Yair . . . I've never had the pleasure (or otherwise) of running a power angle/tilt . . . and I've never run a blade or rake where I ever had to consider I might hurt it. How much can you give a PAT? Do you have to give it consideration when (for instance) lifting out rocks and stumps? Cheers.
Scub... power angle and tilt can take what you can dish out. I've put thousands of hours on mine and the only incident I've had, one time, is when angled all the way and pushing hard, very hard on a stuck piece of heavy equipment I overstroked an angle cyl. and broke it... This disturbing circumstance was all my own fault. I could see the dozer bending and warping and knew I was exceeding the limit. (kick my own a&^&) . If it would have been a hired man i'da stopped him. Lol
When angled use the corner of the blade that is angled in to push of lift out stumps and rocks, if you use the other side you could break a cylinder when angled.
They are thinner so it's possible to dent the blade skin. Same goes for tearing if the skin is a bit worn. Every movement of that blade (angle, tilt, etc) has a bushing, and there's the main ball itself. Harsh contact squeezes the grease out and causes bushing wear so stay on top of greasing all those zerks. You can push a rock or two around but you just have to be a bit dainty when you first come in contact with them. As for just pushing dirt, it will take everything you can get behind it.
I say it depends on the size of the tractor as well. I have a D-5M with a PAT and it has proven to be pretty robust, but a friend with a D-6R with a PAT blade has had many troubles, and works his easier than I do. I have also heard of people with a lot of trouble with the D-6M. I have had a D-4C that was pretty trouble free, except I once broke an angle cylinder while blading a road at full speed in the low range travel mode. I hit an unexpected rock that the blade hung on right at the trailing edge, and it snapped the end off of the offside cylinder internally. Other than that, it would take all the dozer would push in any position. The impact did it in. The D-5M will take all the push the dozer has, but I am careful as to the position, and when loading it heavy, like pushing out trees, I try to dig around somewhat more carefully than with just a bull blade, and then keep my heavy pushing efforts close to the center of the blade to ease the load on the angle. The tilt function is no where near as strong on the PAT as on a normal straight blade either, so forget using it to root out things.
Yair . . . Thanks for responses fellers. I was just wondering. I do a lot of watching these days and wondered why a feller on a D6 was pussy footing on a stump. JDOFMEMI . I assume you can still use the tilt for steering in the slot? Cheers.
Scrub Yes, you can still do a lot with the tilt, but you just don't have the power in it for serious prying like you can with a good old straight blade. I do get nervous when out in a remote area and try to be gentle. Well, I do all the time, but am especially conscious of it when I am hours away from parts and service. I slot doze every chance I get, and people are usually surprised at how much dirt a small machine like a D-5M can move when it is worked properly.
We had a D6M 6 way rented this spring, for trimming slopes, filling ditches and straightening up banks there is nothing better, it rodded out on the down stroke to soon when it came to heavier work though. Pushing a load of stumps was a challange, they just roll off the blade, start off with 5 or 6 and loose 1/2 of them on the way. For all around work the weakness on the corners that Jerry mentioned and the lower blade capacity the 6 way looses to the semi U for us. The PAT blade is pretty much an extra heavy duty moldboard and does an excellent job at moldboard work, not so great at real dozer work.
The 6R's i believe were known for breaking (i dont know what) when they were angled all the way and cutting hard, we had one do it twice in 3 weeks, cat knew there was a problem, thats why they redesigned the vpat for the T series. Then they had a problem with the hoses on the T series for the angle. if you back dragged alot they would bust, so cat redid the vpat again when they went to the tier4 T. I believe when it comes to finishing you cant beat a vpat. I dont know what yardage they are rated at but i dont think an S/U blade handles that much more then a vpat, but the blades for all the vpats are different for each machine, and LGP has close to a 14ft blade and the xw has a 12 ft i think, but the xw is taller then the lgp.
i am very familiar with the breakage in cats forestry dozers, I.E. 527, 517, d5h tsk, they break the c frames usually around the lower outside seam, break vertical center pins for angle, center lower pin for tilt, tear the back out of the blade where the wear shims are, completely or partially break the cylinder mounts off of the c-frame where the lift cylinders end and the angle cylinders start, they don't dent the blade face however because the blades have a 3/4 or 1" blade face added for extra weight, these failures are on every machine over 4000 hrs i have ever seen, it is from removing stumps for landings and skid trails, they just get that corner bit under them and pry til something gives (job security for me)......................theironoracle
oracle, I'm sure you know by now, there's nothing a logger can't break
yeah scrubpuller i reckon they are more of a utility tidy up blade; rather than a pioneering blade designed for sidecutting like a real angle blade. A big steel arm right on the outside edge has to be stronger than a ram, and relief valve, mounted 2 feet inside from the leading toe. Theyre ok leading with your heel as the rams bottomed out against the C frame. They don,t have as much inside 'reach' or outside 'throw' as a normal angle blade. which depending on what work your doing, you may like or dislike. Saw one on a 527 logger the other day and angled was narrower than the width of the grouser on the leading toe of the blade. Absolutly useless for pioneering on a hillside. Plus side papt has to be easier than swinging side braces on the side of a hill ! Just push a lever ! Plus you can have 'half angle'' or whatever you want for the job, compare to just full angle or square on a "A blade". Just my thoughts anyway, have a slight bias towards A blades for pioneering on hillsides. Although diggers are much better for that in steep country usually.
Yair . . . D6 Merv. After the discussion here I won't be so hard on the bloke on the D6 for "pussy footing" on that stump . . . it all comes back to the right tool for the job. I know it would annoy me not being able to give some thing as much as the tractor reasonably could give. I prefer the old angle blade pretty much for every thing. "Back in the day" when we were contracting they were just about mandatory . . . a lot of work consisted of fence line clearing along existing dog fences and if you didn't have angle blade you missed out on a lot of work. Later when I got onto the ring tank caper we had up to (I think from memory) twenty eight different tractors from D6 up pushing up twenty five foot high walls around a two or three hundred acre paddock. I quickly realised that the old angle blade in competent hands would move just as much (if not more) dirt than the so called "bull" blades of the day. In fact I hated the sloppy swaying bloody things. Give me a good solid "C" frame any day. As I've nerped on here before as to how I had hells own trouble getting a motley crew of dozer operators trained to properly push out slots. Eventually I shut the job down on hourly rate and hired a surveyor to shoot cross sections for payment . . . it sorted things out a bit when the boys grocked that a couple of old codgers with cable blade/ripper D7's were out producing some of the D8's and HD 20s/21's/Inter24s and so on. The angle blade on that application . . . black soil and nice gravely clay (I believe) is better in slots than the so called production blades. You have a bit more "wriggle room" and if your getting deep floors with the ripper you don't get so much dirt falling into the tracks from the side of the slot. I'll say it here again. On bulk pushing the rills between the slots are the "cheap dirt" . . . provided they are worked properly. I have watched blokes working slots pretty much okay and then bugger me they straddle the rills and turn them into slots!!! Slots should always be worked front to back and the rills (1/4 to 1/3 the blade width) are worked back to front. From what I have seen in the the last few years (around here anyway) very few 'dozer operators can get their head around that concept. Rant over. Cheers to all.
A blade has its place scrubpuller. I have both and will swap blades for certain jobs. A blades better for hill country roading where dirt is sidecast to waste. And has that extra metre of 'reach' up batters that a S blade will never have when pioneering. But prefer S for digging around stumps and rocks, because its closer to the tractor has more hyd breakout force in my opinion.