old crane guy

The archives have a guy on here posting as oldcraneguy. Is he still around? I was curious if he knew anything about a crane. A pretty small link belt. Model is LS-51, I haven't found much online except specs and parts, operator, and service manuals. I know that it's about 26000 pounds and it's mostly a hydraulic machine in every way but the transmission. I don't even know about the engine in this one yet. For that matter I still don't know if it's for sale, it's just not too far from here.

Is that a lattice boom crane?? I run a 60 ton hydraulic crane a lot. One of the best there is. Easy to work on and parts are readily available

He posts from time to time on the crawler forum.

I couldn't recall seeing a recent post either; per the 'search" his last post was 7-30 of this year, but he doesn't have his email open.
If you can't raise him you might try hcea.net or maybe stripmine or the heavy construction forum; lots of crane/dragline etc people there. Good luck.

If you"ve already got the specs you pretty much know what you need to know about it in that respect. I just looked at a LS54 the other day and it had a 4-71 Detroit. The Detroit was a common power plant for the Linkbelts so something along the lines of either a 3-71 or 4-71 would be right for that size machine. The older Linkbelts like that are pretty much all alike in the way they operate, just scaled up or down in size as appropriate. Saying it"s a hydraulic machine simply means that it has a small hydraulic pump driven off of the engine that is used to actuate the clutches and brakes where most machines back then were actuated using air pressure. All in all the older Linkbelts are very reliable machines and there are still alot of them out there nowdays in every day use.
So far as the "tansmission" the Linkbelts walked pretty much like all other cranes of that era with shafts and gearing transferring power from the upper works to the lower works and on to the drive sprockets with a large machine chain. There were what they called "Pipeliner" models that had Caterpillar type tracks -vs- the standard flat crane tracks but the basic drive mechanism is the same. The Pipeliner machines were well liked if the machine had to do alot of traveling and are typically worth more to someone that needs that capabibility.

It would be a nice little machine to have if you can get it.