Excavator Track Question

Ok so I have a blown seal on one of my track adjusters. I'm in need of a temp fix to keep the track on until I can break it down. And replace the seal. I had a guy tell me I can force the Idler out with something and then wedge a piece of Iron in there to keep the track tight until time for repair. Is there any truth to this? Can it be damaging?

Wedging in a piece of iron could damage the chrome on the adjuster cylinder.

Replacing the seal is not that big of a job, just look for the master link on the track to open it up for removal.



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My thoughts exactly. The guy did a great job of convincing me it could be safely done, but you know how people are lol. Im not up to date on tracked equipment as this is our first excavator. We use a Prentiss 210E for loading/unloading. Ran across an excellent deal on this Case 9040 last week and ran into the track problem today. Thanks for the insight!

Originally Posted by ScrapmanIndustries

we had a track with a blown seal at the first yard I worked at. unless your track is stretched almost to the point of needing a new one you can get by with careful operation. In the army we would also just take out a track pad or two. but those were paid for by the American tax payer so we really didn't care too much if it didn't last that long. I remember when we were in NTC we dropped the idler completely while driving at night, the next morning threw track coming around a turn, so they chopped off like 5 or 6 pads and drove for 3 days with no idler, just the rear road wheel. I would recommend fixing your seal though. things work way better when they work the way their supposed to.

And they tell me to put down the crack pipe, dude there's no way your going to move a track machine around with out the front idler.

And removing pads from the track chain is not going to shorten the track, on larger machines you need a track press to split the track.

I wouldn't even let you fuel my machine or pressure wash the mud off from it.

And my firt hired cat operator was a commercial graphics guy who never operated a machine before and other owners tried to hire him away from me. That's what good training does for ya, Mike had a class "A" personality and many of the other operators showed him the ropes.

When Mike told me another equipment owner wanted to hire him away from me and then after seeing the new Cat with an air conditioned sound proofed cab - told Mike he was nuts to stay on my old open air gear jammer D4D but he told me he loved that old machine.

It was a two year job and Mike stayed on the whole time, Now have I got a story to tell ya about hired truck drivers.

You pay them a decent wage then in your absense the driver subs the driving job to another unknown and only shows up on padays to hand on the hours and collect the pay from which he divvies up with his hired hand.

Got a call form the job super one morning asking me who I had driving my truck, told him Willie. Super says no you don't and you better get down here to straighten this out. At least the super waited for a Thursday to call as I had to be there for Friday to do the hours and cut the checks.

I fired Willie at the end of the day just after he handed me the hour tallies.

Imagine that paying a guy an hourly wage that he is able to hire another driver, pay that driver then bank some for himself.

Originally Posted by ScrapmanIndustries

**** I knew people did that for like the owner operator leasing gigs from the big companies. Never heard of that happening at a smaller hourly company.

And the tracks I used in the army the track pad was like the whole chain link itself. the idler is on the rear on artillery guns. the track configuration is kinda different too if you ever look at one. We had ours fall off out in the desert during training and just took off part of the track and rolled on for another 3 days before we got out of the hills. look up the M109A6 theres like 5 or six road wheels between the idler and the sprocket. we just hooked on to the last road wheel. we had a really rough time trying to turn. Im sure you couldn't do that with a CAT though, nor would I ever want to do that with something privately owned as we did way more damage to the gun then we started with. But at least the 88 could find us the second time we broke down. the first time we woulda been stranded way longer. I'm pretty sure army wtf moments had us on there for a minute. our division did some pretty wild stuff out there during those rotations. At least it was all equipment related carnage and no one died that time I was there. Can't say the same about this last one.

My mistake, apology forthwith please accept.

Should have remembered as I did once wreck out a couple of converted WWII tanks that had been converted to tank drills.yes each pad had rubber vulcanized onto the top side and the whole pad was designed as a link in the track.

I can't remember if the pins were pressed in or fit in loose.

Tank drills were used to drill blasting holes in rock al ltha was used was the under carriage with the engines removed the rear sprockets had large pneumatic motors on them to move the drills around. The large mobile air compressor that powered the rock drill llso supplied the air for these motors. When ever the drills were moved the compressor was hitched to the machine like a trailer on a pintle hitch.







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