Hobart C-100 Mixer - service manual? any rebuild experiences?

Hi all,

We finally have time to tear down the C-100 which we bought last year.   The parts manual has great blow-ups of the planetary, etc., but no instructions on how to disassemble it.  We're hoping someone who else has done this would be willing to share some tips.

We have the motor housing off the base, and have removed the external parts of the planetary.  We've found several screws that were hidden by body putty and paint (one on the plate that holds the planetary in) and we can't get this plate to budge.  Here's what it looks like at this stage:

If anyone can tell us where to look next, we'd appreciate the help!

Thanks

Caroline

I should have added that I'm documenting this teardown and rebuild, and will have lots of photos; when it's done, will post it to FreshLoaf (with thanks to those who have helped us along the way).

Thanks

CR

We concluded that in order to get at the transmission, complete disassembly was about the only option.  (If we'd known this before we bought it, we'd have been looking for A-200's instead.)  I hope to have a photo how-to posted by May, after it's reassembled. Right now all of the "case" parts are out for powder coating.

DLightTexas has guidance on disassembly in his post, which we used to discover how to get our mixer apart.  Basically, you unscrew anything you find.  For each step, first, take a photo documenting where the screws were and what they connected; then label and bag the parts, taking parts off as they are removable. 

Then look for the painted bondo-d screws, remove the bondo and the screws, and again photograph, label, and bag everything, storing the screws etc with the parts they go to.  We used a LOT of gallon ziplocs. 

Eventually, we decided we had to take the head off the pedestal.  That's a time consuming process, but it makes a really awkward maneuver (removing the transmission) more manageable. If you leave the head on the pedestal, the transmission is going to drop on the floor when it comes out; you may end up injuring yourself when it does that.  Safer, we concluded, was to do the reverse of the manual incarnation of a drill press - letting the housing fall, but only an inch, and onto a padding of towels.

My husband did all this work in the kitchen (no garage, temps were zero at the time); we padded the counter top with old towels, and set concrete blocks on those about 18" apart.  He made a frame of 2x4's to sit on top of the blocks.  This 2x4 frame was drilled through, so that the holes lined up over holes in the base plate of the transmission (those were bondo'd btw). He screwed bolts through the 2x4s into those holes, and then used a shorter length of 2x4 as a mallet to bang the "head" on either side of the 2x4 frame (front and back) until the o-ring that holds that plate in place let go, and he was able to get the plate off the mixer. The housing gently dropped onto the towels; no injury, no damage.

There was still the shaft (sorry, I forget the correct name for it - it's on the parts diagram) that connects the motor to the transmission, holding most of the transmission parts in place.  We had to take the hub off to get that out.  Continue the process of "what can you take apart next?"  Eventually, you'll have it in tiny pieces (I think it took at least 10 hours). 

Be sure to document every step, because there's no guidebook (till I put ours together) on how to get it back together, which will be the exact reverse of getting it apart.  You end up with a million little parts and lots look the same, no clue where they belong unless you've carefully corralled them as they came off the mixer.  No way would I remember all of that over the course of 4 months - I'm using the dated/timestamped photos to tell me what came first, what next, and so on.

Hope that helps!  Look forward to reading about your adventures, and as I said, I'll probably have something to post by the end of May.

Here are links to some photos:

http://www.honeydolistguy.com/images/photos/c100/2131-c.jpg

http://www.honeydolistguy.com/images/photos/c100/2233-c.jpg

http://www.honeydolistguy.com/images/photos/c100/2241-c.jpg

http://www.honeydolistguy.com/images/photos/c100/2260-c.jpg

http://www.honeydolistguy.com/images/photos/c100/2261-c.jpg

http://www.honeydolistguy.com/images/photos/c100/2262-c.jpg

Caroline Rumsey

IronRose, I feel for you.  Maybe while you have it open, you can take the time to inspect everything and fix anything that needs work.  The short answer to your question is "I think so."  Below are links to the sequence I described in my earlier post, about attaching bolts to the plate and then trying to get the plate to let go of the housing.

