The "Not So Pro" discussion thread...of course Pros are welcome!

[catbuster]

1. Those tracks are much too tight. There should be a bolt near the zerk for the adjuster to release some of the grease. Be careful, tracks that tight will probably have that grease under tremendous pressure. If you can’t find that, pull the zerk, and again be careful of pressure.

1b. I am deathly serious about being out of the way of that bolt on the tensioner. Tightening up the tracks to a half-inch of slack on that size crawler puts ~5500 lb of tension on the chains. That much (read: little) slack probably has it at much more. Convert that to PSI in the adjusters, and you will find it to be a lot. 2” of sag on a D6ish size dozer puts 800 lb of tension, which is, relative to a lot of the danger in heavy industry, pretty little pressure in the cylinder and sort of safe to work on.

2. Caterpillar’s spec for most of their crawlers is two inches of track sag. It is measured by stopping the track where one of the pins is centered on the top roller, then by taking a straight edge over the grouser bars, and measuring to the lowest grouser bar. That is the correct amount of slack.

3. Most of the transmissions on those tractors are under the floor, and pulling the center floor panel should be where you’ll find the transmission fill. John Deere probably says to use Hy Gard, any reputable ISO 46 will be fine.

 

[rwoods]

Thanks, guys. Given the potential for injury, I am going to advise them to ask the County highway department to send one of their heavy equipment mechanics to fix it. Thanks to the DOD, the range has a D8 that other agencies borrow so maybe they can get some help. Seems crazy that LE is awash in military heavy equipment with next to no direct use for it.

Ron

 

[northmanlogging]

Thanks, guys. Given the potential for injury, I am going to advise them to ask the County highway department to send one of their heavy equipment mechanics to fix it. Thanks to the DOD, the range has a D8 that other agencies borrow so maybe they can get some help. Seems crazy that LE is awash in military heavy equipment with next to no direct use for it.

Ron

there is A LOT of political reasons for it... largely because of the drug war though. So the police were able to attain huge amounts of equipment, and ordinance for next to no cost to individual departments.
They seem to find a use for it around here... APC's show up for even the littlest warrant, let alone a protest, yet the search and rescue helicopter fleet is older then me and falling apart...

 

[rwoods]

I am familiar with what you stated. We had a tracked APC - about useless in MHO; only time I saw it move was during our 1993 blizzard. Obama administration wanted it back as too military and gave us a 6x6 MRAP in replacement. Go figure. Anyway none of the politics explain why local law enforcement is given construction equipment and other unrelated military surplus instead of giving it to local agencies that could actually use the stuff. Local LE agencies have trucks, tractors, dozers, road graders, low boys, etc. The neighboring county has Humvees, cranes, lights set, generators, and more filling a fenced lot.

Ron

 

[northmanlogging]

I am familiar with what you stated. We had a tracked APC - about useless in MHO; only time I saw it move was during our 1993 blizzard. Obama administration wanted it back as too military and gave us a 6x6 MRAP in replacement. Go figure. Anyway none of the politics explain why local law enforcement is given construction equipment and other unrelated military surplus instead of giving it to local agencies that could actually use the stuff. Local LE agencies have trucks, tractors, dozers, road graders, low boys, etc. The neighboring county has Humvees, cranes, lights set, generators, and more filling a fenced lot.

Ron

There's also the flawed Gov procedure of needing to spend this years entire budget, so that you can beg for more for next year. It leads to a lot of buying random **** and unneeded overtime, just so they can have that fat budget for next year, only to waste it again...

Then they have the ******* stones to beg tax payers for more money... and make all sorts of a claims about being underpaid and overworked, which goes for just about all types of Gubamint jobs... yet not a one of them will quit because they know the pay is good and the benefits are better.

its a vicious cycle, on the one hand, most stuff the gov agencies do, does save the public money, but there are a lot of folks in Guv jobs that would or have been fired from civilian work... and all they are good for is collecting a paycheck every 2 weeks.