Heres some pics of some cable laying dozers , they were putting 55 miles of fiber optic conduit near the town I live , never got a chance to see them in action , they did have a big rock saw on site for a while I only saw it breifly and whe I made it back to take pics the saw was gone , does anyone have anymore pics of cable layers , possably in action ?
That's some cool stuff! Those guys sure have some serious grouser cleats on the pads.
I second both of those Atco. They aren't fooln' around are they.
Yeah those grousers are serious , those guys running cable dont know what go around it means:drinkup
I saw some plowing one time near a job I was working on. My boss and I went down to see them. They had 2 8H's and several Army surplus D7G's The 7's were pulling them and spooling out cable. They had a set harnessbuilt that hooked to all dozers front and back and spread the pull so they wouldnt rip one in half. THey made about 7 miles a day.
OK, that's funny! Why is it that one of the 8N's has a top roller and the other 8N in the pics doesn't? That looks curious.
Some of those D8N's did not have them when they first started building them. We had two of them, and ended up getting a kit from Cat years later and adding them. It sure cuts down on the tracks popping up and down.
Thanks, I did not know that. Seems a bit crazy, though, that Cat would even make a track as long as an 8N without a top roller. Caterpillar? What the heck were they thinking? I'd say they did have a bit of a bounce to them.
When I was taking pics of these I was wondering the same thing , I was looking close at them and you could tell the 8N with the roller was a kit , you could tell by the weld
All of the original high tracks had no carrier roller, even the D-10. They were available as an option, and most dealers would sell you the kit, or fabricate one, since midway through production on the "N" series. They were not standard untill the "R" series. I have added them to all my dozers, as it cuts the whipping of the tracks, and makes the pins last longer. It also prevents the rails from rubbing on the front of the track frame, which wears both the frame and takes away life from the rails.
Just so I understand correctly, there was a 4 point connection on the tractor that was being pulled and the pulling tractor :cool2 If I have understood correctly that would surely ( DONT CALL ME SHIRLEY) take some serious setting up to get the tensions correct. :Banghead bet you mean it was from the front of the puller to the rear of the pulled,......... SORRY, had a senior moment. 7 miles a day :cool2 thats some serious trenching. You wouldnt want to get to break time and realise the lunch box was still in the 4x4
The company i used to work for had a lot of D9's nearly all of them including R's and T's came with out the top roller! i remember we fitted some to a few of them, we used an old bottom roller on a fabricated backet! seemed to work ok i think it was the only 2 we done!
This may have been posted before, but it relates to this thread, and is pretty neat. the video shows 5 Fiat Allis 41B dozers pulling a cable layer. The tag says it is a water line, but I do not know anything else. They are hooked together by a ships anchor chain. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_DQYcD11w
Wow that's a cool video! I think it illustrates why they use the radical tall grousers on the D8's in the pics above, and CatD9H is probably right when he said those cable laying guys don't what go around it means. I love the ship anchor chain. That's crazy stuff.
Thats what I meant Rob there were 2 lines and they ahd a cross cable to hold the 2 parrallel. They hooked to the rears of each machine the cross cables hooked on at the front tow hook with a little slack so if one did slip at the rear it coul also pull on the fron if a cable broke or slipped. It was quite a site to see it all moving. They laid controll wires down a pipline job I worked next to. I know they trenched through alot of rock to. Iknow on one occasion they piles across a swamp. They had a Linkbelt excavator and he piled several mats of trees in the bottom of a big creek. They got the first three 7G's across and then the last 2 7G 's went acroos the the ocerside dragging their rippers and pulling the logs out. The two 8H's started moving and all of them went to rolling black smoke. They pulled those 2 8's like a knife through butter, I couldnt imagine how much force was going through the ground. They also used a Parsons cable plow that looked like a scraper cab and draft arms with a dead axle and plow in the middle. There was another crew That had Delta Cat D6's High tracks that6 way blades and cable spools but they plowed only a few miles then The company went down and hid the tractors in a swamp. Afriend of mine went to get a trailer they borrowed and they had left every thing and just pushed out a big spot in the brush and left all the machines.
My third messages, sorry for bothering you guys. I am new to this forum ad need to post 3 messages to be able to start a new thread
Don't sweat it Thor. Welcome to the forum.
:OMG they forgot to add the pipe great find Jerry :thumbsup Wow, some serious thought went in to that set up. I wonder if they learned that the hard way
I would love to hear from someone who saw that fiat string set up. That video creates more questions than answers. Where is the pipe? How did they hook all those units together?(from chain to chain i hope!) Has anyone done the math on what the total pull would be? What does that plow look like out of the ground? Where's the fuel truck in that video? Those fiats sure are sweet!
I wonder if the reason they where using that much power to pull was because the pipe is actually feeding into the trench at the end and they're dragging the pipe down the trench as they go.
pretty impresive you would think with that much power if they did hit something underground something would break like the implement wonder how many miles they would drive before they knew it was missing haha
i suppose you could, buy why would you want to? It is pretty simple to lay the pipe or hose or whatever on the ground and just feed it in as you go. Unless the line is steel pipe? They could be just pre-ripping the path the intend to travel, plowing the pipe in on another pass? I'm stumped :beatsme
A possibility but having tried pulling a length of cable through a duct a few weeks back I would not recommend it, way too much drag I took it that was what was happening. I was being a bit of a smart*** with my original comment about forgetting the pipe. Be honest, if you were going to the trouble and effort to pull a stunt ( in the best possible meaning of the expression ) like that. Would you really want to risk damaging whatever it was you were installing. I would go for a proof pass then drop back and plow in the pipe / cable. Apart from the fact that they may not have another set of equipment available to handle the pipe / cable.
This isn't dozers,but they are using a drainage tile plow.Installing drainage tile.Frost in the ground when they was doing this. Also couple plow at a field day i went too this summer.:usa
Nice pictures! I like the plow on that Case IH.
Looking at the 8N in the first picture,I was wondering about wear factors on tractor & undercarriage.The ripper/plow is sitting a long way back,so the leverage factors must be big ,when ripping in tough ground. Would cable-layer dozers be set up differently,to suit the work, in a similar way a Steel-Mill or Landfill dozer might be set up? Any thoughts ?... Jim