A customer recently brought in a Case 850 (no suffix (B,D,K etc.)). The left track was obviously leaning in on top so I rightly assumed the bushings in the frame were shot. I replaced them and the axle has some wear on it but not excessive for its age. After reinstalling and buckling the track back together, it still leans in badly. The frame is relatively tight on the shaft and the other side is running correctly so from all appearances, the axle is bent up (from what event I can't imagine). My thought is to remove the frame again and with our 1 1/2" rosebud, heat the axle and use my port o power and bend it down. Is this a bad idea (tempering)? The lean is bad enough to wear the rails and put more load on the inside rings of the rollers. I'm also looking for a set of brake pedals and cylinders for it, as someone took them off for a likely rebuild and didn't reinstall them. This machine has been nonexistent in my salvage searching.
Yair . . . wrwtexan. I have no knowledge of Case machines but I think you are referring to a solid "dead axle" and if so( in my opinion) it would be much better to replace it. If you attempt to straighten I would ask the customer to sign a statement that he understands no warranty is given or implied. I would have thought it a fairly straight forward lathe job to make one although, as I said, I have no idea about how it all goes together on your machine. Cheers.
Here's the machine I'm working on. The lean may not be bad enough to be worth trying to fix on an old farm dozer.
Sure would be interesting to know how that happened.
I'm with scrub, while I think you could bend it down i'm sure that would untemper the axle. I looked at Case's website and it doesn't look like that axel is separate from the main frame assy. But I think it could be fabricated.
Is the damage limited to the dead axle, or is the track frame twisted? Or both?
Well we don't have any picks of the guide levers or a good pick of the idler area where the torsion bar front link is hooked to the shaft and secured to the truck frame. Most of these started failing after years and hours of service. The torsion bar is the shaft running along the frame under the top roller, the ends are splined on it for the links, the rear has a tie rod across the back in front of the main shaft, the front hooks to the truck frames. This system keeps the nose up and allows the truck frames to move with the ground conditions much like the equalizer beam found in the dozers of today. Case stopped using this when the 850B series, 1150C , 1450B dozers. The splines would strip and the nose would fall, due to the cost to repair, they would weld the parts up and install blocks on the truck frame to make it stand the nose up and this put the stress to the frames and rear shaft causing it to be ducked out. This looks like it had a lefty working the machine due to that side maybe bowed stumping with that corner of the blade more. The lack of the torsion rod not being able to flex and bring that truck frame back under caused most of this issue.
TXGOAT; the problem appears to all be in the axle. I had considered the possibility of a twisted roller frame but after removing it from the tractor, I found it to be straight. The idler and fork is also in good shape. It has a nearly new set of rails on it and the rollers are all good. I have dealt with this same issue on my IH TD 20B but is was due to the inner bushing moving out of place. I replaced one of the torsion arm bushings while off as it within the two pin link was nearly cut through. I understand the concept of the torsion bar, which I think is a poor substitution in place of a walking beam as my D6C has. That being said, the bar axle is responsible for vertical frame and track alignment and power transfer to the blade, and the suspension only keeps the nose up. There is a link forward of rear plate of the engine which aids the axle in horizontal alignment with the other side, but it and the outer pin is in decent shape. Our weather has been wet and cold but I intend to pull the frame back off and check it with a square against the tractor frame.