All four of my 259D's are having issues with their axles to varying degrees. The worst machine has a track tilt of probably 15 degrees inward. Is it common for 259's to have axle problems?
Sorry, I was intending to reply to a different post.
I know when they first came out with the CTL torsion suspension that there were a lot of reports of the axles doing this. I personally had not heard of this happening again since they first came out. I don't remember for sure what the fix was any more.
It certainly was a problem....I had an early generation 287B that had the tracks leaning in towards the machine. I had roughly 500 or so hours on it and t was going to Cat for a recall. When I brought it in I pointed this out to the service manager and he said they would look into it. They called and said that the recall was done but the leaning effect was caused by wear in the bushings on the torflex axels....to make a long story short I went to cat and demanded to see the worn bushings...they could not produce one, but they did have 2 pallets of new torflex axels sitting 2 bays over. I got the axels replaced and did not need to it pay. So yes, they did have some problems due to the axels bending...
I can't find any recall for 259D machines regarding the axles, only for the drive motors. However there is a document entitled "Checking for Variations of the Torsion Axles" which is to determine if an axle is bent. After you go through the measurement procedure ends up with the comment ....... "If the difference between measurements is greater than 10 mm (0.4 inch), the variation is not within tolerance and the axle should be replaced." Don't know if that is any use to you. As another comment. Do all 4 machines track in a straight line..? The maximum permissible deviation is 10 feet sideways for every 100ft forward travelled. If they are outside that limit there is a procedure to adjust the tracking so they track straight.
These are all helpful, thank you. It just seems so strange that I run into the same problem across four different machines. Even if I can't get this figured out myself, this will give me some ammo when I talk to CAT again, as they "aren't aware of anything that could go wrong with the axles" and say this won't be a warranty issue.
Direct the dealer to Caterpillar document reference REH2213 if they say there isn't a problem ....... if there isn't a problem then why does a procedure exist to effectively check for twist in the axles..?
My cat rep freaked out when I mentioned this, but he said that's an invalid number, it's a digit short or something
Apologies for the misprint - REH S 2213.
Out of interest, we had problems with ours as well.