makng oblong holes round

[b fullmer]

Working on backhoe lots of oblong parts in thick steel how to make them round again, most are too big or cannot be removed to fit drill press. Used a magnetic drill press at work and it seemed to have more power than my floor model at home any opinions ???
 

[JerryD]

You might try welding up the hole. Put a carbon rod the size of the hole you want in the oblong hole and then weld around the carbon rod. Pull the rod out and grind off the excess. Might work.
 

[David G]

Either got to bore them bigger and bush down or weld and drill. Neither one is a picnic without the right equipment.
 

[Stick welding]

They will be too big if you make them round again. You could cut them bigger and weld a new round bushing in or weld them up solid and re-drill them.
 

[Stick welding]

We must have been on the same wave length. LoL
 

[flambeauone]

Depending on how much you wanna spend to make them round again. I"m sure there"s a weld shop or equipment shop around that does on site line boring. The boom will have to be disassembled hand welded or boreteched then the bores recut. I use to do it on large loaders and strip mining equipment. That was back in the late nineties I don"t have a clue what they charge now. Then it was 75 an hour. It also could be bored oversize and have bushings made to fit. I guess it all depends on how much you want to invest in repairing it verses what it"s worth.
 

[Butch(OH)]

Somethings just cannot be done on the cheap and get results worthy of being called "fixed" and your into one of them. As the others have said no way to get it even close to right without proper equipment and drill press on the floor or magnetic are not on the list. Portable bore welding and line boring is probably is probably the best way for parts too big to remove. Last we had done was $150 per hour. Yes, lots of money but so are machine shop rates after you have removed the parts. To weld up and bore to standard size or to bore and bush back to standard or to simply bore to oversize and make pins to suit are choices best made at the machine by somebody familiar with heavy repair.
 

[SDE]

I have drilled out a few holes with a reamer. The hole will be round and then you can make a bushing that will fit in the hole that the proper size. Reamers have about 8 flutes and it will center itself.
SDE
 

[Dusty MI]

Maybe you could weld the oblong hole closed, then drill a pilot hole, then use a hole saw to make an over sized hole, then insert a bushing. But hole saws don't make a real nice hole. Perhaps a reamer after the hole saw.

Dusty
 

[Inno]

I have a similar situation with the backhoe on my old Massey Ferguson. There are two ways to look at it, at least in my case. To fix everything properly and have it working 100% and tight is simply not an option, the cost would far exceed the value of the 50+ year old machine. The options are as follows.
1. Use it! Fix what breaks when it breaks and learn to compensate for some slop. Don't dig near anything you value
2. Fix just the really bad stuff. For me the worst things (currently) are the main boom pin and a leak from one of the control valves.

And I guess a third option would be to sell the machine to someone who can make do with it and save for something better. Eventually it's what I would like to do but if I kept fixing things on my old beater I'd never save any money to do so.
 

[MisterT]

Find some black pipe of the appropriate size, cut it to the approximate length needed, hammer it into an oval shape to fit the oblong hole, weld it in place, grind it smooth, and then drill it out to the correct size. I've fixed quite a few oblong holes in drawbars that way.
 

[jackinok]

back a hundred years ago ,we would grind out the hole ,center a carbon rod in the hole, then weld it up with a hard surface rod. slow process, but it generally left them stronger than new.knew one guy years ago that ground off the old welds and replaced everything.
 

[RodinNS]

Cut the bushings out and install new ones of the correct size... Not a small or easy job.

Rod