D 6T Never worked on system one undercarriage. When installing new rails it looks like the you press sides of links on to assemble rails ? Can I use normal track pin press an make a adapter to hold link square as I press ?
It would appear that the answer is you can't iuse even similar tooling to press the pins on SystemOne. TBH reading the attached procedure it looks like a right PITA. The list of special tooling & adapters is a mile long.
I see NOTHING of Value in S1 UC, everything is specialized and specialized tooling to boot. Every user around here that had it switched back to SALT UC without batting a eye. Nothing interchanges except the machine setting atop those UC components.
Get out your checkbook. Make sure your bank account is fat. The best way is to have Cat service come out and press your link together. Its the most cost effective when dealing with Sys1
If you’re just installing rails use the clamp master S1 master links. About 5 min with a 3lb hammer and your done. Zero specialty tooling required
There are certain (early) machine Serial Numbers that according to the factory cannot be converted, officially at least, to S1. As always, a S/N is the first starting point.
Can see them doing that to machines to lock them into that type rail. Really see little value in those S1 rails regardless.
Some of us cant swing a 3 lbs. hammer for 5 minutes. LOL
At the dealer we always put the clamp masters on. Yes we have the press tooling to install press on links but it’s such a tremendous pain in the butt we use the clamp masters. Clean the paint off the bushings, bring together with crane, slather on a little anti seize and torque per sis and Bob’s your uncle.
For awhile you could get an alligator master link for those. Is that not the case now?
I have never seen one buuutttt I started working in this field several years after System 1 was first introduced. I’m guessing that the clamp masters have superseded such an option but somebody like Nige might be a better source of info on that.
For the un-informed among us.....what is the sales pitch for this ? Longer life ? And what exactly is so different ?
it’s a rotating bushing system vs fixed bushings in regular SALT track. Cat claims more life in general dirt work applications without having to do a midlife pin and bushing turn.
So there is another set of seals, for the rotating bushing over the pin ?
Imagine a humongously large bicycle or motorcycle chain......
They also are supposed to enable longer life on the rail part of the track link. Standard rails ride on the idlers twice in every revolution which wears a dent or belly in each link. On System 1 the bushings ride on idlers and rotate with it as it goes around. The only thing the links ride on are the rollers. Biggest issue I've seen was debris trapped in between the links has nowhere to go when they start to ride on the idler. I've heard it mentioned multiple times that the issue puts extra stress on the components causing failures to the seals.
To cause UC wear you need 3 things. Contact, pressure and relative motion. When the track goes around the sprocket you have only 2-3 bushings (max) taking all the force pushing the tractor. Any relative motion (sprocket to bushing) will cause wear and this happens every-time in the cycle from when the sprocket engages the bushing till it disengages. S1 eliminates all this. The bushings turn independent of the rails so you have no relative motion between the sprocket and bushing. As well like John said we do the same on the idlers as they ride on the bushing. Essentially the only wear on the UC is rail to roller. This is actually very minor unless you are in sand or something. Yes you have contact and pressure with the roller to rail but very little relative motion. The sand grains or dirt squeezing out between the bottom roller and rail is really the only item causing wear (and yes the shoes to the ground). “In theory” with S1 everything wears at a slow rate and “should” all last till the shoes, rollers or link height wear down not bushing or sprockets as you see first on most SALT tracks.
In practice, the seals fail and leak the oil out of the joints, many times in the three to five thousand hour range. The repair involves a box section to replace the damaged link and special tools to assemble it all. I was told it was about six hours of work and usually two people. One of my contacts told me that System 1 is no longer standard equipment on a D6T. You have to order it now.
They are a pain in the ass and the side links cracking is too common.
Another theory (and there have been many such) that did not survive its first contact with the dirt.......... On paper it should work, for all the reasons Ben explainbed above. In practice it's different.
Engineering 101 : "Theory is a great guy, but he never built anything, so don't trust him" Appears someone finally let Theory build something, and guess what, it doesn't work.
There is a reason airplane designers don't test fly, they let someone else do that.
I have a question for all of the great minds here. I run into this a lot on the farming side. And by "this" I mean equipment that obviously wasn't proven out in the field before it was put into production. How many hours are put on something before it's called good? Seems like the manufacturers should be able to figure out that these "ideas" should stay ideas.
It does sure seem like a lot of bad ideas make it to market and stay there way too long with the mfr trying to cover the whole time. Just look at the current emissions engines.
It's always worth remembering that amateurs built The Ark - professionals built the Titanic.
This would be a great ??? to ask a engineer but alot of stuff works great when new even with alot of hours but give it some age and you cant make it work agin. Not to down grade or say one car brand is better than the other Ford has sold several things that when they are new they work great no matter how what the mileage but give them some time or age and they turn into a bad ideal.
Ideally field experienced men would be paired with engineers to say “Yes I know that idea sounds great but it doesn’t work like that in the real world” but it sure doesn’t seem that many companies value that. on the other hand one of the big reasons Bosch was eager to hire my brother in law as an engineer was that before he went back to school to get that degree he was an auto mechanic for several years.
Also these days "Field Follow" of new designs/models/improvements where the iron is kicked out into the dirt to provie itself or break in the process seems to be conspicous by its absence. This is a trend that seems to have been on the increase since probably somewhere around the mid-1990s.
Yes, rather than "this is a new design, let us know what you think of it" it will be more like "you are the first one we have had a problem with, this problem will be fix-as-fail only" no campaigns allowed.
