Old Dozer Re-power

[franklin2]

I was reading the homemade dozer/crawler thread with great interest. I saw a lot of discussion on track design, etc. Has anyone ever thought about buying a old dozer with serious problems and converting it over to hydrostatic type drive?

For instance I saw on Craigslist a old John Deere 1010 crawler. It is getting water in one of the engine's cylinder's. I did some research on it, and these old dozers are not very popular, they were supposedly underpowered and parts are very very expensive if they can be found at all.

But if you approach this thing with the "build it yourself" mentality, it looks to me like you would have tracks and a frame, with a loader, bucket, etc. What if you found a more modern engine, used a 2 or 3 ganged hydraulic pump mounted to a engine, dropped it in place, and then bought hydraulic motors to supply power to the tracks? Has anyone ever converted a old dozer over to a hydraulic drive? Would the Surplus center actually have motors and pumps large enough to propel a small dozer like this?

The original specs for the dozer were 28hp drawbar, 36hp pto, it came gas or diesel, and weighed in at 7580lbs.

 

[Renze]

Why would you want hydrostatic drive ? you need variable stroke pumps and those are expensive, especially when buying aftermarket.
The engine is an inline 4 cylinder 2500rpm motor, not a johnny popper so that gives you plenty of choice for an engine swap within the same space. A 3 cylinder tractor engine or a 4 cylinder compact Kubota or passenger car engine.

 

[bcp]

Videos:

D2 caterpillar crawler re powered with Holden 202 - YouTube

Redneck Chevy powered Tank - YouTube

Over the years I've read of several Cat dozers repowered with V8 gas engines with their transmission in front of the Cat transmission. Not for serious work, but for an occasional use farm utility dozer.

Bruce

 

[Renze]

or search the Volvo BM Bamse forest tractor... just skid steer like tracks running on three axles with rubber wheels..

BM Bamse -61 - YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inFZhHs_hc8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3fc1Xl79KA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU5K6eKE2oQ

Then you can take just any tractor with good spares availability and toss some tracks around the axles...

 

[Tor Arne]

or search the Volvo BM Bamse forest tractor... just skid steer like tracks running on three axles with rubber wheels..

BM Bamse -61 - YouTube

Some Digging With The Frog G-612 Part 2/2 - YouTube

Ferguson 35 med halvband (DEL 2) - YouTube

Ferguson TEA 20 Chenille track TTA de Bombardier - YouTube

Then you can take just any tractor with good spares availability and toss some tracks around the axles...

Only problem is that the Bamse was built by the Øsa company with similar steering clutches as the dozers.

 

[franklin2]

Why would you want hydrostatic drive ? you need variable stroke pumps and those are expensive, especially when buying aftermarket.
The engine is an inline 4 cylinder 2500rpm motor, not a johnny popper so that gives you plenty of choice for an engine swap within the same space. A 3 cylinder tractor engine or a 4 cylinder compact Kubota or passenger car engine.

Well, I admit I do not know that much about it, but it seems the clutches that you use to steer the dozer always wear out, the engines don't run, etc. I figured you could gut the driveline and get the same results with hydraulics. But maybe not. I have worked on a couple of skidsteers before, and saw they were just a hydraulic motor driving a sprocket on both sides. It looked like it had 3 pumps stacked together, one to make it go, one for the bucket, and one for the accessory ports. Maybe I didn't look at it close enough, but it looked like it did have a fancy valve hooked to the levers to control the hydraulic motors. Are you saying these control valves are expensive and hard to find/make out of standard stuff?

I have also worked on a Dixie Chopper and I think it has the system you are talking about, it has a pump/valve combo, one on each side hooked to each lever, and then lines from that down to each hydraulic motor on each wheel.

People seem to be building their own frames and tracks, loader arms, buckets, buying all the valves and cylinders. I thought a older small dozer with problems would eliminate a lot of fabrication.

 

[Wolfy]

By the time the engines on these old dozers died, the rest of the machine was likely worn out. If there was ever a machine that has a tough life, it has to be a dozer.

 

[Cpjlube]

To the OP.
I see your point. You are wanting to start with a known device and then reengineer it, using hydraulic skid steer technology.
I like the idea......... but.
Every time I have tried to modify a piece of machinery I run into issues I never realized until I'm in pretty deep. Most of the time it would have been easier to start from scratch.
If I were to undertake this project I would take th he time to look at my project machine and make sure my plan worked. Does the equipment fit? Can I keep costs reasonable? Etc.
Good luck. Post pics.

 

[jd4310man]

Thats an interesting idea but just to pull it off would require a lot of expensive hydrostatic parts. Most if not all skid steer loaders use a variable piston pump and fixed displacement piston or gerotor type motors. You might be able to use a regular gear pump with gerotor motors. I have a magnatrac that uses this arrangement and works well. The only complaint is it is very slow moving. It would also require a bit of engineering to select the right size components to make it work properly on a re-power. I repowered my magnatrac with a diesel and changed from a two pump system to a one pump system. I was off with the first pump as it was too big. It had speed, but no power. So I had to get a smaller pump for it to work properly. Another problem is how to connect the drive motors to the existing drive system? It would require some change to the final drive of the dozer to attach sprockets to the output shafts. Anything is possible, but at what cost and time to put into it.

 

[Willie B]

Stock, a 1010 was a sweet machine. With blade or a winch they were amazing. Not able to push a mountain in one pass it could in a million passes. Engines are available, or parts for one. If you don't want it, I would like to know more. Re power seems like too much engineering for a one off, replacing a leaking wet sleeve not bad at all.