I was doing a bit of work out in the woods, making a trail, hit some clay and she went down nose first. Tried to recover but no luck. Early 80s Deere 693B right hand cab. 40,000 pounds. Had a guy come out and give me a quote on bringing his machine out but he has gone AWOL Last I saw she was on a 22 degree angle down in front. I managed to jam a lot of wood under the rear tracks before the back of the cab went under, it should keep the track out I hope. Located near Timmins Ontario. If anybody has an excavator or dozer and can help, please pm me
Is it possible to hook a chain to a tree and the bucket and try to pull yourself backwards from the hole?
No good trees in the area. If the back wasn't in clay it would have came out from me bucketing forward, I think the sticky stuff got a grip on it.
I can't find the video now, but I saw a Scandanavian guy recover an excavator with a four wheeler mounted winch with a huge spool, and a bunch of snatch blocks. He ran the snatch blocks to different trees because none were big enough, with all those loops of cable out there it was just a matter of running that winch a long time to pull the excavator loose. I suppose you could do the same thing with chains to different trees and try to use the stick to pull it out. If there's mud up on the engine, I'd rather pull it out and clean it a bit before starting again. The dangerous way of getting an old tractor out is to chain logs to the tires, I suppose a few 10' 4x6's lag bolted across the tracks might get it out. Don't get yourself in a rush, think anything you do through before you make it worse.
Chain a 10" to 12" tree across the top of the tracks on the end that is up. Push and lift the other end as you go forward if you can swing the house in the other direction. If not grab the biggest bucket of muck you can and extend the boom as far ahead as possible to lighten the back end as much as possible. As you track forward and the log goes under it will lift the front and pull you forward the length of the tracks as it travels underneath. There is a perfectly positioned stump between the tracks to help you out. Unlike a wheel tractor using a log across the tracks will not flip the machine on its ass as it is pulling from the front and will only lift as high as the log is big.
What Old Iron Habit said, should work, use the biggest log you can work with!
How's that work chaining log to the tracks? does the chain go under the idler or sproket? and then the rollers? Never done it or seen it done is all.
Sadly one track is weak. I doubt it will get the log into the ground. Maybe when it is cold. How do you chain a log to the tracks? Any pics? I have a 4 wheeler with a 2500 pound winch that , it might be enough if I can enough snatch blocks and somebody to give me a hand. Would be nice to get a jeep with a bigger winch to save on snatch blocks
You need two 4-6 ft chains, lay the log against the front of the track, wrap the chain around the log until you have just enough left to hook the outsides of a grouser. You want to rig it so the hooks are pulling in toward the center of the grouser so it doesn't come unhooked underneath, I don't have any pics but if you think about it when you are hooking it up it will make sense. If one track is weak it may not work, both must pull the same speed. When the log gets to the other end machine should be mostly out. Take pics if you do this, can't find any on the Web so you might help the next poor guy!
Sounds like an update on the way farmers would chain logs to the spokes on the rear wheels of their tractor when they got stuck in mud. Just make sure to keep an eye on the log when the machine starts to move, don't want to travel too far and get it jammed up in the counter weight at the other end.
I'd set it up so you can pull your long length of cable with the little winch, chain the end off to a tree, back the four wheeler up and pull another 20' or so, repeat for hours. The snatch blocks are going to be more expensive than the cable. I could pick the stuff up for several hundred dollars at local junkyards etc. If you're in a rush it could get expensive. I'd lend you my come along collection if I was closer, to use the hooks with pulleys, not to crank by hand, but you could do it that way if you had to. You could try hooking to the top track toward the rear, so that the pull is doubled. I don't think the pull of the mud is going to add as much suction on a slow pull like this, vs trying to rip it out with a dozer or pull with the stick. You'll need 10-20,000 lbs pulling force if it can freewheel, running and inch it forward as you pull, or pull the final drive shaft?. MUCH more if you have to drag it. Scrub pulled out a D9 with a block and tackle, so it can be done.
do you have any idea how deep the clay goes?.you dont want to come back and just see the roof...and can you use the stick to lift the rear to get some logs under the tracks,,if you can get it lifted out of the clay, it will be much easier to winch it off the top than being suction cupped the way it is sitting now..how far away is a tree big enough to pull against?
Don't think a 2500lb winch is going to do it. You might rip the winch off or destroy your 4 wheeler instead of pulling it out. If you can still run it, get some big logs to throw under the tracks and a tow truck or other machine to hook to. Even if you had to get a couple hundred feet of cable to hook to a good anchor point, if you can run it, it should pull itself out or help significantly. Knew a guy that got UH122 buried in a swamp. A winch truck anchored to a big tree with about 6 snatch blocks got it out. They figured there must have been about 200,000 pull but it might not used all that was available. Really surprised the pads didn't break cause that was the only place to hook the chains.
I am not the guy that knows but a compamy I work with sank a 550 dozer in a sediment pond clean out. Seemed to have found a spring or sink hole. They put some pretty good pulls on it with no luck. An old man came buy and got on the 50 FT extendahoe parked to the side. Picked up on the back of it and shook it. Then grabbed the back of the blade and pulled it out. Said suction had it and the shake let it get air under it. If you cannot shake it run pipe under it hooked up to an air compressor. I know nothing about this other than he got it out and the 750 Holms left without a check.
