I looked at two 9G's this afternoon and both had busted frames on the right side about half way between the front and rear engine mounts. They had both been plated with 1" plates and re welded but one of them tore the 1" plate in half like a piece of paper. The welds did not break! Was this a problem on theses tractors or an unusual set of conditions they were in?
Never spent much time around D9G's so can't be much help there. If it tore loose again the way you describe sure nothing wrong with the welding job on it.
You are talking about a machine made in the late sixties or early seventies with maybe 50,000 or more hours on the frame and asking if this was a problem?
You gotta remember that the D9G's were used in all the toughest applications of any job. They lasted a long time so most of them have a lot of hours on the frame with engines, trans, and finals being rebuilt but no attention given to the frame until it gives trouble, and then it was just patched up cause most of the time, the machine needed to be stripped down to the frame to fix it right. That costs more than what the machine was worth by the time it happened usually.
Yair...In the scrub they used to crack around where the equalizer mount attached to the frame. It was engine out to properly gouge and plate it...problem was with a three quarter plate on the inside near the pilot motor there was insufficient room to to remove it with the engine in the frame. Cheers
Based on my experience frame cracks are not unusual in large dozers working in really heavy applications, especially ripping. I don't have any specific experience of D9G but I have seen cracking on other large models. What I would say it that it is VERY RARE in my experience to see a frame crack correctly repaired. They CAN be repaired, but usually the repairer wimps out and tries to do everything from the outside. This is impossible IMHO. The engine & torque have to come out (for a start) and then the frame has to be completely opened up by carving a football-shaped window in the outside skin from top to bottom using the crack as the centre line. The upper & lower plates need cutting back at least 9-12" each side of the crack and replacing with new. The plate is not flat, it's like a T-section but any good machine shop can take flat bar and make it to the profile necessary. There is nothing special about the steel, it's just a good-quality structural steel, not high-tensile at all. Repair then goes like this: - 1. Gouge and & weld the crack on the inside skin by welding from both sides to ensure penetration. This is why you need the engine out and why you need to oval hole in the outside frame rail. 2. Replace the lower plate with a new section. 3. Replace the upper plate with a new section. The new lower plate needs to be a different length to the new upper plate, or the joints need to be staggered so that you don't have more than one weld joint in one place. 4. Bevel the edges of oval window in the outside rail and tack weld backing strips to the inside of the frame. Make a plate out of new steel to fit the oval hole and weld in place. Other tips. Wire feeder works better than electrodes. No stopping & starting. Preheat to around 50-60 DegC to drive out moisture. Use a needle peening gun to remove slag and stress relieve each weld pass. This is really a 2-man job. One welder and one guy to drive the needle gun. Grind all welds smooth after completion. Easy really .......... However on something as old as a D9G can you really justify the type of money that this repair would cost..?
I don't have the expertise or the eq to remove the engine and they want way too much for what is left of the tractors so I'm going to keep looking. These tractors have been in the worst situations since they were new and know in their old age I need them one more time to pull a tile plow. Last fall we were stopping two farm tractors one deere and one cat with a combined weight of 90000 lbs. at 5 feet. And that was pre ripping twice to a depth of 4 feet. One neighbor is using a TD25 and pulling with a D8H another is using 2 550 quad tracks and one of the guys that does it commercially is using a quad and pulling with a TD25. Sometimes ya wonder what your doing but the eq can be payed for on one big acreage, after expenses if everything goes right. IF Everything goes right! One guy pulled his articulated tractor in two and another busted the rear axle housing off. I understand the manufactures are trying to sell an easy pulling plow that's their job but there are times when these farm tractors are simply not enough. The 9G is in my price range and there are some out there that are still in fairly good shape but I don't want too spend 9000 to have one shipped in either. So this is why I was wondering if the frame cracks were do to extreme operations or just iron fatigue after years of heavy use.
Find a old school welder and let him look at it.I have seen welders and I have seen Welders.We used one that would get iron out of a junk pile to use and saved money and time.Some want new iron.We used one that was up in the years but when he got through it stayed together.But if one of these old guys tells you nope can't do it listen to him.
