Has anyone experienced or know of a compact class hydrostatic dozer locking a track and prompting a nintey-degree turn, then releasing and continuing to travel in a new direction? The particular machine in question may have been known to lock up on occasion without any action on part of the operator. Is such an event even possible with a hydrostat? I know that on certain small hydrostatic dozers if the electric brake switch is inadvertently stuck to the STOP position while underway, the stoppage of both tracks is instant and one hell of jolt. You learn to avoid that SOB in a hurry. I mention no brand names here for obvious reasons. The operator was thrown from the machine and killed. The dozer traveled a considerable distance from the accident scene.
Yair . . . It is difficult to imagine a ninety degree turn violent enough to throw an operator from the seat . . . let alone trying to figure out a set of circumstances that would make such an inadvertant turn happen. Every sympathy to the folks involved but I would suggest other circumstances came into play. Cheers.
My condolences to the family. I must ask however, was he or she wearing a seat-belt?
I don't know if the turn could have been violent enough to throw someone from a seat, but years ago when the hystat drive rear engine track loaders first came out I saw this particular loader lock up both tracks and throw my buddy against the windshield as we were going full bore to the bone yard at quitin time. This same machine would lock up one track at any given moment making it very hard for my buddy to back fill curb.
I doubt it. Speculation includes the operator may have been knocked unconscious and fell from the platform onto the right track when his head a rops canopy support. I understand it was pretty gruesome. Anyway, it is interesting to find after all this time that there may be a problem with hydrostatic drives locking up spontaneously without warning which is not being publicized by the various tracked crawler manufacturers. Prior knowledge of such, if there indeed was any, might have saved this man's life. Of course, he could have buckled up. As he apparently knew this was a problem with this particular dozer, he may be in some way partly to blame for his own negligence. The feedback is that he was moving at fast speed when it happened. Go fast is something I never do on our hydrostatic dozer on account of that STOP button.
I have never heard of any cases like that. I can believe the right circumstances can throw an unbelted operator. Good practice is to always buckle up. It would have saved this mans life. I would be interested in learning more about this.
i once worked on a J-D 700h that would when cold traveling strait then make sharp left turn, right track would speed up and it was really dangerous, i mean very fast turn. was bad speed sensor for right travel motor. and once again sad to here of the fatality.
while operating a jd 650 at full throttle and highest speed setting the left track went into reverse and nearly threw me from the seat and scared the crap out of me. if i had not been on level ground it could have been a problem. so YES, such an event is possible. the dozer continued to spin counter clockwise until i hit the brake. that was the first time it happened, so after that i was expecting it when it occured again. sometimes it would continue to reverse and others it would only reverse enough to turn 30-45 degrees.