I have a couple hundred hours on the teeth on my loader. They have about 1" worn off the length since installed. Do you wait until they are worn to the point of being in danger of breaking, or do you replace them sooner? I'm accustomed to people waiting until one falls off to change teeth, I'm wondering if there is productivity to be gained by changing them sooner. The teeth on the machine are standard length, I have a set of long teeth on hand to replace them with. The difference in length is about 2" at this point. I'm not doing a lot of digging lately, mostly pushing fill. The machine in question is a 955L.
I quess this would be a question for the dentist :laugh: Just kidding, I don't think I'd let them go so far as to break but you also don't want to change them if there is still life left, be kind of a waste???
Ask the manufacturer. They should have specs for when the are at 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% wear. Alternatively, you could calculate the amount of wear per tooth that would allow for a tooth to slip, and that would be the time to change it , beacause a slipping tooth could cause damage. edit: I thought you were talking about sprocket teeth but now I think you may be referring to the bucket/blade teeth...:beatsme
Right, bucket teeth. My oversight not to mention that.
Depends on what you are doing. If you are in a pit loading a hard packed material and trucks are waiting to get loaded, then changing the teeth early may benefit you. A hired truck at say $85 per hour sitting while you load is something to consider, if you have 4 hired trucks at $85 per hour then you get the idea. If you are pushing fill, backfilling or performing normal loader duties, wear those suckers out. When the teeth are getting close to the changing stage I monitor the wear more closely as you don't want to wear thru to the shank. If you are doing more backdragging than normal keep a watch on the bottom of the teeth as well.
Hi PhilDirt, I think you should change when you have a little time to spare, The new teeth will help keep the wear off the bucket. have a lota fun, sam.