Monday morning I will put my 1962 Austin-Western Super 366 to work for the first time. It will be 34 months to the day since I bought it. The previous owner had just had the engine rebuilt and was still in the break-in period when he died. His wife paid my brother-in-law to go once a year and start several of his favorite machines, but not to move them at all. After working at it for several years I finally convinced her to sell it to me. The family called me and said we will sell you the grader but only as a package deal with a d4e dozer. I said I didn't want the dozer but they said then we won't sell either. My brother-in-law said the grader always started right up, but 2 years ago the dozer wouldn't turn over. Both machines had sat for over eleven years when I got them. I replaced all the hydraulic hoses and did a few other minor repairs and gave it a complete service. There are still a few minor leaks and my circle reverse rowing motor is a little iffy but I'm going to put it to work to see if it's any good before I put any more money and time in it. I suppose I should mention that I have about 1 hour grader experience twenty years ago. I am going to be reshaping a terribly damaged logging road. Any advice will be appreciated.
make sure u dont drive to fast common neewbie mistake. And make sure u cut deep enough. Seems like most new guys are afraid to dig down. youll have to digg kinda deep if the road is that badly damaged as so u have enough material to straighten it out. good luck everybody started somewhere
thanks, I have done these jobs a lot with a trackhoe and backhoe and a few times with a dozer. I hope with AWD and the flexibility of the grader I'll be able to do it with one machine. the last thing done to this road when it was wet was me bringing the trackhoe to pull their 2 skidders out of it, so I can't make it worse.
Sounds like you got a handle on the situation. I thought maybe you had a little less equipment experience. I personally have seen some loggers who could not make it logging think they are grader operators, Spending the last of there bucks to buy a machine and try to make money. Unfortunately in my area i have not seen that successfully done. But having Background in other types of equipment lays the obvious foundation to move to motorgrader. Scraper,Dozer,Excavator= Grader Success Skidder+Grader=Failure Good luck P.S. Old greasy machines hide cracks wash it off and check you may be surprized.
Congrats on your purchase! Now if it was me and I was tackling a road with next to no experience, this is what I would do. Just take your time and get used to your controls. Don't get greedy with your cuts because your going to end up getting frustrated when you start bogging down spinning etc etc.. Start out by taking it easy with light passes just to get yourself familiar with your machine. Play with the controls, keep your machine straight and get a feel for it. Once you have the blade set just make minor adjustments on the moldboard lift. If its soft on the sides extend the blade out and keep your machine on the solid road. You are going to have to make quite a few passes to get the road in shape anyway, so just keep cutting it back and forth straddling the windrow with each pass. Once you start getting a feel for the controls etc. and your road is starting to take a little shape then start with heavier cuts as needed. If you search the grader section here there's lots of information for the newbie operator. Good luck and keep us posted!
Do you have any pictures of your purchases?
Thanks Guys, A little background; I started out as a heavy equip. mechanic, then went to work for a company where if you were capable you were liable to be sent to do anything. While there I ran trackhoe, dozer, wheel loader, 40 ton forklift, boomtrucks, drove tractor-trailer when I couldn't avoid it, and even learned to scuba dive and do (very shallow) underwater welding on barge recoveries. After the owner died I went back to being a mechanic (self employed), got hurt and was out of work for a year then ran a small sawmill and lost my beeehind. 16yrs. ago my father started a business brokering lime and fertilizer but it wasn't working because he couldn't get his material delivered and spread right, so I resuscitated an old spreader truck he used in the 70's and bought a tractor and dump trailer. I soon bought more trucks and this did well for 6 months out of the year and was dead for the other 6 so I would hire my tractor-trailers out to anyone who could use them all summer at break even rates. About 10 yrs. ago I decided to buy equipment to turn a profit 12 months/yr. I already had 2 backhoes and a loader used to load spreader trucks so I bought a trackhoe and started doing landclearing and etc. in the summers. About 5 yrs. ago the fert. business took a downturn due to competition from some players much bigger than us and I am down to 1 spreader truck used occasionally so I am mostly in the construction business now and in sept. 07 our work aruond Myrtle Beach and Charleston stopped like someone flipping a switch. I have survived due to my contacts in the timber companies and have been fixing roads and cleaning up disasters caused by loggers, and hiring my trucks out hauling logs(again at breakeven rates) But!, I'm still in business and things are picking up. Windrow, Thanks for the vote of confidence. My son spent most of last summer steaming this thing off repeatedly when he wasn't pumping the hand pump on my hose machine and was glad to leave for the Army. I have been over all of it with a welding lead in my hands and didn't see a single crack. Grader4me, thanks for the advice I have always believed I could screw up less w/ shallow cuts even though my end results will be some deeeep rebuilding. Over the last several months I have read at least half the posts in the grader section and have learned a lot from you and others. Tripper, I plan to screw up my courage to ask to borrow my wife's digital camera and take some pictures monday. I wish I had gotten some of us cutting the trees out of the frame to get it on the trailer. I promise not to be near so long-winded in future posts
Thank! It's good to hear from guys who have buckled down and kept slogging away. I hear you about the camera! Couldn't take it anymore and bought my own. Best of luck with the grader. Here's a web page that just might be of some help. http://www.mnltap.umn.edu/Publications/Videos/GravelRoadMaintenance/3-ShapingTheRoadway.html Good luck with the old girl!
