I just bought two new tires for my 966C. 20 ply L3 rock tires. I was going to put these two new tires on the front. Old tires on the back are 16 ply rock tires. Tires are all 23.5x25. Now I assume the circumference of the new tires is quite a bit larger than then old ones on the back. Haven't measured yet. How much of a difference can there be before it will cause problems in the gear train? This loader will never be on the road. Only in my remote mining operation and never gets out of first gear. Thanks for input!
The difference between old and new may be quite large, problem is there's no compensation or slip between front and rear to my knowledge. There's a very real possibility you will twist a driveline in two or break an axle shaft running with different tire sizes. If you don't get guidance here, I would think your local CAT CSR would be willing to give an opinion, loader's a loader new or old.
Thanks. I got an email from an old Cat mechanic. He told me the old loaders (w/o electronics) were more forgiving and suggested a guideline of 3% for side to side difference and 6% for front to back. So I'll use the 6% and go from there.
I don't want to pick a fight here but think about every time you steer the machine. Those drivelines wind up hard on every move. To check that just travel forward and steer hard to one side. Now pick up the front of the machine with the bucket and watch the front tires unload. I've run and seen junk for years and never had an issue that could be attributed to tire sizes. Theoretically there is a possibility there could be a problem. For all practical purposes most of the people that tell you that stand a chance of making some money off their advice.
John .... appreciate the opinion. In the past I never even gave it a thought mixing tires, but ya the tire place where I bought these brought up the subject. So I looked into it a little. If the difference isn't over 10% I don't think I'm going to worry.
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Our loaders are only used for snowplowing. We had two exactly the same except one had a one much smaller tire on the rear. That machine always had less traction. I thought maybe it's because that tire is constantly slipping. We put on a matching tire and it was like night and day. Unbelievable how much better traction it had.
Well, there's a case I would guess since the rears were smaller they were always trying to catch up, so the fronts were dragging them all the time in the snow, would be like having two wheel drive. Interesting!
That's kind of what was happening. When plowing one front and one rear will spin when you lose traction. Well the one smaller rear tire was constantly loosing traction. So yea I guess 2 wheel drive like you said