I heard a story once that a guy had his D-7 stuck (or at least in a sticky possition) and with no winch , he tried a different aproach . Did not see it personally:beatsme He took a long heavy duty chain (or chains) and tied one end around a large tree , and the other end , hooked on one of the tracks and used his track as a winch and backed the D-7 out of trouble . Has anyone of yall done/tried this ? Sounds lodgical , but , What do you think ? Wingnut
i got my d5 stuck awhile back. used this method to free myself. couple pointers chains have to be very strong & you have to keep an eye on how far you track as the chain can get wrapped around the finals. but yes it does work.
Winches are useless unless you are lucky enough to have something like a good tree behind you. A really good method is to simply use some lightish wire rope,feed it through gap in grouser ,then round a good stout post .[both sides] then back through another grouser then drive machine ,and post will pull under and both pull it out as well as give foatation. You can fead wire rope through where Idler or sprokett is as grousers part there. Useually have to dig post in below drawbar etc etc . Works well Take it from someone who knows,dammitt. Regards
Here are some self recovery methods used on tanks - should work for a dozer also. REMOBILIZING TRACKED VEHICLES ANCHORING TRACKS 5-9. Vehicles often become bellied (high-centered) on stumps, rocks, dry ridges, or mire. When this occurs, they become immobilized due to lack of traction. 5-10. To recover a bellied vehicle, obtain a log long enough to span the width of the vehicle and of sufficient diameter to support the vehicle weight (figure 5-6). • Place the log against both tracks. • Place a tow cable so that one end of the cable goes under the log and through the tracks from the inside. • Place the other end of the tow cable underneath the log and connect the ends of the cable together with a tow hook on the outside of the track to make disconnecting easier. Figure 5-6. A log used to anchor tracks 5-11. Follow the same procedure to attach the log to the track on the opposite side of the vehicle. Take up the slack in the tow cable by gradually applying power to the tracks. This pulls the log underneath the tracks until it comes into contact with the obstacle, thereby anchoring the tracks and causing the vehicle to move. 5-4 FM 4-30.31 19 September 2006 Field Expedient Recovery CAUTION To prevent damage to the fenders and tow cables, stop the vehicle before the log reaches the fenders or the cable reaches the drive sprocket. 5-12. For a bellied disablement (other than mire), anchor the tracks by using two tow cables (figure 5-7). Connect the tow cables together with a tow hook and attach the cables to both tracks by passing the ends of the cables through the tracks from the outside and attaching them to the standing parts of the cables with tow hooks. When power is applied to the tracks, the cable will contact the obstacle and anchor the tracks. Hal
Thanks for this reference Wolfcsm - it would've helped me today. I got high-centered while running a D3G, atop a big boulder such that both tracks were almost entirely suspended in mid-air. The machine is not equipped with a winch, and I was nose high, such that I couldn't raise the machine with the blade even by pivoting it. :Banghead Fortunately, there is a crew working nearby on a sewer system and they had pity on me... one of their operators on a Cat 930H wheel-loader helped me recover the machine. It was a pretty close call, and for a while I was afraid it was going to take bigger equipment to get me un-stuck. (Thanks Oscar and your crew!) We ended up pushing the machine backward off the rock I high-centered on. This was after breaking two chains trying to pull forward off the rock, and a lot of unsuccessful attempts to push the machine from behind. I'm going to go tomorrow and lay hands on some tow cable and hooks, as the log self-rescue would've done the trick in this case. I'll try to post a picture of the recovery while I'm still feeling humiliated.
You might like to take a gander at this too wingnut. Some of the same tricks as already posted, but more from the fire dozer concept. http://www.wildfirelessons.net/documents/Scratchline_Issue13.pdf OCR
on winter freighting cats, it is common to use the holes in the pads to hook a chain and use the track to get your self out of the tough spot. i remember the first time i did this when i got the FAMOUS BLACK CAT stuck in some bad ice on a swamp. the loggers could not believe that the cat just walked out using teh a chain on the tracks. thansk KoO Published Author
We had a D8 stuck in the worst muck one time, i left it sit overnight, as I had got it stuck around 8 pm on a saturday night and the neon lights were calling my name haha. Went back there with a headache on sunday morning and it slowly sunk about another 2 feet over night, the "muck" had now oozed over the floorboards about 6 inches thick, the transmission and torque completely submerged in muck. engine half under, fan everything.... half under the muck. So i just jumped back in my truck and lowbedded one of our 320's in to the rescue.... after 4 hours of digging around it, brought in a water truck and pressure washer, washed the muck out the fan area and cleaned out the trans and torque area as best we could, fired it up and drove it out..... the only thing that stopped it from sinking any further, it was sitting on the frozen ground about 6 feet down haha. Another time when i was still wet behind the ears, i was working for an outfit in our area, I completely buried a D9G in a land fill out in the "swamp" it had a winch on it so we brought a 992 John Deere Excavator over to anchour to, dug the bucket in about 3 feet and stood it on its tippy toes, wrapped the winch line around the bucket and started pulling....... the cat came out, but the sides of that bucket just folded like a pop can... oooooh lessons learnt from days gone by lol.
Cool tips on getting unstuck!
Never luck out and have a good camera around when I do something dumb, but a crappy pic mesg tends to make everyone you know feel better about there day.