Are any of you guys using fenders on your motor graders? Are there any aftermarket manufacturers you have had luck with?
Home made fenders on our laser grader, remains pretty clean machine.
We've got fenders on our volvo G976, and i love them. No mud or water around on the grader at all. We had to make som modifications to the rear ones, to be able to use chains.(more room) But thats the only thing. I've bent and made some holes in the front ones, but nothing u can't repair. There is another thread here about fenders. And some pics of ours in the Volvo 900 grader thread.(page 2 and 4.) Fenders here too: Ours are original Volvo fenders.
Mudguards (fenders) Been around for a while Aussie outback, to keep the wet black dirt off. No snow here
That grader is so new it's still get paint on the cutting edges.
Champion Compact Grader in Sweden
The two 16m's at the mine where I work have fenders (mudguards in Oz). They have a fold down ladder at the back and have hand rails.
Byran, how does the rear fenders attach? Reason I'm asking, if you need to install wheel chains there doesn't appear to be a whole lot of room between the fender and tire. Do the fenders detach easily?
There were just some formed brackets that bolted to the tandem box. Pretty easy to remove. I haven't ran into the issue of chains and fenders together but then again we only have a couple dozen units across Europe running fenders. Could easily form a new bracket raising the fender off teh tire more.
fenders on graders greetings l'm a NEW member here - but with a background of 23 years as a Parts Manager at Champion Sales Co in Ontario Canada. Our service dept made and installed fenders on dozens of customers graders. There were NO suitable commercially made available. We built them similar to what is shown in the pics, from checker plate and angle iron. We tried an aluminum set - but were too light and cracked easily and early. We ended up settling on a basic design of mounting front and rear using square tubing - small welded to inside of tandems, a larger ID welded on fenders, with a tightening bolt set-up, so that the fenders could be lifted off with a chain hoist when necessary. We had a support in the centre that mounted with the sockethead bolts that hold the centre sprocket cover plate in place. Worked very well. Rubber flaps on either end were optional, but usual on the rear. Chain clearance was never an issue for our customers. Many customers did not want fronts, only rears - but we also did fronts -- usually mounted rigid - too flimsy otherwise. Sorry - l have no diagrams, pics, etc -- they disappeared with folding of Sales Co.
If you raised them it would probably interfere with being able to fully open the door. Better to take them off anyway when running with wheel chains. If you broke a cross chain you could damage the fender quite quickly. I really like this design though. Looking at the pictures of the back lights..they are mounted on extended braces. Looks like they are hinged so you can fold them in. Or are they just hooked up so you can remove them if required?
fenders Graderfan.....this is the best pic I could come up with but it is a version of the fenders you guys were making. You even made a smaller set for the compact graders.
fenders yep - that's pretty much them. in the "old" days the lights were mounted much better/more visible on the sides of the rad, so not an issue. Only once in a "blue moon" would somebody pop a door off - the door would have to be swinging as the grader moving, and hit a bump to tip up the tandem - then wow - l gather it would be quite a sight to see the door flying - but usually operator failure - door should be open or closed -- not in-between. Very little issue with chains breaking - another benefit of going for strength NOT lightweight, etc. Strength for vibration, operator access to engine/fuel/etc and overall cleanliness -- of course fuel economy, etc not an issue. We did most of the fenders in Carleton Place, Ontario -- sent a bunch to Goderich Sales Co - then they started building for the factory -- factory didnt want to do small numbers / custom fab.
I was wondering why the lights were down on the fender. You can see the mounting holes on the side of the rad where they were normally mounted. Maybe this was a EU machine and instead of the arms to extend the light pods out and downward they were able to mount in the fender? Sounds good to me!
Fenders on Cat. I believe these are factory fenders on this 24H.
O & K with fenders This is an O & K pic.I found on the net.
Bryan: Thats the same fenders we got from Volvo for our 976 in 2007/2008. Only difference is the lights is on the foldable post, not on the fenders. They are mounted with brackets and longer bolts trough the wheel hubs at front and back. Bolts at 12 and 13 at front, and 11 and 12 o'clock at the back. They are realy robust and works great. Ours have a Norwegian adapter that lifts them about 2 inches up and one inn to get space for chains. We then had do some small modifications, to the locking handles on the boxes on top of the tandems.
My old Champion with fenders made by the dealer.
hello, I have a 2007 cat140h and the dealer in our area had a hard time finding fenders for according to him Cat does not sell fenders. There is a company that i think the name is something like M&W from the central united states. They have a really nice front fender that is like 3/4 steel and a mud flap that hangs down or can be flipped up for off road or i like to flip it up for spreading material. They bolt too the top of the spindle area and will move with the front tires. We made fenders like the Cat 24 has, they are close to the tires with just enough space to put chains on but not easy. We run Mich mud and snow tires and i have never chained up yet. We take 2" sq tubing and weld them to the front and rear caps on the tandems so they move with the rear end, just make sure you leave them alittle short in the front so the cab doors dont get hit. I will try and get some pics to post.
In this thread are a lot of pictures of volvo/champion graders with fenders...
fenders Here is link for a fender company. I've been using them for about 12 years. http://www.md-products.com/grader.html The rears are easy to take off if neccesary. My JD 770CH ll side doors open with the fenders in place though.
fenders The MD-products have very nice front fenders. Thats the ones i have seen and would go with.
The 24 h would look sick with out fenders
Mining, the first thing I recommend is removing the mud guards. Remove before they are removed with force. ATS# 16H graders have metal boxes built around the fuel tanks as they will get damaged real quick, how would fenders fair? Highway and civil applications I would leave them on.
I'm with Ross. Those stupid plastic fuel tanks on the ATS 16H were a liability, the only way to protect them was to box them in with steel. At least on the 16M the tank's been moved to somewhere more protected but it's still plastic and tends to deform. In mining I'd either not specify fenders in the first place (they are only an option on the 24, not standard) or remove them at the first possible opportunity before some dumb operator removes them with a rock. The thing is with a mining machine you've hopefully got a good wash bay (still waiting for ours to be commissioned BTW) equipped with high volume monitors so that every machine can go over the wash bay at the very least a couple of times a week and get cleaned off. In muddy conditions you might give things like graders a quick blast every day if they happened to be around the workshop for whatever reason.
Cat m2 fenders I have a cat m2 grader. The front fenders are superior front steerable fenders, the rear are cat factory fenders. Bothe sets require that you take off the tire to remove the fender . So we redesigned the fender to remove very easily, for tire chains or dirt work. We are very happy with these modifications. The cat engineers were out taking pics of them, hopefully they change them.
My 140G doesn't have fenders on it and it never has. It's kind of annoying when it's raining on gravel roads. Our 143H had them on the front, but they kept getting ripped off since we use our graders in some muddy/rough conditions from time to time. They even got ripped off in the winter once in the deep snow. So now we just have the fenders on the back.
We use the Fenderco on our 14Ms...really tough plastic fenders.