Hello, have an old cat 7e dozer that the blade is cracking out on me. As you can see from the pictures it has been repaired at one time or another but is broke out again. What would be the best fix for this? Vee out real good with grinder and weld up or grind down flat and weld a plate over it? Any advice ? Thanks.
Yair . . . Oliver182 First off I am surprised to see the push beam casting welds direct to the skin without a doubler and would suspect some of the internal bracing/structure has failed allowing flexing. I would suggest cutting a couple of inspection ports in the rear skin to examine what is transferring the thrust to the front face of the blade . . . the sides of the blade do of course but further in there should be some ribs and bracing If there are internal problems they need to be repaired and then the normal procedure would be to vee out the cracks, re-weld and grind it level and then fit a nice (say 1/2") shaped plate with radiused corners over and around the damaged section. Cheers.
I'd suggest to vee everything out nicely with an air-arc and grinder then post some more photos showing what it looks like with everything opened up - let the dog see the rabbit so to speak. Welding something over the top without fixing the problems underneath first is asking for trouble IMHO.
This thread might give you a few ideas ............ HeavyEquipmentForums
I would agree with nige. this is a complete mad-womans breakfast as far as welding goes. BACK to the past,get rid of all that Cocky ****e weldind that never penetrated and start over if possible,good luck.
you may just look for another blade , might be easier just my 2 cents
You can sort of see how I had mine repaired 9 years ago. It has held since then. But the repair eliminated the manual tilt of the blade with the adjustment rod, so that is no longer an option. I will get some better photos of the repair when I go back up to the job tomorrow.
Nice looking D7E ETMF 58 White ! I like it .
Thanks. Here is what it looks like after I spent 10 grand on it last month. And the other photo is of clearcut that we finished shearing and raking yesterday. Timber to cattle, that's what the farmers around here are doing now. In another year or two or five, it will go back the other way. My helper is 69 years old so he plays the bad knee card and gets to run the D6R with rake blade and I run the old 7 with the V-shear, then I put the straight blade with hang-on rake on and help him rake. It won't be long before I'm the one with bad knees; you gotta be tough to stay on that old beast all week. The reason I haven't posted photos of my blade repair as I intended is because I forgot to take photos, and we moved out and I left the blade on that site. I'll try to remember to take photos when we go back to burn the brush piles. I don't want the OP to think that we've forgot about him and hijacked the thread.
That's cool ETFM 58 White ! Keep doing what your doing Bro . Looks good .:yup D7E is my favorite Cat dozer . Classic machine ! Never ran the V shear blade . We use a Rome K/G blade for clearing and switch back to semi U blade for piling & dirt work on a 16 B Fiat Allis . I really like that size dozer ...... Big enough to move something and easy to haul on a tractor trailer .
This aint a CAT dozer ............ My Fiat -Allis 16-B has a 1" thick base plate welded on the back of the blade frame . The blade arm boss is then welded to the base plate . My thinking is this helps spread out the load stress on the joint area . No cracks that I can see ....... Might be a possible repair solution ?