailer to have its powerpack come in. What I immediately noticed was a lot of fuel consumption and A LOT of extra hours on my tractor for no really good reason. Those extra hours will quickly eat up any savings you have in not hooking the woodsplitter up to its own small, dedicated engine.

My suggestion is, since you got the splitter for nothing really, take the savings and buy a small engine and hydraulic system. You are only talking a few hundred bucks. Heck a woodsplitter engine is only $99 at Harbor Freight and so you could buy a dozen of them for what a rebuild would cost on a 350C engine overhaul.

BUT if you really wanted to, you could tap into your bulldozer hydraulics. Pick a function that is not critical; for me I run a lot of bigger dozers that only have 4 way blades so the angle function is seldom used on my 350D. I would simply tap into those ports, then use a bungee cord when I wanted to split wood and pull the handle in the angle direction. This will divert hydraulic fluid to your woodsplitter valve. If your woodsplitter valve operates "backwards" just bungee cord the handle in the other direction.

If you like this system, go to the trouble of putting in a tee to each port with quick change fittings on both your woodsplitter (if it does not already have them) and on the hydraulic ports on your dozer. Then in the future you can just plug your woodsplitter lines in and bungee cord the blade control to angle and you can split wood.

mini kahuna · Post by **mini kahuna** » Fri Oct 21, 2016 2:57 pm

cutting edge, I was thinking about it some more and your post beat me to it.
we had a 3pt splitter that had it's own engine and pump and it worked pretty good, best part was we could mount it to 3 different tractors whenever we wanted.

MarkW · Post by **MarkW** » Fri Oct 21, 2016 9:00 pm

Thanks for the responses guys!

I don't mind putting the hours on the machine, I have only been putting about 10 hours a year on it for the past couple of years, it had an overhaul about 200 hours ago so I need to use it a bit more lest I be accused of neglect.

I did some casual looking around in the back and do not appear to have any aux hydraulic ports back there. Mine is a loader, I haven't poked at it yet for finding a port to tap off, tomorrow when it gets warmer.

I do have to say though that running off the vehicle hydraulic system is the way to go IMHO for splitting wood, gone are the days of a motor bogging down on a knotty piece of wood it just powers through and the implement motor doesn't even slow down. Plus it is a bit quieter keeping the exhaust further away.

The splitter is a beast, has a 30" stroke and will be too heavy for 3 guys to load in the truck easily, so another plus is no one will be able to borrow it!

Post by **Lavoy** » Sat Oct 22, 2016 9:08 am

Look at your hyd valve, and see if you have another valve section on the side of the joystick valve. Some had it, some don't. If yours does, you will need to hook hoses to it running out the back of the crawler and put a pair of quick couplers on the hose. Once you hook the splitter to the crawler, you will have to tie the hyd lever back or forward to send flow to the splitter valve. Make SURE that the splitter is running an open center valve.
Lavoy

MarkW · Post by **MarkW** » Sat Oct 22, 2016 1:41 pm

OK, here is a pic of the valve:

I can see where to tap off the bottom for both of the lines, and I am assuming I can just fabricate up a lever to hold it open. possibly with a hook to slip over the bar and hold it that way.

Apologies for the dumb questions, but does anyone know the size of the fittings?

Lastly, I am thinking I will just coil the hoses in the bottom here when they are not being used and just run them out through the open cover. That would also make it easy to turn the valve off if I were to blow a hose sometime. The splitter has been modified with a substantial base to stand vertically, I am planning (subject to modification) to have the crawler next to it so the wood can get split and then tossed into the bucket when necessary, then when the bucket is full unhook the splitter and dump the wood where it is wanted.

I am assuming the splitter has an open center control valve, can I check by just blowing air through the hose when the lever is centered?

Thanks all!

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Hooking up a wood splitter to a 350C

Hooking up a wood splitter to a 350C

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