Lost my track

[EddieWalker]

My plan was to line up the track with the sprocket, and just pull the track under until I could get a chain on it and pull it over. Seemed like a simple idea, but it never worked. I then tried to back up onto the track, but the same results.

 

[EddieWalker]

Two problems kept coming up. One was keeping the track strait. It just didn't want to. The other was the master link kept getting caught up in the sprocket and binding up.

I had no idea how much climbing up and down from one tractor to the other I'd be doing. Most time I could only move the track and inch or two and then climb back down to make sure everything is lined up, climb onto the backhoe to adjust the track and back onto the dozer to move an inch and then undo it and start all over again.

This lasted until around 2pm when I gave up. I'm stuborn, not overly bright and pretty clueless, but I do get an idea every now and then.

 

[EddieWalker]

This is something I didn't want to do. In fact I was a little itimidated about the idea of jacking up such a big peice of machenery on uneven dirt. But its how the pros do it and I really didn't have a choice.

I save my PT blocks of wood for just such an ocasion and have a 20 ton jack from Northern Tools that I used on home repair jobs. And of course my trusty shovel. I have over $50,000 in tractors for moving dirt, and my $20 shovel is now my most important tool. Go figure.

It was kind of scary watching those boards compress under the weight of the dozer. It's about 40,000 lbs. I kept thinking that if this thing drops and I get caught under it somehow, nobody will even look for me for a week at the earliest, so I put my cell phone in my pocket in case I lived through an accident.

No problem, just slow going. I'd max out the jack so I could get one 2X8 under the dozer. The weight would compress so much thats as far as I could get each time.

Then it was shovel time.

 

[EddieWalker]

I had no room to pull the track through, so I just inched it in underneath one link at a time. Any faster and the track would bind up and I'd have to pull it out again.

 

[EddieWalker]

This is another angle. My back was really feeling it by now. I was killing myself climbing up and down off the tractors.

I really like this photo though, I like the way the track goes under the backhoe.

 

[EddieWalker]

I didn't know it at the time, but the hardest part was now over. Getting that track underneath was the hardest part. I also realized that I had to have it in the air to get the track over the idler

I hooked a chain to the master link and just pulled it with the backhoe. It came just a smooth as cream!

 

[EddieWalker]

I released the presure on the idler.

 

[EddieWalker]

Then all I had to do was pull it all together and put the pad back on and the new bolts.

I like this photo because it shows the outline of the master link and how it all holds together. Its one of the features of this dozer that I liked. If I had no master link, it would be too big a job for me to do on my own.

 

[EddieWalker]

This is how it looked last night when I quit. Track is on and bolts are tightened to my 190 lbs jumping on the socket wrench setting.

I'm still wore out the next morning and not real exited about finishing up. I will when I finish my cup of coffee.

I need to get the jack and blocks of wood out, adjust the tension in the track and get it back to my container barn and torque those bolts down to 400 lbs with my impact wrench.

Todays project is just the formalities. The worse is over.

See ya'll on the next project
Eddie

 

[EddieWalker]

One last photo.

These are my buddies before the track problem.

1998 New Holland/Ford 555E Loader Backhoe

1989 Case 1550 Dozer with 8 way blade