Approximately how much drawbar pull do you need for what you're planning to do..?
I have a cat challenger 75 C it ways around 34000 lbs. The rule of thumb that I've heard is a little over 80 % of it's static weight is what a machine will pull, but I have no details as to how they are doing it. Hard surface paved surface etc. If I can stay on dry top soil and not have to go over 36" deep and I don't hit blue clay and pre rip I don't have any trouble pulling a 6" boot. But it's all up hill from there. There is no subsoil moisture this year and that's adding to the problem. The 10" boots at seven feet is what takes all of the pull and if you hit blue clay it's worse. The horse power is not an issue. To get down to 1.5 mph so that the satilites can control the hyd. I am throttled back to around 1300 rpm. and there is a big sign next to the shifting lever that says not to use low gear under sustained loads. Simply put my cat is not designed to do what I'm doing, and I probably need a reinforced draw bar like the scraper tractors use. I have work for a big crawler moving dirt and clearing some land so I thought that would be the best way to go and if I still can't pull it on the deep 10" mains I could put something ahead of the crawler.
Not familiar with any frame issues with old CAT D9's,but if I had a dollar for every older D8 with a broken track frame I have seen it would make a nice wad. Exactly why back in the day when I needed a big dozer I bought a TD-25 instead.
Your Challenger 75C according to the Performance Handbook has 28,000 pounds of drawbar pull @ 2.6mph in 1st gear, 23,750 lb @ 4.0 mph in 2nd gear, 20,500 lb @ 4.7mph in 3rd gear, and 17,900lb @ 5.3mph in 4th gear. There are other figures up to 10th speed but I guess these are the ones that interest you. Comparatively a track tractor will give you the following drawbar pull: - A mid-80's D6H - 27,500lb in 1st gear @ 1.7mph, 21,000lb in 2nd gear @ 2.2mph. A mid 80's D7G - 39,000lb in 1st gear @ 1.6mph, 26,000lb in 2nd gear @ 2.3mph. 70's/80's D8K - 56,000lb in 1st gear @ 1.7mph, 42,000lb in 2nd gear @ 2.2mph. The D9G you were looking at - 68,000lb in 1st gear @ 1.6mph, 56,000lb in 2nd gear @ 2.1mph. Unless you really need high speed maybe you should be looking at a D8 rather than a D9.
Thanks for the data! I had found the draw bar pull on the 75C but I could never find anything on the steel tracks. Does your hand book have anything on a John Deere 9630 4 wheel drive? It had 8 of the biggest metric tires I've ever seen on a farm tractor, but I don't know the size. The trucker told me it weighed 57000. I'm just guessing that the draw bar pull on the 9630 is somewhere around 47,000lbs. The 2 of them together would be around 70,000 which is more than the the D9, and this year we couldn't get over 6' deep. Also do you have anything on a TD 25? I was to slow and left a 25C get away. I like the high low steering clutches. Speed is not what we want no more than 1.5 mph.
Yair...grandpa rich. what exactly is it that you are doing...ripping in cable or pipes maybe? Cheers.
Granpa - my book only has Cat information, but I'd imagine if you trawled around on the internet you'd find information on the other models you're asking about.
Hello Scrub Puller and Nige! I just found the 9630 information. It's 53,666 max pull. So the 75C and the 9630 had a combined pull of 77,416 and we couldn't get over 6 feet deep in the soil that we were in. Scrub Puller your right the frames are busted above the equalizer on the right side. The only thing that I can think of that would do that is to lock the right side of the blade under a heavy root or rock and lift the back of the tractor off of the ground. Maybe some one else knows why they break there. The water table in these soils is so high they we have to drain them every 50 to keep the crop from drowning out. most of the tile is laid in around the 3 foot level. But there are always holes that require a much deeper cut. 7 feet is the max for this plow. The other day I googled "tile plow", and found one being pulled in North Dakota by 5 HD41's.
