OK why is it that nearly ever scraper i move which are mostly cat seem to have no brakes, has it always been the case or is dropping the bowl to stop just a new thing as most of the scrapers around the area i work are about no younger then 10 to 15 years or older, it is no fun loading one on to trailer with out brakes
well my 433b's do have brakes somewhat that work, air leaks need fixed for me i had new parking brakes installed and the operators keep burning them out by taking off with them on i actually had to throw dirt on the parking brake before to put out the fire so now i just leave the parking brake unhooked unless i have to work under mine safty and health regulations.
it's nothin new for over 20 yrs. now i been around scraper's and very few have a pedal brake the first scraper i got on did'nt even have a pedal in the floor you got all the brake you'll ever need in your right hand even when loading i can see where if you ain't acustom to not having brakes would scare you some but take your timeand keep the bowl close to the trailer thats how we do it all the timeafter sometime you won't even think about it anymore
Scrapers have brakes, when did they start doing that? Anytime I was ever runnin too fast, lay off the thorottle, and lower the bowl, stopped me everytime.
i guess i worded that worng at one time it had brakes but the entire pedal was gone and there was a hole where the pedal was around here they just don't worry about fixin them simply because you don't have a pedal brake dose'nt mean it's broke in my 20yrs. i have never been on a b,c,or d that they worked on and did'nt mind it if i was haulin or loading on a trailer i'm not acustom to brakes some are and some ain't is that better
Well, all scrapers have brakes, excepting tow-behinds. Biggest problem is, that way too many operators use them too much, instead of using the retarder or planning ahead and gearing down before they have to slow down to the proper speed in the cut or fill. That wears the linings -- which are none too big on most machines anyhow -- rapidly and then the dern things are out of adjustment or cammed over. Not too many scraper mechanics are really crazy to perform a brake job on a scraper. It's a lot of work and can be very messy. The work area is very small and the parts are heavy as an anvil. A lot of mechanics don't know how to properly adjust scraper brakes either, which means they are often ineffective because they are too loose. But, others are right, you always got a thirty ton brake in your right hand, or should have anyway. That will get you stopped and in a big hurry too. One of the reasons you always keep the bowl down close to the ground. Only machines that are a little slow this way are the electric Wabco's and Letourneau's. Long time back they had a quick drop feature on them, but as the machines in that day and age didn't have seatbelts, it was an idea quickly dropped. (no pun intended)
Many so-called operaters do not know how to release parkin brakes, especially terex. Burn em up then ya a'int got none.:drinkup
Surfer Joe I agree whole heartedly not planning ahead is a big problem, not only with braking but also with how they work the cut,fill, or spoil. Alot can not see 5 minutes ahead let alone 5 hours,days,weeks, or months.:drinkup
Scraper brakes Hi Oversize, in California the scrapers have never had any brakes! I think most still have thier 1st set. Use to be the mechanics would cut the brake rods as soon as they arrived. Of course now with saftey & Attorney iltigation, they actually maintain the brakes. Here is a tip on loading Cat scrapers that have no brakes. You can get close to where you need to be & moving real slow in 1st gear,then put the shifter in reverse as the machine reacts work the shifter between forwad & reverse to control your movement. Another tip is to pull on the ejector lever at low RPM's & will stall the engine. Never assume a scraper has brakes, if you going to be on pavement check them 1st always treat them as having no brakes.
thanks dug over burden i will have to do it next time i have to load one on my own
My wabco c-pull has brakes.Air "s-cam" type on the rear,On the front it has air operated clutch packs.They work ok when it's empty,but not when loaded.
Surfer Joe is right on about the proper operation of brakes. Our scrapers told on the operators when they ran the same hours and some were getting new brakes 2 times to the others 1.
We are going to covert our 412B to air brakes with S cams. For now we just drop the bowl slightly and get a little tighter grip if we need to stop quickly.
Brakes are a luxury at my company. Push-pulling can be interesting for the second scraper, and frustrating for the front! It takes a while to get used to tagging up smoothly using the bowl to match the front guy's speed, but we manage most of the time. (The mechanics don't listen anyway) The machines that have working brakes are usually reserved for the greenhorns so they can get accustomed to the operation. Makes for less close calls when new guys aren't so sure....
we used to convert all our 633D and 639D with double acting boosters (spring applied/air release park brake) safety plus
It gets very costly to maintain brakes on a fleet of scrapers. I was taught that brakes on scrapers are only meant to stop you in the yard to park. Most green scraper hands that I've worked with use the brakes instead of other means (and hydraulic pressure on the ejector or apron is NOT other means!!) to slow themselves while coming down grades loaded and you will burn through a set of brakes real fast that way. So if a company were to maintain brakes on their fleet with reckless operators burnin them up then that really eats up any profit to be made. And it's hard enough for a company to make much profit on a job these days.
