Hydro Dozers

[RonL]

Does anyone have experience with Hydro drive dozers? I believe the small Cats and Deeres are hydro drive. How do they compare with clutch operated dozers? Useability? Maintenance? Durability etc?.

RonL

 

[Tags]

Ron,
The hydro dozers are unbeatable compared to the clutch type.Basically buy having a hydro transmission you have just eliminated the replacement of steering clutches,which is a high price repair,and a lot of work to do yourself.Just about the only real component to worry about is the wear on the tracks,and I'm pretty sure that most of Deere and Cat dozers are now hydros.The hydro also gives you the ability to counter-rotate the tracks when turning,which allows tighter turns and is just cool in general.Some day when I have enough money I'd like to get one,I've run the JD 450H and the Cat D3 and the Deeres drive system was superior to the Cat,but I believe Cat has switched the design but I haven't tried a new one yet to see what its like.Hope this helps.

 

[Steve_in_Ont]

Ron - Hydostatic drive for a dozer is good for light / finish - types of work. The problem with hydrostatic drive is that when it reaches it's stall point, the tractive push / torque goes toward zero. Dozers with direct drive, or torque converter/divider drive have a torque rise as the load increases. This is why the larger production dozers are still not hydrostatic.

So for your average light jobs - hydro works very well, and all the major manufacturers offer this option on their smaller machines.

Another interesting development is some of the high-tech controls for the torque divider drive systems... all of the ease of the hydro, with the production and efficiency of a direct drive. I had the opportunity to operate a new D6R with Cat differential steer system... slick! One hand on one joystick does all of the blade functions (6 way) and the other hand on another joystick controls F/R, gear and steering. It was like operating a video game. Check it out under track type tractors at Cat.com.

 

[Hillbilly]

The 1st Hydro I ever ran was a new John Deere 750,years ago.I loved it. I was maintaining a coal pile at a power plant and I was really impressed with the ease of operation.