Well I finally swaged one boolit too many. I broke my Rock Chucker. At first I thought it was too many stresses on the cast...where the lower ram pin goes thru the bottom linkage piece...but after picking up the pieces off the floor I noticed that the pin itself had broken internally where the groove was cut for the set screw.
I had recently made a new ram and I guess I over tightened the set screw and put too much force on it....thus cracking it down the middle. I will make a new pin and only put a flatspot for the setscrew instead of a deep channel groove around the entire diameter.
Now, the cast lip has broken off and must be replaced...I guess I'll contact RCBS for a replacement part to have on hand...but I intend to make a solid steel piece and shorten the linkage like some of you have done for the Lee Presses. Any advice here would be helpful I intend to replace the cast vertical linkages as well with steel.
Now...how the winnie the pooh do you get the pins out of the upper linkage? One side has a solid pin that appears to be pressed in..and the other has a pin that is hollow. The pins are about 1.6 inches long...and the ram opening is only 1 inch wide...so the advice I saw via google of knocking the pins thru and having them drop out won't work....but it does appear that if I knock them in until they hit the other side I can squeeze the linkage out.
So...is there a secret to removing these pins or do you just throw the Rock Chucker under an Arbor Press and press the pins out?
BTW...25,000+ 9mm to 40 S&W 188gn boolits swaged before this happened...so it has already well paid for itself not including the many hours of reloading duties it has done as well.