The assembly of the excavator is mostly complete now. The welding is done. The hydraulic pistons are mounted on their bushings. Engine, hydraulic pump, and hydraulic tank are all mounted. We were unable to easily source the bucket teeth yet, but we welded on thick pieces of metal that we may grind down to sharpen a bit (and possibly find a shop to temper the steel). Also, we had the control levers installed, but removed them to adjust the height a bit. This should be done tomorrow.

As you can see from the picture, we haven’t yet sourced a tractor seat. But we had a broken office chair laying around and figured it can stand in temporarily while we look for an actual tractor seat from one of the scrap yards around town.

Other than that, we just need to buy the hydraulic tubes to connect the hydraulics together. We saved this for last to make sure we could measure all of the actual lengths before ordering them. If I’m lucky, we’ll have these installed and everything ready to test some time this week.

On a side note… yes we did construct the whole project  outside on dirt ground. And no, this is not the way I would have liked to build something like this. But since I wanted to build the excavator in part to help with the construction of the various buildings, including the workshop, we had to build it in a less than ideal environment. But the equipment and tools for constructing the first house were all assembled here, including circular saws, grinding tools, and welding equipment, so it wasn’t as strange as it looks.