I know low drive Cats are old and you've probably ran a few if you've been in the industry for a while so I was just wondering if anyone is currently running a D7F,D8K or a D9H I know there are more low drive models but in my eyes those were the best models made by Cat, what do you think the pros and cons are when comparing low drive to elevated sprocket Cats other then the fact that the sprocket isnt down low where it can be damaged, I am on a 1978 D9H right now cutting roads on the side of a mountain and I love everybit of it , but I hear alot of complaints from alot of people in this area who hate low drive Cats not sure why , what are your thoughts , and if you have any pics feel free to post away
Well from my past experiance and talking to many antique operators and mechanics. The old oval track design was flawless, it took less power to turn the track around just one idler. The segments last longer, because there was more contact with the pins (close to 50 percent on oval tracks, and from what i can tell, high drives hardly make contact with 40 percent of the segments).... If caterpillar would have admitted thier mistakes when the first tried the high drive, and stuck with re-designing the oval track final drive set up with a simple planetary drive design I think they could have been un stoppable. I have only owned one high drive dozer in my few years of business, it was a D8N. and our D8K's with 50,000 frame hours plus, made that cat look like a D5 wide pad with a 3304 in it.... useless. Nothing wrong with riding old iron man, if you enjoy what your doing and like the machine you riding, giver hell and who cares what other people think. I like to take pride in riding the old iron, not many "highlighted haired" "panty liner city kids" can say they rode the most legendary machines on gods green/black/smokey earth haha. In my personal opinion, nothing beats pulling a pan or knocking down or thick stand of hardwoods, hot thermos of coffee, warm summer morning, open cab 8K or 8H, fresh pack of Marly's..... listening that old girl sing, because they can only sing for so many more decades until thier frames rot out from underneath them and what remains is melted down into some plastic covered, gutless Kummagutsa.... right Deas?
Right, Deas. Hi, Catskinner77V. I'll agree with you - up to a point. I dearly love running the older D8's and D9's, love the sound and the feel of them and the simplicity of them. I have always enjoyed working them in the dirt, push-loading scrapers and clearing. I have also done some pretty fiddly work with them and enjoyed that too - 'detail' excavations, finish work, cutting dirt batters and cleaning up rock batters, boxing out road beds and a few other things as well. Great stuff and they did it very well. The D9G's and H's in particular had somewhat more track oscillation than the high-sprocket machines and better reach for cleaning rock batters. I would never try to take a high-sprocket machine up an 8-foot high vertical bank like I did with a ripper-less angle blade D9G one night at Mount Goldsworthy iron ore mine in Western Australia. The high-sprocket machines strike me as being climbers backwards than forwards and I think that can be a little dangerous at times. If I had the bucks and the space, I would like to OWN a D9G with semi-U blade, tilt cylinder and 4BBL paralellogram ripper, restored to as-new or near-new condition just to play with and take to shows. BUT, if you want me to do a hard day's ripping in real rock, I'll choose a high-sprocket D8, D9, D10 or D11 over the older rigs any day. With those cantilevered idlers, they definitely ride smoother than their older counterparts, at least IMHO. The D9L's in particular could really PUSH. I even saw one with a bent push arm on the blade when working in heavy rock. They could put that much grunt on the ground. There was just no contest either when push-loading scrapers with a D9L compared to a D9H. It was like chalk and cheese. The D9G's and H's were a little easier to do smooth pick-ups with on the run but the D9L's left them for dead in the actual pushing. Also IMHO, I have yet to come across a 'gutless' 'Kummagutsa'. All the ones I have had my ample butt on have worked and worked well and gutless they weren't. I have enjoyed running them but then I'm easily pleased. If it burns diesel fuel, makes noise and moves dirt, I'm happy. However, I can't honestly say that I have ever felt as safe or as comfortable on slopes with any of those 'Kummagutsa' dozers as I have on similar-sized Cats on similar slopes. I found the D85A Kummagutsas in particular to feel a tad wobbly-booted on batters and slopes. They felt to me to be too light in the back end and felt like they had a rather high center of gravity. Aside from the above, what I don't like about most 'Kummagutsas' is the apparent shorter service life to first re-build and between subsequent re-builds in comparison with the equivalent Cat machines. The exception seems to be their excavators which seem to have pretty good service life. That said, I will also admit that if I was given a choice between a 'Kummagutsa' machine and the equivalent Cat machine, I'd take the Cat every time. Does that make me biased or prejudiced? LOL.
I do love them old Cats and I love the sounds that come from them giant D342's and D353's ,they do make alot of power that 9H I am on now just wont seem to stop pushing it will definatly run out of traction long before it does power and as far as which I would pick to run day after day it would have to be a D8K or a 9H but as much as I like hearing them from an open cab , it would have to be an enclosed because the winters here are nearly unbearable and the summers will burn you up even though in the winter it still takes a heater in one of those machines about 3 hours to build enough heat to make you confortable I'd pick them mainly because the fact that we are constantly walking slopes and in the mountains and a low center of gravity is a very big issue