Ranger 8 Question

[Flintstone Charlie]

Good Evening All,

I'm new to the forum but have been reading and lurking for a while. I was recently given a Kohler powered Ranger 8 that has about 450 hours. It had been dropped, or fell over, or something. The business owner that passed it on to me acknowledged that he has likely not really gotten an exact story on the incident. Then to add to the problem it was left where it got rained on.

I've been going through it and have the engine cleaned up and running nice and have replaced broken wires on the choke and a burned power wire from the starter to the ampmeter. It had low output voltage which I eventually traced to a broken wire on the control pot. So it is all running and welding great now. Good output voltage and everthing working as it should.

The problem I still have to solve is that the reactor/choke/rectifier assembly came adrift in the incident. It broke 4 of the 6 ga wire connections and bashed into the back of the panel. I've fixed all the connections and everything is electrucally OK. So, finally to my question, how does this whole assembly mount? I can see that the connection between the choke and reactor is OK. It is between the base and the reactor where it seems to be loose. I didn't glean any info on what this mount looks like from the manual or parts manual. So, anybody know what it looks like down on the bottom or any thoughts on what might be broken? I assume this rather large component is not supposed to be held in place by the wires....

Thanks for the great site. Reading the tips here helped me diagnose the problem with the control pot.

Charlie

[Flintstone Charlie]

Good Afternoon,

Do I get partial credit for answering my own question? ;)

I understand no one telling me how the bottom of the reactor is supposed to come off the mounting flange.....because it isn't. Guess that is why none of the drawings show any hardware.

The bottom of the reactor coil welds to the base through three slots. The photos below show the weld beads on the bottom of the reactor and the base. Note that one of the islands between the slots came with the base.

The other two photos show a couple of brackets I made to reattach the reactor to the mount base. I decided I didn't want to try to reweld it. Hopefully, the brackets I made will take care of things.

Keep in mind this welder came to me free after the whole reactor/choke/rectifier tower got forced up against the back of the control panel and broke some wires and shorted the power wire from the starter. I was a little confused about how that much internal damage had been done when the outside of the welder didn't show any damage. Looking at the wear on the base it seems clear that the stack was adrift for some time. Given the weight of the componets and the distance the center of gravity of the stack is above the base it seems obvious how this could have come to be.

Now, I know very little about how this welder was used. I do know it rode around in the back of a truck which wouldn't seem unusual for a gas driven welder. I don't know if there was a lot of rough road drving or if the welder got loaded and unloaded a lot. The enterprise that had it does have a fork lift so even if it got loaded and unloaded a lot I'm not sure that should have hurt it.

The welder was about 8 years old when this happened. It only has 470 hours on it but that doesn't mean that it didn't ride around a lot.

Anybody hear of another welder that did this or did this one get rough treatment? For those that have one in a truck and drive rough roads you might want to keep an eye on it.

Thanks! I'm enjoying the forum and have learned a lot.

Charlie