Hey! WOW you are a survivor! Sounds pretty tough down there. But Hang in there! Sometimes I have to remind myself also, but it only takes one GOOD job to help put you on track. Dont be afraid to look for work outside your comfort range.(sounds like you are)(easy for me to say right?) We have had to change .Where I live the county started doing townships. they do it for $65/hr! the cheapest Motorgrader I rent out w/operator is $80/hr. Fuel will be $30/hr this summer.The county is subsudized by taxpayers, I am not . So we have had to move away from that type of work. But when one door closes another opens.I Have an Uncle who was almost broke when a large Corp offered him a contract he was not qualifed for . He got the work done and now is a multimillionaire. I look at him as if he can do it anybody can. Hes no einstien, he got lucky and ran with it. I guess what iam getting at is that if you dont play you cant win. Don't give up! Best of luck.:usa Motivational Speaker living in a Grader Down by the River. LOL
Well, I WAS in the motorgrader business I moved the grader to the job yesterday and then I had to do some other stuff so I didn't start running her till this afternoon. For about an hour and a half everything was real good. The machine was doing well and the amateur grader attendant was too. I was finding running a grader to be much more like the grader operators said it was, and less like the non-operators said. I was so cheerful thinking how the flexibility of the machine was going to make many jobs easier. I was pleasantly suprised by my results too. Suddenly, a sound and feeling like a drive chain slipping and catching. I realized one chain wouldn't stop the machine so I backed her out the road and got under it. The rear end has about a turn of slack and the pinion wobbles BADLY when you shake it.:crying I had checked for slack in both drive axles and had flushed them out with diesel and filled them with premium gear oil and even gone to the trouble to put some of it in through the breather so I knew there was oil uptop immediately.:Banghead If I am so lucky I should immediately go buy my first ever lottery ticket, I will have to put in new pinion bearings. More than likely I'll have to find a ring gear and pinion, and if things are normal, a whole hog head.:crying Once again, wish me luck.:beatsme
EEEEWWWW icky.... there are only two things I fear in fixing motorgraders Transmissions, Rearends. You are lucky enough for the latter. those stupid things(third members) weigh like 500-700lbs and theres no good way to getem in. I did it once and had to make a specilized plate for the jack. I would rather get the clap than do one of those again. Sorry for you misfortune. Once again good luck
This one is top loading like a Mack. According to the service manual you can disconnect it at the swivel plate (A-W rear steer tandems turn like on a fifth wheel) then push down with blade and lift grader, roll tandems out.:beatsme We'll see
Glad you enjoyed your first experience on your grader. Sounds like you did a great job! Well, the machine is old and has been sitting for a long time, so I guess you can expect things to break. Hopefully you can get it fixed without to much expense..good luck!
It's a whole lot easier to lift the main body up & wheel out the whole tandem final drive as a unit, then lower it onto blocks. I've done rear end repairs both ways. Far easier to stip down & much safer. See if you can find some 'updates' while its apart. Good luck My version of a movie quote with relation to this "I hate the smell of gear oil in the morning" cause it's usually expensive $$$$$
That's what I was talking about. The way this one is made I don't think you could do it any other way. It has to come out the top of the axle housing and it is just a few inches below the oil pan. On the subject of $$$$$, you used the right number of $'s. I checked Minn-Parr, which is the oem parts source for A-W. The ring and pinion set is available new. The price is $13683.75! :eek2 :spaz I doubt there is an A-W grader left on the planet worth that in usable condition. I will take it apart to see just what I got and then check other parts sources. Tripper, on the subject of cameras she said she left her new one at her mother's on easter, and can't find the other. I took pictures of the grader and the disaster that used to be a road with my phone and will post them when I have more time. By the way thanks for the link to the road maintenance info, I learned some stuff and got some ammunition to use to convince the companies what we need to do with these roads. Thanks all for the encouragement, I hope I'll get time tomorrow to see just what's wrong. Mitch
More than one way to skin a cat Don't stress about buying a new Crown Wheel & Pinion (CW & P). I had a high metal reading come back on an SOSample. I got another 7000hrs out of mine after a rerace, by oil changes every 500hrs with gallon a gear oil suppliment (wynns, lucas, nulon etc) what ever brand you like, plus over fill the housing by a gallon, as when you're on batters/slopes this ensures everything has adequate oil. Another mod is to make a new fill point higher in the housing or park the machine on a slope to enable more oil into the housing. Polishing the crown wheel can also be another repair alternative rather than a costly replacement too. When I needed to replace my CW & P, it took about 50 phone calls & emails. A company called IHK (International Hough Komatsu) in Adelaide, South Australia where the only parts men who made an effort & sourced the parts for me :notworthy, AU$5k , the only downside was they were shipped by a ship from USA to Australia. :beatsme Took nearly 3 months before I had them . Anyway good luck
A short update A short update for my legions of adoring fans :naughty:falldownlaugh I finally got time yesterday to go over and check the grader. I had been thinking about the pinion nut, thinking it would be something if it had just backed off. I first dropped the rear u-joint and cleaned the nut. Imagine my feelings when I saw the nut was welded to the pinion shaft! Now I know somebody had trouble here before. So, in the morning I will go put it on the trailer and take it back to the shop because I KNOW I have work to do. I'll post updates and I promise I'll post the photos but I just hadn't even wanted to look at pictures of it lately. Thanks again for the advice and encouragement.
Promised Pictures First a few of the old girl on the trailer about to leave for the job:
More On the job: If you want to see larger sizes of the last two look in the thread "old girl looking pretty good". I posted them in that thread as a joke so people could compare it to Dwan Hall's excellent restoration, and the forum won't let me put them in two places. Can you believe I got the first vote!?:idontgetit:falldownlaugh:lmao
and still more A few pictures of the destroyed road. It doesn't look too bad here cause it's dried out but the ruts are 1.5-3' deep and a few inches under the dirt in the high spots are randomly placed 350-800 pound chunks of broken concrete. In a few pictures you can see the old reliable Case 580superK that fixed all 2+ miles of it, (and the next road almost as bad) by itself. I plan to take the grader rear end apart tomorrow since it's pouring here tonight.