You need some serious Horsepower .......!! IMO a D9G still wouldn't do what you're proposing. Even a modern-day D10T with 580 BHP available (compared to the old D9G's 325) still only gives around 75,000 pounds of drawbar pull at 2mph in either 1st or 2nd speed. However at lower ground speed like 1.3mph in 1st it does give 125,000 pounds of drawbar pull. Asking price new - about $1.3 million ......... I'm not sure a single track-type tractor is your answer to be honest.
I've got the 1.3 if you leave off the million. HA HA! I know what your saying, and we're trying to do this with farm tractors that weren't designed for it and that's why they're pulling them apart. I'll just keep looking around and next spring I'll post some pictures if I can figure out how that's done. bu The guys around hear that do it commercially use a D9 or TD25 on the plow and pull with a D8. So I have to balance the price of the eq. against hiring it done.
Yair . . . I've seen clip of a plow being pulled by the 41's...on this board there used to be a picture of a mouldboard plough working at about eight feet. I've always wonderered what you could grow in such country that would warrant such expenditure. I can only assume that the work would be done in long straight runs and if I was confronted with the problem I would be seriously looking at a winch and spud set up on 300 hp crawler...they can always suck a lot more than they can pull...I seem to recall 80,000 pounds on the old D7 so maybe 150,000 on a nine. Winches aren't much used any more and there are probably a few laying around. Cheers.
That sounds like the old days of steam ploughing. 2 tractors one each side of the field winching the plough backwards & forwards across the field. Not such a far-fetched idea to be honest. Deserves consideration.
I would think that the answer might be in a hydrostatic machine or in a creeper geared farm tractor. Another good place to look is in steiger ( the green ones ) farm tractors, alot of them used over the road truck trannsmissions that had some ultra low gear set ups... Or possibly 2 smaller tractors with creeper gears. I know some measure speed in feet per hr.
one of these maybe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsCLBS870nY&feature=related five big allis crawlers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_DQYcD11w&feature=related
This tile trenching tool looks interesting.Dont know what it costs but it dosent take two riggs to pull it.Depth accuracy may be better as well. http://www.dktrenchers.com/video.html
Grandpa rich there are two D9s on e bay.Look pretty good in the photos.
Caterpillar D9G Working Short video of a great old D9G pushing wood chips.Taken a couple weeks ago.viewable at http://www.youtube.com/user/skadill#p/u/4/iM2VF6qVWeY
have not seen that on the D9Gs we ran. still running. if it is a problem look for a DD9 which has a double frame being they were double tractors. the most knowledgeable person i know to talk to would be McAnnich Corp. Des moines, Iowa. they had up to 50 of these at one time.
Broken frames I've seen many older Cat dozers with cracked, welded, and plated main frames. I've seen hightracks with cracked, welded and plated main frames, too. I've seen plenty of track frames cracked and welded and plated, too. I've personally welded, patched, and plated numerous Cat track frames. As D9GDon says, the bigger crawlers are always put into the toughest work. Rock is the crawler killer, and speed on rock is the crawler double-killer. All my D7F's cracked their main frames, and we welded and plated them. They usually break either side of the equalizer bar saddle. The older Cat dozers such as the D8H and D9G were bad for it, because they had long noses designed to improve weight distribution for uphill dozing, and big heavy engines in those long noses. Anytime an operator bounces over a rock or a stump, the long nose and all that weight out the front, acts as a lever on the main frame. They bounce back to earth and the main frame rails bend with the bounce. Do that a few thousand times, and cracks start where the flexing is worst, at the saddle. Main frames also twist under load and impacts. Couple the twisting with bouncing and it's no small wonder main frames crack. It usually only happens after about 15000 hrs of "severe service" work, as Cat neatly termed it. I've seen in Cat literature where they estimated crawler life at 10,000 hrs on severe service, 20,000 hours on moderate service, and 30,000 hrs on light service work. Of course, you can get a lot more hours in many cases, particularly if you continue to replace components and repair frames. I think the amount of rubber bushings used around pivot pins, and other major weight-bearing points in modern crawlers, has probably extended their lifespan considerably, over the older design tractors. P.S. - Skadill, I like your video. I like that nice shiny blade! It must feel good to push a bladeful that you can't see over! Good to see some of the old girls still turning an honest $.
