A 'Cat' Forum?????????????????????
Hi, GDMason76.
If you have been monitoring this site for any great length of time, you will probably have gained an idea of who and/or what most of the more common contributors are.
For myself, I am a pretty dedictated Cat fan but by no means one-eyed about it. I do think though that IF a window could be opened where feedback from a site such as this got back to Cat. Inc. and the R&D people and the design people took a SERIOUS look at it, that might just give Cat an edge that few if any of their competition have. I say 'IF' in capital letters for what I consider to be a pretty fair reason, that I have not seen much evidence of any feedback being seriously considered in the past, especially from outside of the U.S.A..
Just as a 'f'rinstance', Cat, along with most of the other light dozer manufacturers, seems to have almost TOTALLY abandoned the idea of outside push arm dozers below the D6N or equivalent in favour of PAT blades. Now I grant you that a LOT of these smaller dozers ARE used for cleaning up and rough/finish grading, especially from what I can gather, in your country, However, YOUR country is NOT the be-all-and-end-all of the small dozer market and a dozer of around 100 hp and 15 tons with wide gauge, long track frames AND OUTSIDE push arms on a bull/tilt or semi-U dozer blade would be ideal for the work that I do here in South-East Queensland, DownUnder.
Whether high sprocket or 'oval-tracked' is not all that important. What IS important is that it have good to great slope ability, be capable of reasonably heavy clearing within the limits of its weight and power, able to dig out rocks and stumps with the corner of the blade and bulk push material somewhat more efficiently than any PAT dozer that I have yet seen. PAT blades don't have the lift for clearing much in the way of trees, they are somewhat uncomfortable with taking heavy loads on the corners of the blade and they are just plain NOT good, efficient bulk earth movers.
Diff. steer, while being all very easy to use, is a real PITA when working in tight spaces such as are commonly encountered in our work on house sites. They usually seem to involve the long way round for the LONG way home. Clutch-and-brake or hydrostatic drive are the preferred options in our work. Sure, the diff. steer is supposed to contra-rotate. I have run a Cat D6H and a D6R and they DID NOT like contra-rotating in anything but IDEAL conditions, i.e. firm to hard ground, and then somewhat reluctantly.
Up until about 6 weeks ago the company for whom I work had a Cat D5B, wide gauge, 44X series dozer with an after-market ripper and a scrub/brush canopy. I did a LOT of work with this machine, leveling house sites to +/- 3/4", clearing, spreading 60,000 tons of shale fill dumped from trucks ahead of a Cat 825C compactor and cutting some 'different' driveways in some difficult country, among other jobs. It was simply a magic little machine for the work that it did. MY question: What do Cat now manufacture that is around that same size WITH an outside push arm blade AND a good set of 'hooks' with around 2-foot penetration? (The after-market ripper on the D5B carried 2 x 2-foot shanks and handled them very well, thank you.)
Another 'f'rinstance': Cat has stopped making the 943 track loader or any close equivalent. The 943 with a 4-in-1 bucket and rear 'scarifiers' was/is the ideal size and type of machine for the bulk of the work that we do, clearing, levelling and prepping house sites for building. My employer has 6 of them and 3 x 953's. He is considering buying second-hand 943's in the U.S., shipping them over here, re-furbishing where necessary and putting them to work because good 943's are getting to be like hen's teeth and rocking horse manure DownUnder.
Your comments, PLEASE?
I agree that IF a window could be opened and results achieved, that would be a wonderful thing. However, in this case, I suspect that I might 'be from Missouri', so to speak. I may need to be shown.
I wish you well with this 'project' if you decide to try to implement it and you can count on my support, at least while it has the appearance of being serious.