Trying to get my new-to-me D6R going. Nice looking machine from a contractor sellout auction and only showing 8000 hours, and not beat up. Oil cooler was putting oil in the radiator, so $550 reman cooler from the Cat store and two days of my time to replace cooler and then Cascade flush, drain, repeat half a dozen times got that fixed. Previous owners had run it with the bushings in the equalizer bar roller frame brackets missing, which egg-shaped the holes a little bit, which means it won't hold the new bushings permanently. Don't have time right now to pull the roller frames and rebuild and line bore the holes. The new bushings fit fairly tight, so two different shops told me I could just weld them in there until I can do better. I'm somewhat skeptical of this because the bushing and the roller frame brackets are vastly different steel. Sure enough, my welder guy couldn't get the weld to penetrate the bushings. So I made me some retaining rings from mild steel to hold the bushings in their holes. I don't know how long this will work, but I got them welded in there tonight. Pics show them positioned on the brackets and ready to weld, and the eq bar with its new oscillating bearing and seals. I guess you can ask me in about 30 days if this method to repair it was any good.
What year is the shorthood lincoln?
I think someone told me 1939. I do know that my grandfather had it around his shop in the mid 1950s, and I think he had it at his sawmill here in the Mid-South in the war years. He made lumber for ammo boxes. After the war that came to an end, and a lot of the sawmill hands moved to Oregon to work in the big mills. I have never had to buy a battery for the old gal, haha. It has an "Armstrong" starter. Just don't lose the crank like my dad did. It came unhitched from his pickup in the 1960s and sailed down the road ditch doing cartwheels. We boys had to go look for the crank, which we found and is still in use.
Nice piece and story. Being that age and yellow i'm thinking it was from a govt ship yard. That thing will still be welding long after we are gone. Good luck with the 6. If there is no meat under the loaded part of the bushing the little collars are going to take the weight. It's all going to look a bucket of smashed A holes after the first day. You could find a longer pin and some bigger collars and it would probably hold till its undercarriage time. In all honesty one guy can pull both roller frames in a half day.
Surely isn't the best fix, but who knows how long it ran with no bushings. If the new bushings still fit in the holes, and now everything will be tight, this fix could last a long time. Or, it could be slopped out in a week. Most interesting question is where did the bushings go? If they would have been ran to the point of being completely gone, I would think the holes would be unusable. Maybe the tractor was in the shop getting repaired and they just stuck it back together for the auction?
The front bushings (both sides of the tractor) were pushed back on the pin and riding between the brackets and the oscillating bearing. They couldn't go out the front because the flag on the pin would block their departure. The rear bushings were just missing in action for who knows how long. You would think an operator would say, "Hey, this dozer is bucking up and down when I shift gears. Maybe we should take a look at it." The good news is that the holes are not extremely egg shaped, and I had to drive the bushings in and there is only a very small sliver of daylight right at the extreme bottom of the hole. Whether this will be enough to destroy the bushing when the weight pounds down on it remains to be seen, but I can promise you that the bushing is extremely hard and brittle and needs to be in a tight hole to remain intact. As far as removing the roller frames, that's probably what I should do but that is complicated by the fact that they welded one side's master link together so I can't break that track. They also ran the tractor with 3 loose sprocket segments, so I've got to torque some new bolts in and then weld the segments together because we all know that they ruined the holes running them loose. What else did they neglect in their (non-existent) maintenance program? I'm sure I will find out in time. But I think I bought it cheap enough to put some fairly major dollars in it and still be okay. Doyle's observation about the welder maybe being an ex Navy machine is very interesting. It would fit that time frame in history, and it's been yellow painted from the beginning.
And that's just what you found so far. Undercarriage work is pandora's box until you get it all exposed. Best wait till you have the downtime with $ in the pocket. There is a thread on weldingweb with a same yellow color shorthood and a navy brass tag affixed. It had the year and ship built on stamped on it. I can't find the thread now, but thought I could give more history on your sa.