I'll agree with the above. I've seen a lot less frame issues with high-drives that have rubber cushioned bogie suspension than there ever was with "solid-frame" tractors like D8H/K & D9G/H. This D10R is one of the few high-drives I've seen that suffered a major frame failure. It had 16215 operating hours when it failed, I would say more than 50% of them ripping, in a nitrate mine moving caliche. That stuff was hard. Both sides of the frame went about a foot behind the equalizer bar.
Skadill, thanks for posting that. Good looking Dozer.
I don't know how it would match up but you maybe to find an old terex 82-30 around. Have seen one pushing along with a TD25 and it kept up no problem. just a thought.
Granpa, was this the tile plow action you were talking about? ..... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_DQYcD11w&feature=related Man, that's great to watch! I never even thought there was 5 x HD41's left in operating condition, anywhere - now I know there is!
yep that's the video! If you look close at the 4th dozer it looks like he's ripping ahead of the plow but I don't think he is because the ripper should be heaving at least a little dirt even in sod. My take on it is they are pre ripping with the plow because I see no pipe going into the ground. They'll come back later and run a foot deeper and plow the pipe in. Or maybe I'm not looking at it right! The plow is similar to ours only it's a lot heavier. Ours only uses two wheels. When the plow is in the ground and working there isn't much weight on the wheels. It doesn't suck down like you think it would. The weight is on the hitch and that's why they're busting the rear ends off of the tractors. When we pre rip we stay a foot above the grade so the tile has a nice firm bottom. This is pretty much what we do! Every 100 feet and we try to stay at about 3 to 4 feet and run the lines as long as possible so as to avoid a lot of connections. I did run a terex once stripping for a gravel pit but I liked the cat better. My uncle put me on a 1949 D4 when I was 14 years old back filling tile ditches. I ran a D6 and then a D7E in Nam and when I came home I ran a D8H for a guy building roads. I also ran "owned" a 1959 ??? international TD24 but I couldn't keep heads on it. Also ran a HD 21 but this was all 35 years ago. We just want a big tractor that will pull the load by it's self 75% of the time and also be able to clear some land. When we are done if it's still in one piece we can re sell it. I always liked the way the cat's handled in the woods and the parts are still readily available. This forum has been a wealth of information for me on some of this older stuff and I thank every one.
I just watched that video again and now I think he is pre ripping ahead of the plow. It just seems that there should be more dirt movement under the ripper. But 5 HD41's hooked together is a lot of power
You'd have to make sure there was no solid rock in the area where you were planning to lay the pipe? I hate to think what would happen to that ripper if it struck a solid outcrop of rock, with 5 x HD-41's pulling. That ripper would come apart like a Chinese socket on the end of an impact gun, if they struck a rock outcrop, wouldn't it? I can recall ripping sandstone with my D7F's. At one stage the sandstone was so hard, we were pushing one D7F with two others. I can tell you, Cat ripper shanks can stand the pressure of 2 dozers (one pushing on the ripper), but they don't like a total of 3 dozers. We ended up snapping the ripper shank at the bottom of the shank box. When I bought any new Cat dozer, I always folded a piece of flat bar around the bottom of the shank box (1 1/4" x 5" on the D7), and welded it fully top and bottom, to give that area maximum support. If you didn't do this, you'd tear the back of the shank box right out, when you pushed with another Cat on ripping. The flat bar made a good spot for resting the cutting edge on, for proper blade location for double ripping.
If you have to push one dozer with an other in order to successfully rip hard ground, then IMHO your original dozer is not big enough. Ripper frames & shanks are generally designed to withstand the force that the tractor itself can produce, not the additional force of another tractor shoving it up the *** ............
