Up In Flames

Today I made a stupid mistake that most of us have got away with many times but today it caught up with me. The hydraulic pump on my slasher failed a couple weeks ago and after getting back from a motorcycle vacation, I got to replacing it today. Normally I would have drove it home and pressure washed it, working where I got all my shop tools, but with the pump out I could not raise the outriggers or properly stow the boom for travel. The pump mounts on 4-3/4" bolds for allignment purposes. Being the pump was slightly different I had to cut off two of the bolts to reposition them. About 10 seconds into cutting the weld with a cut off wheel my neighbor whom was helping me by running the skid steer yelled that the grass caught fire under the machine. I was standing in the skid steer bucket as the pump is 8' off the ground at the edge of the machine. By the time Ted backed up and lowered me it was to late. The lower machine had flames licking everywhere. It didn't help that the blown pump had sprayed some hydraulic oil around. I quickly determined that it would be foolish to try to get the fire extinguisher out of the upper cab. Equally foolish two newly aquired large fire estinguishers sat in the garage at home. I jumped on the skid steer and threw sand around it as well as I could to stop the fire from turning into a forrest fire. I was between a partial cut up wood pile and a tree length log pile which partially burned also. The old machine probably doesn't owe me a dime after using it for 18 years in my hobby logging but it is irreplaceable from a historic perspective. It was the first large log loader Prentice ever built. The only 4 outrigger loader they ever built that the front outriggers had to be slid under the truck in front of the axles and then stood up. Ironically 1 of the 3 firemen on the volunteer fire deptment that responded lived accross the road, and another with in a half mile of where I was but they had to travel 7 miles to the fire station to get their gear and the pumper truck. They both ran out of their house when they got the call on their pagers and could see the fire.
Here's the result.

Attached Images

 

Up In Flames