Thanks for the :thumbzup:
I still split the majority of my wood by hand...mostly because it is faster! But, when I run into a knot or piece of wood that requires more than 2 or 3 swings (or a wedge) to split then I will run it through the splitter. I suspect that, as I get older, I will be using the splitter more and more! I used to split everything by hand...dreaded those pieces that took a wedge and 20 swings!
The -002's engine just putts away whenever I'm using it...seems to be an excellent application for it. Over 3 days of on-off use (probably 16 hours total) I burned only 3-4 gallons of diesel through it. WAY better economy than even a little honda gas engine.
It is possible to stall it out, although this is extremely rare. If I bind it up with a gnarly enough piece of wood the hydraulic relief will lift and then the engine will slow down over about 2 or 3 seconds until it stalls. This tells me that it may be a little undersized for the pump, but this isn't a finely engineered tool! It's a pile of parts that I got for free (or cheap) that I threw together that happens to work fairly well together
My grandfather put this splitter together in the 60's; although I have replaced various odds and ends (including the engine, obviously), the ram and pump are still originals. The casting number on the pump doesn't return any results on google, so I'm not sure of its flow rate. But it is pretty high based on the cycle time of the ram. It is a single stage pump, somewhere around 28 GPM. I could figure it out with engine RPM and a stopwatch, but I don't have any kind of a tach for the MEP engine so what I have is just a guess.
If I was to build another splitter (or replace the pump on mine), I would probably use a 2 stage hydraulic pump...something like this:
Surplus Center - 22 GPM DYNAMIC 2-STAGE PUMP
A pump like that has internal valving that switches from a high flow under light load (faster ram cycle time) to a low flow (more power) under a high load. It lets you use a bigger pump with a smaller engine. Ideal setup for a splitter...
The ram is 4.5" bore 28" stroke. It will power through just about anything. The larger splitters use a 5" ram...I would always go for the larger one if possible, provided you have enough engine and a pump that flows enough to prevent the ram from creeping along too slowly.