Nige What you say is generally true, but it was common practice in the days when D-9G's and D-9H's were the biggest you could get to push on the ripper with another D-9. Look at the single shank rippers from that era and you will see that many were built for this, and had pushblocks on ther back of the ripper pocket. In pipeline work, Kelly rippers were fovored for this reason, and they had a pushblock that reinforced the pocket, as well as a heavier shank. In other places, people will use what they have. If you have 2 D-8's and a bit of hard ground, it makes more sense to double up than to rent or buy a bigger tractor. Now if you have to do it all the time it is a different story. The D-10 in your post above looks sad. It looks like a small crack got ignored until it became quite large. I had a D-8K do that, but only on one side. It had been on bare rental and the "operator", as I later learned, had been trying to remove a large boulder by ramming it at speed. He tore the corner of the blade off, then continued to run it the rest of the day that way. The company called and asked me to bring out a new corner bit, as the one it had had "fallen off". After the obvious was fixed and we got the machine back, I noticed the hood shaking a lot as it traveled, and found the right side frame looking almost like the D-10 picture. We repaired it much like the directions above, but with the engine in place we did all the repair from the outside. Cut windows and plated it all up nicely. Took 3 or 4 days of welding, but it lasted the 10 years I had the dozer, and as far as I know it is still going.
Somewhere I have the "after" pics of the D10R. We nailed the frame back together on both sides using the procedure mentioned on Page 1 of this thread and I swear you could not see the joins after we had finished. Didn't even use any reinforcing plates over the original frame. Ripping caliche must be the hardest job a tractor can be asked to do, although the seismic velocity was not the highest in the book, there's no grain in it whatsoever so even trying to get a start is a problem. On that particular site everything was ripped and dozed into piles for loading out by 992's. There was no blasting whatsoever because of an astronomical observatory located very close to the mine. Hard on tractors, eventually the customer bought 2 x D11's specifically for ripping and had the 10's doing his dump work and general load pile pushing. Only then did his frame problems go away. even then I would not have been too keen on buying a 2nd hand tractor if I knew that particular customer had owned it previously.
That statement takes me back to the time many moons ago when there was only one contractor around my way that specialized in ripping. Our UK contributors will remember Stokey Plant maybe with affection..... Sometimes in really hard ground they would double up D9G/H with Kelly rippers. They always used to ask "why blast rock you can rip?" Our answer in those days was always "Why rip rock you can blast?" .......... tractors have come on a bit since then.
Yair...On one job we had some layered sand stone that a nine with a Kelly could get underneath and lift but it was slow going...put another nine up his a## and it became a cake walk. The biggest problem for the push Cat was getting over the slabs. Cheers.
Nige, in the perfect world of unlimited or corporate financing, you can go buy whatever you need to do the job at hand. In the world I lived in, every dollar was hard-earnt, and there was no rich uncles, no corporate finance, no mining company largesse .. just the brother and myself struggling from scratch as agricultural contractors, undercapitalised and overworked. We could afford good, low-hour used D7's, and that was it. We did buy 2 x new D6C's and 1 x new D7F. However, buying a D8H or D9G was out of the question. A new D7 was around $50,000 in the early 1970's, a D8H was $90,000, and a D9G was $130,000. Not only couldn't we afford D9G's, we couldn't afford to buy the replacement truck and trailer required to haul it. Then there was the case of trying to convince farmers to hire a D9 on hourly hire when a D7 was all that was required for the job. About 1/2 of our work was hourly hire, the other half was contract rates. The D7 was the ideal size for the area we worked in where tractor shifts were frequent, and narrow gates and a lot of soft ground, wet from shallow springs, was present. If we bogged a D7, it could be retrieved. A D9 bogged is a bigger nightmare. Yes, I know all about debogging with logs tied to tracks. Been there and done that aplenty. However, when you get a D9 bogged, you need log sizes that have to be mechanically handled. A D7 size log we could handle by hand. Then there was the need to have bigger handling equipment with a D9. You can shove a replacement D7 track roller into place by hand, a D9 roller takes a forklift or some other mechanical handling device. All in all, the D7's served us well. We didn't have to double or triple rip very often, they were only a limited number of occasions where it was required.