Repair of Hinges on Rear Hatch of Dump Body

[Don52]

When my customer obtained the dump body about two years ago,I welded up the upper hinges on the rear hatches because they were cracked. The hatches can be seen in picture 1 above the tail gate. The hinges are supported with a huge overhang so I added an extra screw to cut down the overhang. Last week I had to weld up the lower hinge. I also added an additional screw to the lower hinges, but this time I did something about the root cause of the problem.

The rear hatches have a wooden latch that grabs the inside of the tail gate as shown in picture 2 . I guess the idea was to lower the tail gate to release the wooden latches. The problem is that if the dump body is filled with grass and lawn waste to the top of the tail gate, stuff falls out if you open the tail gate to free up the latches. In addition it can be hard to close the tail gate if the load shifts. The solution that my customer came up with, was to lift up on the hatch so the wooden latch would clear the tailgate. The problem with this approach is that it puts tremendous stress on the hinges, which I believe is the reason that they failed. My solution was to remove the wooden latch and replace it with two slide bolts. The slide bolts engage with a slotted plate that I welded to the top of the tail gate.

Picture three shows the broken lower hinge.
Picture four shown my set up for welding the hinge.
Picture five shows the hinge welded.

[Don52]

And here are the rest of the pictures.

Picture six shows the hinge painted and installed.

Picture seven shows the upper welds on the plate, which was welded to the top or the tail gate.
Picture eight shows the lower welds on the plate, which was welded to the top or the tail gate.
Picture nine is a close up of the slide bolts and plate.
Picture ten is a picture showing the rear hatches all done


Don

[ryanjones2150]

Repair of Hinges on Rear Hatch of Dump Body

Looks like you got it handled. I don't know how much pressure will be on that gate when the truck is loaded, but looks like you may have trouble unlatching those slide bolts. If it doesn't work well, you could always try some sort of cam locking lever.

[Don52]

Looks like you got it handled. I don't know how much pressure will be on that gate when the truck is loaded, but looks like you may have trouble unlatching those slide bolts. If it doesn't work well, you could always try some sort of cam locking lever.

Good point. I don't think that it will be a problem for now because my customer fills the dump body in the following sequence:

1. Fill with tail gate open
2. Close the tail gate and fill to the top of the tailgate
3. Fill above the tail gate but staying away from the top of the tailgate at the angle of repose.

Unless the load shifts there would be no pressure on the rear hatch doors.
I am guessing that he dumps it by opening the hatch doors and the tailgate and then activating the dump.

The hole that is visible on the right hatch door is for a hose from the vacuum/blower that my customer hasn't purchased yet. There may be more pressure on the hatch doors if he blows in grass clippings or leaves and fills the dump body to the top of the hatch doors.