The bulldozer
Not sure if I posted about this before or not? My uncle bought an old bulldozer at the beginning of the year. It's an old Allis Chalmers HD-11 and I am guessing this particular one was built in the late 50's early 60's. When my uncle bought it he knew it has a bad bearing in the main left idler wheel. Well this weekend we began the work to get that idler off so it can be rebuilt with a new bearing.
Every thing is big on this thing, at work I mostly do little things. I rarely use screws much bigger than #6 and frequently use #0-80 (think eye glass screws) for things. Nearly every bolt we touched Saturday used a wrench or socket bigger than one inch. On the main screw that tensions the track we had to use a 1 7/8 inch wrench and an old car bumper jack to turn it.
So for this first go around we managed to get the blade of the crawler and get everything block up the way we wanted so that when we break the track we will be able to roll that main idler off and pick it up with a tractor while still supporting the rest of the 21,000lbs crawler. After all this prep work we tried to drive the master pin out of the track and despite most of a can of penetrating oil, prodigious amount of heat with an oxy-acetylene torch and some serious persuasion with a 16lb sledge hammer the pin refused to move. That stymied our progress but it was not bad work for the first day at it. My shoulders and back were sore Sunday and even today.
My uncle is trying to track down a hydraulic tool to drive that pin out. We'll be back at it in a couple weeks. I am really looking forward to getting to drive it after the repairs are done.
Click to Enlarge
The lady on the left is my cousin's wife. The guy in the brown jacket is my dad and the guy in the blue overalls is his brother, my uncle.
Click to Enlarge
Click to Enlarge
Click to Enlarge
Click to Enlarge
Click to Enlarge
The big wheel on the left is the main idler that needs new bearings. The pin above it, the one that has penetrating oil all over it, is the pin we need to drive out to open the track and let that idler roll free.
Every thing is big on this thing, at work I mostly do little things. I rarely use screws much bigger than #6 and frequently use #0-80 (think eye glass screws) for things. Nearly every bolt we touched Saturday used a wrench or socket bigger than one inch. On the main screw that tensions the track we had to use a 1 7/8 inch wrench and an old car bumper jack to turn it.
So for this first go around we managed to get the blade of the crawler and get everything block up the way we wanted so that when we break the track we will be able to roll that main idler off and pick it up with a tractor while still supporting the rest of the 21,000lbs crawler. After all this prep work we tried to drive the master pin out of the track and despite most of a can of penetrating oil, prodigious amount of heat with an oxy-acetylene torch and some serious persuasion with a 16lb sledge hammer the pin refused to move. That stymied our progress but it was not bad work for the first day at it. My shoulders and back were sore Sunday and even today.
My uncle is trying to track down a hydraulic tool to drive that pin out. We'll be back at it in a couple weeks. I am really looking forward to getting to drive it after the repairs are done.
Click to Enlarge
The lady on the left is my cousin's wife. The guy in the brown jacket is my dad and the guy in the blue overalls is his brother, my uncle.
Click to Enlarge
Click to Enlarge
Click to Enlarge
Click to Enlarge
Click to Enlarge
The big wheel on the left is the main idler that needs new bearings. The pin above it, the one that has penetrating oil all over it, is the pin we need to drive out to open the track and let that idler roll free.