The plan was for my son Jeff & I to split firewood Friday afternoon/night. But, just as we got into a good rhythm the linkage on the valve body broke
I decided waiting for a new part to get here, and since it was Friday night I could make one faster. As I sat at the computer to draw up the part I thought "MAN THIS IS A LOT O' WORK" So, I figured I'd give JB weld a try. Glued the pc. back together and let it set overnight. After running some errands this morning I put it back together to give it a try. It lasted about 10 minutes. LQQKs like that's 1 thing JB can't fix. The part is pot metal so I went back to plan "A" making a new one out of aluminum. I didn't have thick enough stock to make it one pc. so I cut 2 pcs. and tigged them together. I beefed it up where the old one broke as much as I could without it interfering with movement.
BTW: I think this one will hold up. I was using the track loader to load the bigger logs in the splitter. First log I caught the valve handle with the backhoe bucket and spun the splitter around Didn't even bend it. We are back in business.