Hi All, Just wanted to let ya'll know to NEVER buy a dozer that was made on a Monday or a Friday . A little background: This was a municipal trash compactor for most of its life prior to my purchase from the middle man that bought it from the city. IE it was used to push and cover trash in the local dump, so it was set up with the "environment" package along with the ripper. As a muni trash compactor it has lots of idle hours and most likely very little heavy use (if any and nothing to rip). So after I purchased it I thought I would try it out on my muddy driveway before I needed to use it for real. Yep it works GREAT. Good thing those hoses are strong. Stronger than the factory welds. Ya its out of warranty but ya would think that something this obvious Komatsu would stand up and help a little at least but Nope! We can try to re-weld it for another $7-8000 or so. Oh the joys of buying used . Just as a side note: The "experts" at multiple Komatsu "dealer/repair" office's as well as corporate HQ, could not determine if the ripper could/ should be directly bolted to the frame without the use of the bracket in the pictures or not! But my simple cardboard stencil outline shows that the bolt holes do not line up to do a direct bolt as HQ claims.
That's not the right rippers for that machine you didn't notice the home owner welding and adaptor? Bob
I was thinking that same thing. I would be surprised to see anything on that ripper that had anything to do with a Komatsu factory.
It is a Komatsu ripper Depending on who you ask at Komatsu, both HQ and dealer, based off the serial numbers on the dozer and ripper, they were or were not shipped together???? Yes the normal 6 should have shipped with two piston ripper, based again off of Komatsu advertisements. The "adapter/ bracket" is a Komatsu part not home/municipal built. As I get different answers from Komatsu, I can only ASSume that the municipality that purchased it, wanted it NOW and had them put on what ever year ripper they had. As the ripper is for prior year 155's. I am basing that off of the ripper serial number and prior year pamphlets so once again there is the assUme part. As the local Komatsu dealer is going to try and re-weld using the same Komatsu part numbers and pieces, I am open to any help or suggestions anyone has? Thanks. BTW the picts are for intertainment value only as YMMV.
The question is if that ripper was ever supposed to be welded like it was to that bracket? it sounds like you're confident of that, then the only problem is the welding that wouldn't have been allowed out the door at the muffler plant. I don't know that I'd have Komatsu do the welding, the owner's son in law that did the original welding might still be there, do you really want him to take another shot at it?
That is the age old million dollar question. For the most part, up here they are the only game in town that MIGHT be able to weld that deep and hot. The Cat dealer here is not any better :-( and dont know of any other places that could handle something this big. But to answer you question Delmer, Not really. I wonder if they would take it in trade for a new one that would bolt on? Most likely not any chance of that. Not very many 155's around here let alone a market for the used ripper. Oh well will keep trying to find out more accurate information on it all and go from there. Fourth and goal or fourth and punt!
There should be a serial number on the rippers , I have a -1 with a winch and a -- 2 with rippers . The winch is the same one used on the D85's of the same era . If the winch's are interchangable so will the rippers be but the D85 rippers might pull apart with an extra 150 hp .
I usually find the opposite in those operations. The machines were high hours and abused like a mofo.
well, the main fault is with the welder that 'stuck' it together. from what it looks like, its a weld fault called incomplete penetration or 'lack of penetration'. the little angle iron braces were mostly for show and did not add much strength. not a huge job but takes proper prep, preheat and maybe stress-relieving after. on jobs like that, i prefer stick and a multi-pass weld and maybe another heavy plate after on the outside for more strength. but if that area is re-welded and reinforced properly, other weak areas may show up. it requires careful inspection of the rest of the mount and possible modification. welds like that mostly need proper welding procedure and not necessarily huge amperage. huge amperage causes huge distortion and really need to be stress-relieved after. huge amperage causes more grain structure change in the heat-affected zone of the weld area as opposed to lower amperage and more passes. as long as multi-pass welds are done correctly, they are every bit as good as a one-pass weld. the downside is that multi-pass welds take a lot longer but i think quality is the foremost objective, especially in this high-stress application.
I would never buy any equipment that was used in a landfill. Landfill equipment suffers from the environment and the fact mechanics don’t like to work on nasty, diseased ridden equipment, and I don’t blame them.
There are different types of landfills and different management strategies that they are run under. The worst ones take what are called putresibles or things like plant and food material that rots. In this state what you see in the smaller operations are the cut a fill management. The land is cut away for a layer of garbage which is covered every night at the end of the shift. The fill material is brought in with scrapers. Sometimes they run out of loose cover and the cut has to be ripped and the scrapers are push loaded. The machines in those places are traded out just before the end of the warranties. I used to see plenty of 6,000 hour D8 and D9 with 637 scrapers. Yakima County runs like that. The big dump was in King County. My history there goes back to the 1960s as my Dad cleared a big part of that land and then went to work for them. It was cut and fill back in those days but now works with engineered cells that collect the gas and burn it off. That landfill runs iron nearly to scrap metal. Sometimes they will put some money back into the iron to get a better trade value, but usually they will make a trade and have to wait for the new iron to show up. It might be six months after I looked at the machine before the new one shows up. The money is already agreed on and the trade might only run well enough get on the low boy. The other county I visited now and then was Okanogan County. The iron there was old and smaller. It was run until it no longer did. I don't believe they cut anything, just started dumping there years ago. I didn't see a cut place for the fill. It looked to me the last time that I was there that they were importing fill. I could be wrong on that. The smell never comes out of any of those pieces of iron. The dozers and compactors working on top of the garbage are the worst. The scrapers weren't too bad. The last type of landfill I have experience with took demolition debris. Those were on private land and run by the land owners. Stumps, bad dirt and building debris such as structural concrete is all that could be dumped there. No provision for cover until the dump is completely done with the exception of putting out the inevitable fires that happen. That iron will be like any other construction machine that does clearing and pushing dirt. Mostly dozers there and maybe a wheel loader and scraper.
...END thread! LOL
Looks like the two bits of flat bar bolted to the frame were there to cover a cracked weld long enough to get the dozer sold . Those rams are very light for that dozer