I know it is a Allis and a oddball 7G at that but I needed pieces and here they are. Engine was shot, had a busted block the previous owner thought was a bad oil cooler. Trans had less than a few hundred hours, torque converter somewhere near to that so they are going into my runner to replace that which is losing steam rapidly. I have managed to unbolt everything so far, including the botched up cabbaged crappy mods someone else thought were neat. Shoes are patch jobbed with grouser bars but the rails measure almost new for 7.0 pitch.
Hey D; are those grouser bars something thats sold, or were they fabricated? If the latter, what kind of stock are they made out of? They look pretty mean.....
There is a company in Utah, Dura-Tuff, they make replacement grouser bars only their shortest is around one inch in height so would be similar to these and yes, these seem to be true grouser stock as they are tapered to the edge from the shoe. Before I bought this unit to tear down for parts I had a bid from them as to two bars per shoe and 37 shoes a side, they were going to cut the bars to 15" length at a total of $960. Had I gone to a single per shoe as here, just at $500 including shipping.
Found them. Awesome, thx D!! I imagine shipping will be quite a bit less from Utah to AZ.......
Just had a thought (and it might be harebrained), but is there any reason you cant skip every other shoe and cut the amount of grousers in half? 12 shoe plates are on the ground at all times in my machine; thinking that would give me plenty of "bite".....
Hey Viking, I wouldn't so that, as the rails pass under the lower rollers on harder surfaces or ground would put a lot of stress on the shoes, rollers and pins/bushings, hard enough on them with single grousers but staggered would be worse. My machine has odd number of links(37) would be impossible to do that anyway.
Good advice, thx. What do you think of the idea of using rebar instead of grouser stock? The latter is pretty expensive...
Rebar as sold is usually case hardened only. It will more than likely crack and break off at the weld point.
Thx Multi. looks like if I decide to fix my traction problem, out comes the checkbook....
We welded 3/4 rebar to the pads of a Fiat FA 14 and it has worked good so far. If the machine is not going to be used everyday and in harsh conditions I would try rebar before I spent a whole bunch of money on grouser stock.
Re bar would do a really crappy job. It takes a lot of welding, if you are going to do all that work might as well use good materials. I re grousered my D4 years ago. I bought legnths of grouser bar from F P Smith and cut it myself. I dont recall that it was expensive at all.
Less $$ is usually better; machine definitely sees light duty in very rocky conditions....
I'll be cutting 10' lengths of whatever stock I use into 15" lengths. Still waiting for a quote from distributor.....
Yair . . . I have used more rebar than I can remember, never any issues, not hard to weld as it can all be done downhand . . . make sure you get a good melt in around the ends. Cheers
We cut down old 3/4" rebar for a friends older 955H, it still has the materials on the shoes 5 years later, took 26 lengths of 12' bar he had in a leftover pile from a previous concrete job for 2 bars/shoe even with cutting out pre-bends and accidental bent spots. Welds just fine as SP states, you can weld looking at it and down instead of any position. We used 3/16" 7018 rod, another fella using heavy equipment said he used drag rod. Won't use anymore rod than putting on real grouser stock either.
Almost forgot, got a little further yesterday until I broke the handle on my 20# sledge driving master pin.
I'm leaning that way right now; will depend on cost of actual grouser stock (which will look cleaner & more pro obviously).
Grousers on these tracks look almost 2"+ high (as in REAL serious!!). You worry at all about the stress on finals with an older machine? BTW, what H.P. is that engine?
HD7G, is only 110HP, 4 cyl. 1700rpm, torque converter shuttle shift, two forward two reverse speeds. Grousers are right at 1 1/4" tall from the face of the shoe so not so severe, I am going to add a piece of 3/4 re-rod or type 6G from Dura Tuff to the third cleat on each shoe to balance them a bit but they will work reasonable as is. The lower rollers show the wear from having these, the inner roller flanges are rolled almost completely off with the outer flanges having been 'trimmed' with a gas axe, lots of side stress you wouldn't see on a dozer as they won't carry loads and turn at the same time. Most newer loaders use two bar shoes and they are considerable at to grouser height new. I have six, possible eight bad shoes on this unit, have six spare shoes and may get a few more from General Gear in ID to fill in the bad spots. The toe of the bad ones have broken away or curled severely and one is just a POS oddball from another tractor model, I also have the rails off my runner with shoes that I could cabbage into spares as the rails themselves are pretty well shot. The chains under this machine spec out new and no snaking, my runner rails snake so bad they will try to roll off in turns even when tight.
Looks like rebar will be my grouser material choice (unless I can find areasonablelocal distributor). Check out THIS quote: "The price each for a 10’ 840 Bar is $27.82 and the freight for one bar to PHX would be $131.88. " LMAO.....
Local steel shop here can get me rebar for $350/ton if I needed that much, there is around 130 10' rods to a ton, I would need around 12 rods. His cost to me for a dozen $45.00. Did get the rails down today, now the project slows as I return to work for a few weeks. Also need to heal my shoulders from winging the 20 pounder at the master pins.
Wow! Looks like quite the job!! Hurt my shoulder today too whacking at the pins that hold my bucket cylinders on. I was able to get them both off the machine alone today (no boom truck) w/o getting killed. I wouldnt recommend that job to my worst enemy.... Yep, I can get rebar cheaply too (so thats what I'll use). Shipping costs are outlandish.
Will be a few days to a week or so before I can get back into the scrapper, will be loading the worst of the leftover tins and absolute iron junk to get it out of the way then. Trucks and running gear with the loader mounts come off next, the last will be to empty the finals and bevel gear case. In all, out of the 13 ton sitting there I may load out around half or a little less. Hate to see another old machine go to scrap but this one had little going for it beyond spare parts.
That improvised jack looks a little scary. You are far braver than me......
Don't let the camera angles fool you too much. That is a piece of 10" 1/4" wall steel pipe, on the bottom of it is welded a 18"x18" 1/2" square steel plate and is level to the floor region. It is sitting on the most convenient flat spot on the finals case and is surrounding the center drain plug boss. At the front is a 6"w C channel foot 3' long with two 3" square 1/4" wall steel pipes welded as seat supports for the front subframe with 3"w x 6"L C channels welded on for the saddles. This is about as stable as any tractor can/will get on stands. Being as there is no true suspension there is little to shift for it to lean or slip off, have used Oak block cribbing similarly just in stacks for soft soil work. Put it this way, go to a cat shop and watch rails come off, they are scarier than this.
I bet you're right about the Cat shop. Being an amateur, I was a little worried when I was using railroad ties......