Saw this one in a gravel pit here in Iceland, used for ripping and dozing volcanic rock and lava material. This has to be the biggest ripper I have ever seen on a D7 size machine. The original LGP grousers have been manually flame cut to a narrower size. The blade looks a bit home made too. You obviously get a machine that´s more stable, but I´m not sure about the strength. I wonder how the new D7E would stand up to a conversion like this
Talk about customizing and pimping out your ride.
Customized ? Yes , never seen the rock guard or spill plate for the dozer cylinders built like that also. Looks like a custom built ripper. Nice looking one though.
Ripco builds Rippers for Cat and John Deere. Nice looking blade did a nice job on the wings. Sure should move some material. I don't know the density of volcanic or lava rock. JEY
Nice looking ripper, I like the push block
That's a 'ripper'? Hi, Hjolli. Here is a photo that I took back in January of a Cat D7E 48A series - NOT the new electric drive version - LOL - with a fairish lump of 'backscratcher' fitted to it. The other 2 dozers in this photo are, I think, a Track Marshall and a Fiat. The second photo is of an old, apparently abondoned and rather neglected Cat D7 17A cable angle dozer almost lost in grass only about 300 yards away from the D7E and the other 2 dozers.
Ok Deas, you beat me on this one! I have some interest in the D7´s, it´s the first machine I ever drove, and when the D7E came out they caused a minor revolution in earthmoving in Iceland, being used for practically everything, including heavy ripping. Maybe that´s why not all of them lasted very long.
Sneaky trick. Hi, Hjolli. That was a sneaky trick. I think that D7E was ex-Telstra - they are our major tele-communications company, used to be government owned but a certain pack of idiots 'privatised' it. Telstra used to hang rippers like that on their D7's for ripping cable tranches and would sometimes put another D7 behind pushing in tougher going. All the adjustment holes in the shank allowed them to work at a wide range of depths with the ripper right down. They also used a similar set-up on their cable layers with the addition of cable carriers on the front of the blade and cable feed over the top and back to the ripper. Some of them, designed for heavier cables and bigger spools, only had the frame for carrying the spools and no blade. Telstra also designed and built their own spool drive for laying optical fibre cable. This drive 'sensed' how much cable was on the spool at any given time and the ground speed of the tractor and drove the spool at the right speed to unwind the cable and feed it back to the ripper shank so that there as no drag on the cable from spool to ripper. Neat little piece of gear. I do like the look of that ripper in your photos. Have you any feedback on how it performs and how it lasts?
The D7R Ripper looks set back a bit further than the standard one. I like it. I've aways throught that if the ripper was set back a bit further it would do a better job. Interesting.
Nice D7R Hjolli...I've been finding quite a few dozers of that size around here lately. Any more pics of that operation? And Deas, is that an old quarry those dozers are at? Contours in that hill suggest that kind of activity from many years ago. That D7E dwarfs the other ones...good ol' American dozers just won't die! :usa
Hi Deas This is a machine they have just aquired I think. I don´t know the owners and haven´t seen the machine working. There used to be a D7G with a U-blade and an ordinary ripper in this pit for several years. There´s only this dozer, a loader and a screener. The volcanic rock in this area is quite fractured and should be easy to work with, even with a D7. According to mechanical physics a shorter set-back ripper should give a greater down force than a longer one. But then a longer one has a better scope of up-down movement
No Old Quarry. Hi, Stretch. No old quarry. Those dozers were working on a dam in the farmer's paddock. It's not the easiest of country to sink dams in but the seem to hold fairly well once they're done - assuming they're done properly, of course. Hi, Hjolli. Yes, there is a 'happy medium' in ripper design regarding set-back from the machine. However, one of the most successful rippers, the Kelly ripper, was also one of those set furthest back from the machine. When you sort that one out, let me know please.