We just bought our D4C and the tracks are pretty much smooth. Dad picked up a full set of pads & bolts for it the other day. I've tried heating the nuts (MAP-Pro torch) and using an impact wrench to rattle a few bolts loose. Not one budged (well, four that were already loose did, but no tight ones). Do I need to get an Oxy-Acetelene rig and cut all the bolts off or is there another trick I can use. We don't have a full shop on the ranch yet so have air, stick & MIG welders and normal hand tools. No gas welding/cutting gear at the moment. I need to get this machine to earn it's keep, I'm building a house and this dozer won't push, it just spins. With haying season fast approaching, I'm running short of time.
It's hard to say what you should do, torch is a plus, don't no your air system size or gun, 3/4 or 1" would be a plus, having the pads washed around the bolts and placed on planks and calling for a tire truck for a service call with two 1" air guns would work. Need to have a few extra sockets ready, and may need a special one for worn pad bolt heads. You will need to clean the paint off the new pads where they rest on the rails and under the bolt heads if they are new also. Also be care full with the fire wrench, sparks can cause issues fast in machines so be ready with your emergency plan if you due that.
Yair . . . SIIaCanuck I suppose it's how good your rattle-gun is . . . often the problem is the bolt heads are worn and won't hold a socket. I will mention here and now that you can't run a 'dozer without oxy. If you are recovering the hardware I would be vey surprised if after heating one flat on the nut to cherry red you couldn't start them with (say) six foot of pipe on a one inch socket breaker bar then up them with the rattle. You want to ensure the threads sticking through the bolts are lubed and free of mud and rust If you are scrapping the plates and bolts just wash the heads off, punch them down and cut the bolts again underneath to free them from the links. Things must have changed a lot since I last messed around with dozers . . . provided the plates were reasonable I would just weld on new lugs (you used to be able to buy it in different heights) . . . a bloody sight less work and money than replacing the whole kit and caboodle, it only takes a couple of days of admittedly pretty boring work. All the best with it and Cheers. *PS When you put those new plates on make sure you clean off the paint where they contact the links . . . and check the bolts for tight again after putting her to work.
I suggest you save yourself the energy and use oxy-acty torch and cut all bolts because you do have new ones to replace. This job of removing old bolts can really drain your energy when it comes to track pads
The time messing with the worn out bolt heads will drive you nutz, get some one over with a oxy. torch to cut them off. sam.
I'll second the call for torching them off, and making sure you clean everything. Also check the specs for tightening them. They have to be way tighter than you think.
I'm with them, torch em! Btw, My 1" track torque gun makes a funny rattling sound when it's on a 1/2" air line ;-) ha
I agree with others, if you already have new bolts/nuts, don't waste time trying to pop them loose, take a gas axe to them and burn the bolt heads off. :yup
Use the torch to cut the bolt heads off. I was told to be careful when heating or torching on sealed and lubed chains as pressure can build and the plastic plug can come out like a bullet.
Don't forget anti-sieze when you put the new bolts on the pads.
I respectfully disagree, no anti-seize unless you want to spend the rest of your days re-tightening them. Properly done they are installed with a "torque-turn" process, that is you torque them to a certain value and then turn them a certain amount beyond that, whatever CAT specifies. Track hardware should never be reused, if they were properly installed they actually stretch to obtain maximum clamping, if you install them again they stretch again and will fail prematurely. :IMO
Yair . . . . That's interesting lantraxco . It didn't used to be that way, I have even spent days building up the heads of bolts to a tight fit in the socket . . . those suckers were expensive. We never had any trouble with bolts coming loose and it was before the days of rattle guns, a fit young bloke bouncing on the end of eight feet of pipe for the final tighten was quite effective. Cheers.
And I respectfully disagree. 3 sets of pads on my D5G, 3 sets of pads on my 953. All bolts had anti-sieze and torqued to Cat specs with the torque turn process. Never had any bolts loosen or back out, 4000 hours +/- on the clock of both machines. Also never have had to take a torch to get the old bolts off.:cool2 I have always use new bolts and nuts, although saved a few old ones to rattle around on the service truck in case we needed a bolt for something else.
anyway
I'am not sure but the anti-sieze helps get the torue up, the new track bolts are lubed up good when you get them, and the book says to use a little oil on them. i don't think it makes a difference oil or anti-sieze, but with out anything, not sure if the bolts would be torued right. sam.