Looks like it my be in too deep now to run the engine without damage. Better call someone with a big heavy duty wrecker, or a dozer with a winch. There should be some big dozers or wreckers in the Sudbury area. It is going to take a lot of pull just to break the suction of the mud. I have done 2 recovery's of dead excavators in the mud. They both required some BIG winches and several snatch blocks. Good luck.
I think you're gonna need a dozer or something big to get that out. There's a tow company down in BC that does bush recoveries and they sometimes need 2 or 3 big winch Cats to get stuff out of the mud.
If you end up pulling it, pull very slow so the suction will relieve itself. It did not look like the engine would be in to deep in the first pictures. Have to look and see. Might be worse now.
Does anyone have a smaller hoe or a backhoe you could dig a hole in front of it to drive off into and then out of? May sound dumb but after sliding my 27 ton JD 790 down into the original end of a pond cleanout, I used my backhoe to dig a hole in front it to drive into as it wouldn't pull itself up the steep incline and forward at the same time (hydraulic priority).
It has a monster stump between the tracks in front just itching to catch underneath. I would tie a log across the front to lift it even if it still needs a pull to help. It still looks to me like it could be swung around to lift the other end and throw logs under the tracks until they stay up. If the bucket sinks when pushing down add a tree or how ever many it takes under it to get some bearing. Might be bull work but it will get you there.
If it's safe to run, no mud up to the crankshaft, and it will lift like OIH says, that will be the easiest. If it's too weak to lift out of the mud, try putting the bucket closer to the tracks for more leverage, if the bucket goes straight to the bottom of the muck, then extend the stick out at the same time you try to back out and go down with the boom, try to work the tracks to help break the suction, and work it up onto the log. Once you get close to halfway on the log it will tip out more easily, unless the log sinks, but the stump should keep it on the surface.
I know of a brand new 320 and log shear that went down in a bog.They spent $20,000 building roads and bringing in big equipment but they finally torched the log shear off and let it sink out of sight.
I pulled about 2.5 gallons of water from the fuel tank and about 2 quarts of water from the engine with the little dipstick oil change tool. A wide track at d6 came in to pull it out. I rode on that d6, that monster doesn't stop for anything. That is the undercarriage i want on my next ezcavator. Lors of power amd lots of flotation. Took about an hour and half of me driving full power, bucketing and him tugging. His cable wasn't the best I was out of line of sight in case it broke Then he pulled my excavator all the way to the road. Are excavator drives supposed to be a string as dozers? Is the chain the only difference?
Glad to hear ya gotter out ok ! Came close yesterday myself ..... http://www.heavytruckforums.com/sho...ufacturing-Company&p=4046&viewfull=1#post4046 If all else fails call Dude Watson . He likes draggin stuff around . http://www.heavytruckforums.com/showthread.php?263-Some-Holmes-750-action&p=4024&viewfull=1#post4024
I'm not an experienced operator by any means but I'd say that a dozer's drive (power-wise) will be stronger than an excavator. The drive function on an excavator is really only meant to move the machine around so it can dig. A dozer is built to push and pull, so travel power should be much more important. Bearing in mind I have about 30 minutes seat time in dozers and a couple hours worth in an excavator. I could be completely wrong in my above post.
No you're correct 92U, an excavators drive line is not near as strong as a dozer for the reason you stated.
I have seen excavators walk up some darn steep grades. Steeper than I would dare go up. They may not as strong as a dozer but they must have a pretty decent pull. This machine seemed lacking, at least on one side.
Everyone seems experienced it this An wanting to joke an sling silly ideas. But we've done this before with a big tractor I've had my fair share of this. But see there's one thing that now ones mentioned. Well when the devil reached up an grabbed ya from underneath An pulled ya down it formed a suction to the underneath of ur tractor An makes it worse when there bottomed out like this. Also ur machine is sure nuff useless when it's burryed up an the cab is in the mudd to cause it don't have Enuff power to swing while in a bind. The log trick possible would work but sometimes the suction is so great ya machine just don't have enuff power to get itself up. Ur gonna need another hoe to dig ya out an help pull. I'm Sure ur aware too. Sometimes just need to bit the bullet An spend the money An get the big guns in
Oh, you have to be careful with the log trick when the back is hurried like mine was, If the log goes around it gets stuck behind the swivel housing then what... So, which mini-midi excavator is most like a dozer? Or is a track-hoe what I want?
It is always a good feeling when they get unstuck. If there is so little bearing that the log would go around with out lifting the machine it would not have stopped going down in the first place. I have never had a log pull under the machine more than a foot or so. The machines have always come forward but it has always been with a stuck logging dozer. In any event I'm glad you got it out. It sounds like the dozer pull was a good choice as it seems the one drive is weak enough that you needed a assist pull all the way out of the woods anyway. Keep us posted on what you find wrong with the drive on that side.
The old Aussie farmers used to chuck a stick of dynamite or diesel/fertiliser charges under dozers stuck in mud/clay to break the suction then gun it as soon as the charge went off. They also used it to remove stumps, dig holes, loosen up gravel......you'd never get away with it these days though with OH&S and terrorism