Back in the eighties I worked for a small coal mine company that purchased three Cat 550B articulated trucks. Brand new design. The three trucks we got were supposed to be headed to the proving grounds in Arizona, but instead came to us. The bad engineering showed up within two weeks of receiving them.
Watched in disgust as a Enganear explained away a issue I saw with Sludge Pond influent controls, his design was to allow the sludge with a flocculant additive, was SUPPOSED to flow out away from the discharge pipe and settle to center of the pond. Told him Good luck with that as for as soon as the water leaves the pipe and slows the mud will stop moving. He chuckled, called me a ignorant Farm Sod, three months later he was looking for a new employer as the sludge was building up just off the pipe mouth and they had to add a long reach excavator with operator to Shove the soup out to center. I had made the comment in front of the Plant Manager. Have seen all manner of "Emissions Control" adventures in Power Stations, on HE and Trucks or light vehicles, NONE of which did as expected beyond change the release to something else that needed further address, burn more fuel and cost production/maintenance/warranty hours.
Freightliner corp people won't come out to the shop anymore . They got tired of trying to over talk this raggedy old bugger. Hendrickson field reps the same thing, davco fuel filter company same thing. My name has been put on a {no call list}.
DAMN TS!! You must have made them all look bad!
Been told by my Boss that Two More PCM units came and left on warranty machines for the other Quad. He called the salesman that aligns trucks from that dealer where he divulged that tidbit. May not ever see another Freightliner Western Star or any other Associated machine line on this yard. Peterbilt salesman is frantically trying to find replacements for the two Quads and at similar weights although their warranty program is also faltering.
Not to hijack---But below is a fine example of testing after the sale. Hendrickson ST13 drop axle, we had 4 like this fail at same point. Fabricated axle-main formed beam is only 1/4" material. Hendrickson showed up and started that {Your company is the only one we know of that has had these failures, you must be over- loading!}. {no we carry 9,600 on your 13,000 lb axle}. But one thing I did notice Hendrickson changed the thickness of the formed main beam to 3/8 material. {Well how do you know that the Hendrickson rep asked} {Because look at the radius of the formed piece it has a wider radius on the new axle--That tells me you guys {Hendrickson has a problem-maybe a call to NTSB is in order to alert people who have these axles those are prone to cracking and catastrophic failure}! That was the end of the reps discussion {crickets} as he turned and walked away. Company rep buttholes.
Not heavy equipment related though gearhead related is Robby Gordon's Speed UTV company he's building. Robby has been a desert racer for years and isn't an engineer. He's been involved in R&D for a couple of the major UTV brands and decided to start his own. His approach is much different than the typical big corporate approach. While they are way late getting their product to market he's been really transparent and done a lot of real world abuse testing in the public's eye. His budget is much smaller than someone like Polaris and has required a different strategy to get his UTV to market with a much smaller development team. A couple weeks ago they were giving demo rides in a preproduction unit with fresh oil stains all over and a couple other issues. He publicly explained what failed and how they plan on fixing it. This is a much different approach than the big corporations who keep it all under wraps in a private test facility. Following along with his updates on YouTube can be mildly entertaining background noise to a gearhead.
One word "BeanCounters"....
Definitely place that call, as parts are falling off at 70 mph onto the hi-way involving innocent (other) drivers.
I agree with you somewhat. However I think a part of the blame (at least) should lie with engineers who have no real world practical experience and who design these POS, then convince their companies that their latest brain fart is the "only possible way forward". That's where the difference between theory and practicality comes in..........
Yes, I forgot all about the latest problem...."Spoiled Brat Engineer Syndrome"
Another side also--companies/corporations want planned obsolescence built into there products what ever that might be. I think in many cases engineers are told what is expected of them. A friend who he and his dad manufactured bean, grape and pea harvesters named {Pick Rite} said years back a 40% structural over kill was standard practice these days most over kill design has been cut to 10 to 15%.
They most certainly are...Mow that the Beancounters are running the show. Granted FEA has made it possible to reduce excess material somewhat, you see the results when FEA is not followed up by real world testing.
hear is a good video for track were.
It's a nice program for what they are trying to convey. The visual showing the movement of the link and bushing going around the sprocket is a great way to explain why to minimize reverse operation as much as possible. They don't speak about the negative operational conditions of high drives. Doubling the number of bending axises around two idlers required the use of SALT which increased the expense of the track. Running over two idlers also doubled the wear on the rail section of each link. Cat has offset some of the wear issue by improved metallurgy but last time I was part of a cost benefit analysis, the cost per hour of an oval track undercarriage running SALT was about half the cost of a comparable high drive undercarriage.
The only difference between theory and practice is, in theory, there is none.
Do you mean in theory, there is no practice?
In theory it is ALL practice!!!
What gets me really worried is when anyone refers to a "medicall professional's" practice....... I would have thought they'd get to a point where they were experts and wouldn't need to practice any more......
Ah Nige, but we ALL practice our Trades too!! Just as Physicians Practice Medicine and Have Practices!!
A practice refers to a task with multiple outcomes, none of which is certain. Think of a doctor trying to heal a broken bone. It can be reset and hopefully the body will take care of it. But then again, maybe it won't. The doctor only does the best that they can do to make the likelihood of healing more likely than not. The same thing happens for an attorney defending an accused or arguing a law suit. The steps are uncertain, the path that has to be navigated requires a broad knowledge and there are degrees of success. The difference between their practice and our task is that our task has only two outcomes, success or failure.
I wonder whatever happened to Cats rotating pin and bush?.I remember those systems from the 90’s but never looked at them closely