Must have been some big machines. Not arguing, to each their own, but the D4C has I believe 9/16" bolts? I can pull through those with a 24" breaker bar flat footed. Cheers.
http://parts.cat.com/cda/files/3070388/7/PEGP5027-06.pdf OCR
Yair . . . lantraxco You can strip a 9/16'' Grade 8 NF highnut with a two foot breaker bar? Bloody hell mate, you'd be handy in a punch up. LOL . I'm talking Eights, Nines and Allis twenty-ones . . . when its fifty in the waterbag its a lot less effort to pull them tight with the long pipe, just lay on them till they creak. Cheers
I stand corrected sir!
Not strip, good hardware won't do that.... tighten it till it pulls in two, yeah. The big stuff I had the pleasure of doing on a track press with an 1-1/2" hydraulic drive... now that would rattle them down. The smaller bolts it was easier to tighten till they snapped than try to fight them back out! This was in a former life by the way, I play with rubber tracks now, no bolts!
The spec may be antiseize now but when the D4C was made, you soaked the bolts and nuts in a bucket of 30wt oil before install.
Lurking on this thread reminded me of a time I wholely meant to remove from my memory. In the mid 60's, the summer of my 18th year we were in South Eastern Alaska and my Dad's D6B needed new pads.. the former owner had changed the rest of the undercarriage but had just welded rebar to build up the pads which did not hold up long. Dad got the new pads and bolts but the unknown was that Alaska in her growing pains was deciding the best way to transport items such as acetylene and while we were used to getting it shipped on the ferry, a several times a week occurrence, It had been deemed to dangerous for that and was being shipped by barge, a monthly or twice monthly occurrence. We used what torch supplies we had to cut bolts but quickly ran out so Dad fired up the big Hobart welder and he started burning them off at one end of the track and myself and my brother started replacing them at the other.. Other than a few broken sockets, a pin broke in one breaker bar, and one stopped day for my eyes to heal from welder flash burn, we became a well oiled machine and got the job done.. except.. while my brother and I were very happy to put that last pad on and tighten it up with the dreaded 8ft cheater. Dad was not satisfied ... He then drug out the big sledge and proceed to smack every bolt a couple licks and we ..again cheater in hand gave every damned bolt another twist.. Dad was a big guy and I was not.. but there is noway he could ever got me to do that again..LOL..I think now the nightmares are going to start again..
LOL... a phrase you will never hear: " There is one track job I remember that I really enjoyed" :umno
Thanks for all the advice fellas. We set to the track with an oxy-propane setup and found that if I headed the flat of a nut until it just started to cherry, and Dad hit it with his 500 ft.lb air wrench on the bolt, they'd rattle loose. We're now 19.2% done (battery flat so we couldn't move the machine last night). Compared to MAP-Pro & Air, the Oxy-Propane heats really quickly so we can hit the nuts without getting too much heat into the link etc. Anyway, she's starting to look like she might push some dirt rather than spin the tracks in a strong headwind. We have on question, how do we tackle the master pad bolts? They are longer and thread directly into the master link casting. If it turns out to be a more specialist job, we may well put the machine to work with 76 out of the 78 pads replaced until we can get to the masters without wrecking something.
Master link bolts can be a little tricky because they tend to cut while loosening, I suggest you heat the bolts and then quench with water( this will help break the rust ), then attempt to loose with your air tool. Better yet I do not see any problem leaving those pads on if you encounter problems loosening the master link
Yair . . . SIIaCanuck You're doing well mate! On standard tracks you can just heat the side of the master link casting and get it glowing at the thinnest section in line with the bolts . . . SALT track appears to be a whole 'nother ball game and I can't comment. Actually lantraxco when I was young and sappy I quite liked messing around with tracks, when you have half a dozen tractors working in second gear continuously at WOT you tend to get quite good at it. It got to the stage where four of us could put a fresh set of tracks on an eight or a twenty-one and have her back pulling in under half an hour. They were drive in master pins and I never found it detrimental to heat the link-bosses cherry red . . . if you had every thing lined up proper the pin would just slip in and at the call of "right" a hand would start pumping, he already had the grease-gun nozzle on the zerk . . . them's were the days, I'd like to be back there now instead of picking grubs off cabbages. Cheers,
Well, heat the heads cherry, wait a sec and hit them with the impact wrench. Repeat another time for two of them and all four master pad bolts are out. Anyone know if you need a special grease for the track adjuster? Had to slacken the track a bit to get the master links back together. We're now about 1/5 through the project but having learned the hard way how easy some bits are (no Operation and Maintenance Manual yet - it's in the mail), we probably can rattle through the rest of the job at twice the speed we managed the first 17 pads (one master) at. Makes a change from sitting at a desk writing training reports on young pilots as I was doing this time last year. A change is as good as a rest as they say.
