I’m adjusting the final drive bearings. I’m hoping to cure a little leak as well. I didn’t have a spammer so I thought I would share my method. I used the tractor to pry up on one side and a hammer and a piece of pipe on the other. Seems to work better than a cheater on a pry bar!
I bet your method worked just fine… But I think by removing the ten-foot cheater bar from the equation you might have taken a critical piece of the “modern engineer“ to caveman unga-bunga conversion off the table…my guess is “they” figured an average service tech weights 185 lbs (in 1949!), then when put on end of (set length) cheater bar puts about XYZft lbs on the adjusting ring… …with I guess the real “risk” being how did you know if you went too tight?? I suspect you felt/heard the hammer hits change feel/tone (and it stopped moving!)?? Curious how many turns or cutouts it moved before you put the lock back in?? Leaking less? Or more now?? Thanks for posting up the info/pics
It did cure my leak. I just tightened it until I felt like I had an acceptable amount of play on the sprocket. I could put a whole lot of pressure on the pry bar because it was just bending the bar. It really just gave me enough to be able to turn the adjuster nut
There should be no play in the sprocket
In the '70's I built a final drive adjustable C spanner out of some old Cat DH2 cutting edge. I just selected a fairly even thickness of old cutting edge, and with the gas axe, I simply profile cut a curved piece with a hook on it. Cut two more smaller rectangular-shaped pieces out and welded them to a piece of truck axle with 7018 low hydrogen, to fabricate the handle/lever section. Drilling the holes was the slowest part. Used a Cat bolt to hold the two pieces together. DH2 steel is boron steel - it also contains manganese, nickel, molybdenum, chromium, and vanadium - all of which makes it pretty high tensile low alloy steel, near enough to tool steel for mine. Truck axles are usually molybdenum steel, and are tough as nails. I never broke that homebuilt C spanner, even though I used a piece of 6' pipe for a cheater on it most times. Unfortunately, I never took any photos of it, and I don't know where it ended up, after many moves and sale of my business. Probably got thrown in the scrap pile when someone didn't recognise what it was for.
I had wondered if the spanner works as well with the tracks on. I left a little play as it seemed like it was getting awful tight. It sounds like I need to finish the job though if we’re talking about that kind of length on a spanner putting that much twist on them.
The direction you're tightening on that side, whether the tracks are on or off, won't make a great deal of difference. However, the other side is a different story, you have to wind the nut the opposite direction. Of course, splitting the track makes the job really easy.