I use my D3 LGP probably no more than 200ish hours a year, but while working in the dirt, I spend the tracks in 2nd gear long before it starts lugging the engine. I was wondering if they are to far gone, and just start saving for replacement, or build them up with the prefabricated weld on stock. Any input would be great guys.
How much do new pads and probably new bolts cost? How much is grouser bar, welding rods and your time going to cost. Can you safely weld on grouser bar if you have sealed and lubricated chains without damaging the seals?
Yair . . . A couple of points. Depending on what you are doing at 200 hours a year is this a major issue? It sure takes a bit of load off the drive train which must be getting up in hours. Grouser bar should be a lot cheaper than plates and bolts. I have no experience with SALT but a bit of judicious water cooling should alleviate any welding heat problems. I used to routinely rebuild rollers without dissasembly. Cheers.
The machine has about 4,800hrs on it. Well as far as load goes, the blade was narrowed down (previous owner.) from 10ft, to 8ft. That seems like it would be taking off a good chunk of load. But where I really need more traction is when doing silage work (stacking animal feed.) Pushing something up a steep incline, that doesn't role off the blade, and is very wet. But as for the dirt work part, I like to be efficient as possible when someone is paying me, while not wasting my time. Dave, I don't have the numbers in front of me...but as I recall, it was pretty spendy. Quite a bit more than the metal and I have the stick on hand. In the winter time, If I'm not tinkering in the shop, I'm drinking a cup of coffee.
try these guys for grouser bar .... www.dura-tuff.com We use their bars and they are extremely good. You might be really interested in their curved bar because it means you don't have to start trimming the existing grouser on the pad in order to get the replacement bar to sit square. The 1" measurement you are showing with the tape measure is about 85% wear on the grousers BTW. So you can probably go a little longer before re-grousering.
Years ago I had a D4 7U series in excellent condition but not much grousers left. A huge difference after welding the grouser bar on and had to keep a closer eye on the temperature guage.
Your pads look about like my pads on my D5G XL. My undercarriage is on run-out since I have already turned the P&B's. I am just going to run it almost until failure to get as much out of it as I can. I have ran the numbers in the past between welding bars on and new pads, with the labor and material I would have had in re-grousering I could buy new pads and be back running for not much difference. This is basing welding labor from hiring a local welder so the numbers change if you are doing it yourself. The last time I bought Cat track pads and bolts for the D5 I think it was around $3800 for everything, we had them on in 1/2 day with 3 guys including myself. I am not a welder but I did have very good welders working for me at the time, however they were worth more pushing dirt than spending a few days welding grousers. That obviously factored into my equation. How times have changed, now I can't afford to hire welders or buy track pads.
For the 200 hrs pe ryear you run, I would weld grouser bar on in my spare time. Don't worry about hurting the seals. If you are too cheap to buy pre made grouser bar, and I do not mean that as an insult, you can get the traction you need on the cheap with some 1/2 or 5/8 rebar welded on. A better alternate, if there is any oil field work near you, is some sucker rod. You can usually get it cheap around the oilk fields. I know these are not the "proper" way, but for the hours you run, it would last 3 or 4 years doing what it sounds like you do. The link above for dura tuf is good for the weld on bars. I would guess it would run about $1500 or so, maybe a little more. I priced it for my D-5M at about $1200 with 20" shoes, so yours with wider pads will probably be a little more.
Correction to what I wrote above. 1" grouser height on a D3G track shoe equates to 80% worn, not 85%. So you still have some way to go before they are completely worn out. If you go the grouser bar route you'll have to take them to 100% worn (0.75" height) in order to install the appropriate grouser bar which is 1.125" tall. That would take your grousers back to 1.875" high compared to new shoes where the grousers are 1.85" high. Thing is you don't want to go too high on the grousers otherwise you'll have so much traction you will probably encounter overheating issues.
Thanks everyone (especially Nige.) for the advice once again. While in the photo it looks like there is 1", its actually 7/8" or .875, but regardless, still to tall to regrouse, unless I want to do some trimming. I'm going to think about this over the summer, and see where I'm at financially next winter. It always comes down to money...
You could still re-grouser, even at 7/8". Extreme Service Track shoes for your tractor have 2-1/16"" high grousers, so installing grouser bar on your shoes would only take you from your current 7/8" to 1-15/16" but wouldn't take you "outside the envelope" in the strictest sense. You'd just have to be careful watching the temps until you wore the rebuilt grousers down a tad. Check out the grouser installation procedure in Dura-Tuff's web site. Blow-by-blow instructions of how to do it. For my money if you go the grouser bar route I'd suggest to use the curved bar - much less prep work before welding.
Local dealer says he can get pads for pretty much same cost as welding new bars, but since I can weld them myself I find it is worth while if I don't count the cost of my labour. One point is I would weld new bars on sooner than later, before the pads start to bend, as once that happens it is pretty much time to buy new pads.
If you want to weld grouser bar "sooner rather than later" then you have to oxy-cut the grouser down to a height where after welding the new bar on it puts the height back to 100%. If the pad is bent then it is not a candidate for re-grousering anyway. It means the base of the shoe has become too thin, or that the shoe is too wide for the job it's being asked to do. I've seen way too many dozers with huge width pads on them bent to buggery. The motto is that the shoes should be the narrowest you can possibly get away with while still maintaining adequate flotation. May be hard to believe but we only use 24"-wide shoes on our D10's and they are fine ...... we have no issues with bending shoes whatsoever. In our operation we get 3 lives out of shoes - original + 2 re-grouserings before the base metal becomes too thin and they get junked.
Yair . . . I have often wondered about this preoccupation with wide grousers. There seem to be more LGP tractors around doing "ordinary" work . . . I have even seen one fitted with a ripper. Under "normal" conditions apart from the obvious issues of twist and trackwear the wide plates provide less traction. Cheers.
If you want to screw up the undercarriage, final drive, & track frames of an LGP tractor right quick put it to work on hard-ish ground
I was talking to my Cat salesmen and the subject came up of one of the local guys that just bought a new D6N LGP. This guy does quarry service work, not digging overburden but rather "clean-up" tasks around the quarry and the kilns. This is a powdered lime manufacturing facility. The particular project I saw the new D6N on was building a berm with overburden mixed with a little shot rock. The discussion evolved into why he chose a LGP machine being the fact they do a lot of this type of work on a regular basis for the quarry. The salesman said he tried to talk him out of an LGP but he wanted one for when they have to push the fly ash and waste lime dump off from time to time. Now I haven't done this type of work in those conditions but if a rigid frame truck can dump it's load on the pile, I would think an XL dozer could push it off but then I again I haven't done it.:beatsme I think a lot of folks purchase LGP machines not understanding the true operating costs, similar to people buying CTL's for conditions their not suited for and then wondering why it's so expensive. LGP's have their place though.
In my little silage business, I need the LGP. When I come to a complete stop, the machine just starts sinking. I just hope and pray the day never comes that the machine breaks down on top of the pit. When I was looking at machines a couple years ago, I looked a JD750 LGP that had a bunch of pads completely broken in half. Evidently they didn't get the memo about being careful with wide tracks. Glad I passed on the JD