Scrub Puller , it comes to us all eventually if we live long enough. Sad part is most of us are so busy we don't realize we're living the best part of our lives until we have to look back at it. My Dad's 82 now and still works hard at being retired, but his wrenches have been cold for a long time. I don't do repair anymore at 54, but I do build things, which is some better in many ways. Still, I miss being part of the action in the field, make it work, get it done, keep 'em smoking. I'm glad you and I are part of this community. Lots of good folks on here I'll never meet, but it's good we can talk to each other. :beerchug
We just use regular #2 grease in our track adjusters. Be sure to follow the spec on adjustment, too loose or too tight causes problems and accelerated wear.
Yair . . . lantraxco A true and profound statement . . . well said mate. I never did take time to smell the roses or try every remote fishing hole, but I really can't complain. Cheers.
Hate to hijack the thread, but after the comment from lantraxco , I'm glad sites like this exist where old and young can get together and share their experiences regarding the iron we all enjoy or have enjoyed working on or with. There is such a wealth of knowledge and experience on here that no manual can ever come close to putting into print. We may miss some things in life, but look what you have to look back on and the things you can tell to us young whippersnappers. As a young freelance mechanic, I can learn so much from the members young and old who gather here and am thankful there are those who are willing to share what they know.
Looks like I've arrived a bit late in the day for this one but reading the various comments regarding anti-seize (or not as the case may be) on any types of hardware prompted me to post a few thoughts. Someone posted about torque values. The thing is that when your torque wrench clicks off really all it is measuring is the resistance to rotation of the bolted joint. That resistance will be a combination of the tension that is being applied to the bolt plus the friction resistance to rotation. What you're trying to achieve when tightening any joint is not a torque in lb. ft. per se but a tension in the bolt that means it will stay tight without overloading or underloading it. In my experience people confuse the two terms, because it's important to remember that the relation between them is only fixed if you know what the coefficient of friction is in the joint. Now track shoe bolts in particular are a pretty low-tech bolted joint. Literally nothing has a machined surface, track pads can have high spots on them, the nuts may not sit square on the cast track links so that throws the bolt off, etc, etc. The critical thing about the anti-seize in this instance is that it not only needs to be applied to the shoe bolt threads but also to the face underneath the head of the bolt. Some people apply it direct to the area around the hole in the track shoe, either way will work. That way you can guarantee the bolt will be pulled down tight. Back in the day before anti-seize became common the use of a heavy grade oil was recommended. It's amazing how much the friction in a bolted joint can be reduced by the application of anti-seize, and also how the reduction in friction (and therefore the setting that needs to be put on the torque wrench) varies with the type of anti-seize you're using. I have something I downloaded from the internet (can't find it now though damnit) that illustrates this perfectly, and I quote ........ "Bolt Stress - The table below gives torque values required to achieve and average bolt stress equivalent to 50% of the bolt yield stress. Care should be taken to select the correct coefficient of friction." Here are the figures taken from the table for a 3/4" Grade 8 bolted joint. The numbers may surprise you. Approx. Bolt Tension - 15,466 lbs Min. bolt Yield Force - 105,000psi (about 46,000 lbs on a 3/4 bolt) Torque Required Dry - 258 ft.lb. Nickel - 151 ft.lb. Copper - 139 ft.lb. Moly - 92 ft.lb. I have had personal experience on more than one occasion of bolts shearing because the torque applied to them was for an un-lubricated bolt and the mechanic in question was using a copper or moly-based anti-seize compound without making a corresponding reduction in his torque wrench setting. On case almost got a guy killed when a complete spindle, brake pack, and front wheel assembly (probably about 2 tons) fell off a 789 as it was being installed when the securing bolts came undone like a zipper due to being over-stressed. My guess in that case is that one bolt failed then after that it became a chain reaction.
