OMG! First off, thank you for your response! Now for the story. I had the dipper cylinder rebuilt and the rebuilder wanted to charge me $1800 (new barrel) after quoting $800. Told him, with my $800 on the counter, that I'd see him in court, as I swept up the money. He took it! :O Unfortunately it did not solve my problem of the dipper and boom cyls not coming up properly to lock into place for traveling. So, a couple of weeks later, I saw another 26D for sale at a hugely discounted price. The original posting was almost 2 years old so I made an offer and he accepted it. It looked very nice (way nicer than mine!), military surplus, and I guessed not very many hours on it. So I bring it home. A guy came over that I'd hired to do the changeover. He started up my WB because he wanted to see what the problem was and how the controls worked before doing the swap. And he says... "There's nothing wrong with your backhoe. You just have a hydraulic hose reversed. And sure enough, he swapped the hose and my own went into action, pulled right up, and locked into position. So now, now only do I now have three spare cylinders, but I have a complete beautiful 26D backhoe attachment sitting in my back yard with me wondering whether to keep it or sell it! Being a newbie to the tractor world, I sure am collecting a lot of stuff!
