How to Repair Stroke Wear on a Rod, Actuator or Cylinder

When a hydraulic rod has a common stroke area, that portion may sometimes exhibit deeper wear. We refer to stroke wear as a saddle. Most types of rods and cylinders will experience wear in the existing hard chrome layer. If proper preventative maintenance practices are used, rods can be treated with a standard re-chrome process to replace the protective layer before any issues arise with wear in the actual rod.

However in some cases, such as suspension rods on heavy haul trucks for mining companies, the rods face extreme wear in the stroke area based on the amount of weight and uneven terrain in which the trucks operate. For these larger rods, we can repair saddles using our submerged arc welding repair process.

For smaller rods that have saddles, these can generally be repaired if the entire rod can be ground to nearly match the lowest point in the saddle. For deeper saddles, a heavy layer of chrome may be needed to restore the rod to size. If the required grinding would result in taking the rod extremely far under size, we deem the rod to be beyond repair. Our technicians can always provide recommendations on particular situations.