One thing to note that likely most already know but a truck driver loading a CAT scraper for the first time may not know.... surprising how many experienced scraper operators don't know. CAT Scrapers do not shift into first gear on their own unless the shifter is actually positioned to first gear. If you put the shifter in anything but first it shifts automatically but starts out in second. In first gear it will crawl, in second it actually trucks along purty good......Could make a world of difference for someone loading one for the first time. The majority of the scrapers I have operated have not had brakes. I have helped mechanics change them and what an ugly/expensive job. It is becoming more common these days though that they do have them, safety eh, times are changing. I have been asked before at safety meetings if my brakes work and I couldn't answer, didn't know. I did not have need to use them yet at that point lol
Yea it's amazing how many people I've come across that don't realize that first is a "manual" gear on cat scrapers and the rest just dictate which gear you "top out" at. Most people I've run with were just told to "slam her in 8th and floor it!" but there is so much more to it than that to be a good scraper hand. Sorry for getting off topic, it just irks me to see operators that are ignorant about the machines the run.
Another thing to mention, most times having a scraper in 1st gear gives it enough torque to run through the brakes so it's not recommended in situations where you have to idle along and then try to stop. Neutral is your friend when you've gone far enough.
Brakes - What a luxury ! The only time our gear had brakes was after they came back from the dealer or had a major overhaul. That usually lasted a week. After that, the bowl WAS the brake. The only thing that seemed to keep its brakes for any length of time was one of those nasty little 613's but I guess I was too busy uncompressing my spine to worry too much about it.
pinch a pickup tire in the apron so the tire folds over the cutting edge and with a GENTLE hand you ease it ahead and stop with your bowl without doing damage to your decking! Always worked good for me. and if that fails buy a trailer with a big neck!
THIS IS FOR ALL THE NEW OPERATORS WHO THINK IT WOULD BE NICE TO HAVE BRAKES ON YOUR SCRAPER!!!! I myself am in my 50's now and it all started for me with my Dad. My Dad (May God rest his sole) ran a scraper for some 40 years and built bridges before that. After serving as a Sgt. in the Army Air Corps until the end of WWII and then coming back and started working as an Operator in the late 40's I was taught to respect my elders and I can remember every word I believe, that my Dad told me while we were laying in the woods listening to the hounds run coon (I was taught you never interupt). I would be a rich man if I got a Dollar bill for everytime my Dad said,"If you need to stop your scraper in a bad situation, Grab the lever, drop the pan and hold on!" It was always my 'Destiny' to work on the road with my Dad. The first year I did (Laborer/Flagman) I was changing a 21's dump cable along the haul road (Yes I should have had it blocked up but anyone who has worked on a big job knows that safety is thrown out the window sometimes). The guy working with me accidentally pulled the wrong lever and the pan dropped, the curved face of the apron came down hitting my shoulder which triggered my kicking response (don't ask me why) and my foot ended up under the cutting edged. The face of the apron braced my knee and the pan filled with sand, shoved my foot down into the sand. BATTERIES are another thing that were a luxury so I had to wait (while the First Responders were on there way) for a dozer to come and lift the pan up, you had to push them to get them started which was kind of out of the question at this point. After he got it held up the First Responder was going to pull my foot out but my heal of my boot was where my toes were supposed to be. I told her I would rather do it my self but after I grabbed my pant leg and pulled & my leg moved but my boot didn't I told her she could do it. To make maters worse we were in the middle of nowhere but on a major hiway and 180 miles by rescue squad t a hospital big enough to keep me a live and possible save my wringed off foot. After a month and a half in the hospital and10 months in a cast 11 operations and 9 pulmanary emboli passing into my lungs I thought I was ready and setting on top of an old cable 21 CAT scraper. Brakes were not a part of the operation but gears and the weight of the machine, as well as planning ahead was. My second day found me "cutting off the top of a 70 degree hill with a river at the bottom. This si when all my Dads coaching from my birth and pulling the pan cable was usefully. I could nt hit 2nd to pull away fom the pushcat to save my life (literally) so off free wheeling I went down the 300 yard CLIFF. The first time I pulled that lever I will NEVER forget an not the 2 hours it took to unscramble the cables and re thread it and get going again. Once you start fee wheeling there is no way to get it into a gear and I had to ride it out until I was down at the bottum where the machines turned around to drop my pan so I was out of the way "Time is Money" and so is scrap pieces of cable. I felt bad for my father as his 21 year old son made a fool of himself so after my 3rd episode of pulling the pan lever and grabbing the steering wheel that was partial imbedded into my gut, I called it enough. I should have waited more than 28 days after being laid up for almost a year before going back to work. I had to lift my leg onto the cluth and I didn't have enough strength in my arms to twist a ballon figure. I gave it my best shot, so I went back to work as a Metal Fabricator for the goverment the next Monday. A few months later I got back to operating a buddies dad's D-6's and D-8's on the weekends and later 2 of my buddies and I started a business logging and then sawing the logs, we had it all. I was running a cable skidder in the Ocooch Mountains (which made the hill I started out cutting off look like the flat lands, seriously and guess what...It Had NO BRAKES EITHER...and we needed to build the business up before we could get it fixed-You Had to BE THERE. So, when you backed down the rocky mini mountains you aimed for a tree ahead of time so you would stop & I didn't even have a steering wheel to grab on to. Oh S___HOOT!!!
Brakes we never really had them, only when empty anyway.our motto was "When in doubt right hand out". I was told never take you hand of the bowl lever, except to open/close the apron and the ejector. And always loaded the float facing down hill tyres hard to the goose neck.