Has anybody ever seen a Cat loader frame with this kind of holes in it ? Aftermarket ?
Hmmmmm.... that's different @Nige will know Maybe someone took some arms off another machine.... or they broke the originals and fabbed up some new ones???? the cat logo looks a bit fishy anyways....
Must be aftermarket or homemade. What I don't like is it is thinned out way to much on the bottom of the cutouts.
Also has a tie down eye mounted in a weird place
Yeah, I think they just put them there to make installing the *new* arm assembly easier From what I've heard the arms can cost a bloody fortune so fabbing one up for a machine you're gonna auction anyways is probably a no-brainer. Nige should see this now....
Pretty sure it's ex-military. the holes are to save weight on transport aircraft... a pound or two here and there add up, also explains the tie down eyes. Probably used more as a forklift than a loader. The Balderson quick hitch is standard for the military stuff.
That makes sense RZ. Has a 22Z serial number prefix. Not sure if that’s any indication
22Z03295 but no suffix
22Z does come back as a 950E with a 3304 engine. Scratch the paint, I bet it has green "primer".
I don't know..... got my doubts
waynegov.com?
Well it's been working at the dump for a while... Here it is in Jan of 2008 And Feb 2013 And Nov 2014 May of 2016
And March of 2019
Wow. Good work.
If indeed that is the same machine, just remember that the municipalities get the first crack at milsurp machinery. A lot of our smaller towns in this area have milsurp graders, fire trucks, etc. And they score the stuff for pennies on the dollar.
I know My first 2U came from the portland dump, it is an SP suffix.
Man, that's old stuff. Way back I part timed on one on weekends cleaning cattle pens at a feedlot. Made me appreciate Powershift, Power steering, and hydraulic blade controls. Tilt was nice too.
Weight saving makes sense, the same way some lowboy trailers have holes in the frame. Doesn't affect strength as much as one would think.
As Ronsii pointed out with his photo, in the larger loaders like 994's have holes in the lift arms as standard. This one appears to have been lightened and the lifting points are most definitely NOT standard. It's hard to see but the lifting eyes appear to be actually part of the lift arm and not something that's been welded on afterwards. I may be wrong.
Lift Arms are NOT supposed to look like this BTW.........
The 950E was built as a "special" by Cat - 5R-8015 Special Loader Arrgt. Probably a lot more details hidden away in some Custom Shop (or Military) Manual somewhere. There's nothing in the public domain.
Really I thought that was some new quick detach boom system! The reattach might be a bit slower however!
Believe it or not but breaks like that were repaired in our neck of the woods, despite the factory being dead-set against it ......... this is a different one, broken further up. Weld Prep & Alignment Simultaneous welding and the alignment jig that was used to keep the arms pretty much in line (it was line bored afterwards) Stress Relief
The finished repair "You can't see the join"
Nige you people sure do some good work! Would love to just hang out in your shop for a few days. Kind of reminds me of a guy that was at the Cummins school I attended back in the late 1970's. He was from an operation somewhere south of Mexico. He was asking the instructor about some injection pump parts and why they might fail. He was saying how due to long lead time to get new parts they were making the parts in their owm machine shop. The instructor basically said "No Way!" those are special heat treated steel parts! Guy said you do what you have to do or it shuts down a multimillion dollar operation for weeks. The parts they were making only lasted say a couple weeks but they made up a bunh at a time and just replaced them as needed. He also had a whole list of spare parts he was going to be taking back in his luggage!