Don't know if your replacing the old bolts with new or not ,but i would definitly replace the master pad bolts with new.They strecth and when reused sometime break off in the rail then you have a real problem.Go new or go home. I have a set to do also! Good luck
....... Well said Nige, hopefully this catches the attention of some of the "needs to be bolted up dry so it don't come apart" crowd.
Thanks for the vote of confidence. My intention when commenting was not really to enter into the "anti-seize vs no anti-seize" debate but to point out what happens when anti-seize is used and to fire a few warning shots about the perils of not understanding what happens when such products are used in circumstances where the procedure in the manual does not specifically call for their use. So it's important to reiterate my comments about significantly reducing the applied torque setting on a bolted joint in cases where anti-seize is used if the Service Manual installation procedure doesn't specifically call for it. If the procedure calls for the use of anti-seize then the only question is what type of anti-seize is called for and if a different type with a different coefficient of friction is being used to what's being called out in the manual then a certain amount of correction to the torque wrench setting from what the manual specifies may well be necessary/desirable to avoid over/under-tightening of the bolt. If the procedure does not call for the use of anti-seize at all then it is likely that a major change to the recommended torque wrench setting may well be required depending on the type of anti-seize being used. Based on the figures I have the "Correction Factor" is likely to be approximately the following values. Don't take them as Gospel, they're only a guideline. If a "dry bolt" has a factor of 1 then various types of anti-seize would be as follows: - Light/Medium Oil - 0.90-0.95 Heavy Oil - 0.85-0.90 Graphite - 0.65-0.69 Nickel - 0.56-0.59 Copper - 0.52-0.55 Moly - 0.33-0.36
DONE!!! Managed to snap off half the heads with heat and loosen the other half. All back together. Anyone know what the service limits are on the track rails/links and sprockets? The Operation and Maintenance Manual doesn't have the wear limit specs, just service detail. They're pretty shot on one side and I imagine I'll be looking for a good second hand set ASAP. In the mean time . . . PUSH DIRT!
Rails measure 3.65" new and 3.35" when they're worn out. If the rails were updated, those numbers are 3.75" and 3.42". Sprocket dimensions attached. Make yourself a measuring device from the info supplied or post a picture. Its pretty easy to tell when the sprockets are shot.
That looks like a pretty old sprocket guage chart, do the Series II D4 Cats use the same size sprockets as the older ones?
You never mentioned Series II before this post or I missed it. The info I posted is for a D4C, not the D4CII.
Sorry, it's a 1990 D4C Series II. Thought I'd mentioned that at the beginning but maybe I put it in the previous post. Any idea on service limits for the D4C Series II?
I don't have any info on that machine. I would call CAT and ask if I were in your situation.
I am having a hard time figuring out what post #37 is a picture of Pj
Yair . . . powerjoke . It looks like profile gauge for sprocket teeth.
To measure the profile on sprocket teeth of genuine Cat (I'm not sure if it will work on "will fit") undercarriage for a D4C Series II you really need to get hold of the Cat Go/No-Go Gauge Part Number 5P-8616. AFAIK it's priced at around $30. Below is a picture showing how it works.
Would one of these be correct for a 955L? The D4 maybe? If not, where can I find the data for a 955L sprocket gage?
The 955L rails are also used on a D5 so I don't think the D4 measurements would be of much use to you. Nige posted an interesting tool. Perhaps CAT has one for the 4, 5 & 6.
Although the illustration I posted says "D7-D8-D9" the Part Number quoted in my post is for a tool that will measure sprockets on D4, D5, & D6. Sorry if I didn't make that clear. 5P-8616 will measure wear on sprockets for D4, D5, & D6 plus all other machines using that size of track chain. 5P-8617 does a similar job for machines and derivatives in the D7, D8, & D9 range.
Thanks Nige. I'm going to buy one.