The "head" ready to work on:

http://www.honeydolistguy.com/images/photos/c100/PlanetaryRemoval-01.jpg

Bolts test-fitted into the holes:

http://www.honeydolistguy.com/images/photos/c100/PlanetaryRemoval-02.jpg

Preliminary marks on the 2x4 "sandwich"

http://www.honeydolistguy.com/images/photos/c100/PlanetaryRemoval-03.jpg

Centering the marks on the 2x4s:

http://www.honeydolistguy.com/images/photos/c100/PlanetaryRemoval-04.jpg

Scribing the centered marks:

http://www.honeydolistguy.com/images/photos/c100/PlanetaryRemoval-05.jpg

Tool used to mark the centers:

http://www.honeydolistguy.com/images/photos/c100/PlanetaryRemoval-06.jpg

Verifying that the marks line up with the bolts:

http://www.honeydolistguy.com/images/photos/c100/PlanetaryRemoval-07.jpg

Drilling the 2x4s for the bolts:

http://www.honeydolistguy.com/images/photos/c100/PlanetaryRemoval-08.jpg

Bolting the 2x4 sandwich to the "head":

http://www.honeydolistguy.com/images/photos/c100/PlanetaryRemoval-09.jpg

Testing the fit of the 2x4 frame-he found some warp in the 2x4s

http://www.honeydolistguy.com/images/photos/c100/PlanetaryRemoval-10.jpg

Pulling the 2x4s together, removing the warp in one of the boards:

http://www.honeydolistguy.com/images/photos/c100/PlanetaryRemoval-11.jpg

Frame ready for concrete block lifts:

http://www.honeydolistguy.com/images/photos/c100/PlanetaryRemoval-12.jpg

1st concrete block; note the protection for the countertop!  This is a sheet of thin plywood on top of 3-layer cardboard.  The cardboard allowed us to slide the whole assembly around on the countertop without scratching the counter; the plywood did the actual protection.  (OK, you're warned):

http://www.honeydolistguy.com/images/photos/c100/PlanetaryRemoval-13.jpg

There's very little "drop" in this setup - that protects everything inside the head - and if the head were to fall suddenly, it will land on the folded wash cloths, almost invisible, below it:

http://www.honeydolistguy.com/images/photos/c100/PlanetaryRemoval-14.jpg

The frame attached to the mixer head, hanging from the concrete blocks:

http://www.honeydolistguy.com/images/photos/c100/PlanetaryRemoval-15.jpg

Using a short piece of 2x4 as a hammer.  He smacked down alternately in front of the frame and behind it.  It took a LOT of banging to get it to move:

http://www.honeydolistguy.com/images/photos/c100/PlanetaryRemoval-16.jpg

Finally it starts to let go!

http://www.honeydolistguy.com/images/photos/c100/PlanetaryRemoval-17.jpg

We received these questions from Matt - my answers are ~in italics~:

(1) How far in do you screw the two bolts that you're using to pull it out?  Do they have threading on the transmission housing behind them, or do they simply hit a blank wall and bottom out. 

~The definitive answer to this question will have to wait till my husband gets home from work - I *think* he screwed them in till they bottomed out, but I'm not certain.~

(2) To clarify, in this image (http://imgur.com/Ja5JHdO), it looks like one of the bolts on the transmission plate goes into the transmission housing.  If it does, then no amount of slamming would pull the transmission out since it's still bolted to the unit.

~It's really a pity they picture the transmission case only from above, so there's no official diagram of this.  I'm pretty sure the pin you've circled is an indexing pin - it's still there after everything inside the transmission case is cleaned out:

http://www.honeydolistguy.com/images/photos/c100/CleanedOutHead-2408-a.jpg ~

I did see the post about the generic puller and I'll probably try that in the near future... my impact wrench may give me a leg up on the machine.

~ I urged Ed to take the least violent approach possible (impact wrench: shudder!) and he capitulated. It may actually stand up to that, but I protested at anything more than the 2x4 sledge hammer approach - we already knew that replacement parts aren't available, and as BetsyMePooch pointed out, we hadn't thought of constructing a puller.  Wish we'd thought of that, it's a GREAT idea. ~

Central Mass Powder Coating just called to let us know the mixer shell is done. 

Here's what the parts looked like as we picked them up:

We chose a darker color and a crinkle finish compared to what they used in the factory, for the simple reason that the welds were coarsely finished, and this is (we think) somewhat thinner than the factory paint. 

Cost: $500.  There was a ton of masking involved, and we were explicit about what we wanted done with every little screw hole.  They did a fabulous job. 

The other objects in this photo are parts of our CL grain mill, which we had blasted and powder coated at the same time (we bought a used mill; its original paint was flaking off, into the grain hopper).

Thanks for your assistance! We really feel as if this mixer rehab is an example of "it takes a village to..." <fill in the blank>.  We've received SO much help from Freshloaf posters, couldn't have gotten this far without you all.

Most rewarding: It's a tossup between having it purr after it’s assembled, or savoring the first loaf of bread that it kneads.  

Photos (and maybe short video clip, if it really does purr) will probably end up at least linked, if not outright posted, on Freshloaf.   Originally, I had thought we'd be done by early May, but we didn't get the mixer back till May 1st.  So now we expect to be done rebuilding by late May or June, with the writeup ready sometime this summer.