• Thank you for visiting HeavyEquipmentForums.com! Our objective is to provide industry professionals a place to gather to exchange questions, answers and ideas. We welcome you to register using the "Register" icon at the top of the page. We'd appreciate any help you can offer in spreading the word of our new site. The more members that join, the bigger resource for all to enjoy. Thank you!

Uneven rail wear D6RIII

watglen

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 3, 2009
Messages
1,324
Location
Dunnville, Ontario, Canada
Occupation
Farmer, drainage and excavating contractor, Farm d
You seem to mention something about a plow and I take it then that you are using this machine in farming and not construction? The reason I ask is the right side front and rear track rollers are over 50% with the left side a lot less. Normally a machine doing a lot of blade pushing would were both front rollers more than the real while primarily ripping would wear the rear rollers more. I would not expect to see close to the same on one side front and back.

I can seen dragging disks across a field and making left hand turns twice to hit the next row loading up the right side a lot more than the left side.


Yep you are right on all that. The plow is a tile plow (see pics if you can) for farm drainage.
I am guessing that the first 6500 hrs of the machine's life were spent building those oil pump pads out in the bush in Alberta (There's a name for that kinda work???) The maint records say all the service was done out there, while the owner was in Toronto. After that I put the plow on it and that is basically all its done. The blade hardly gets dirty these days.
So I imagine the front rollers got their wear out west, then we did the wear on the rears.
That makes the most sense to me.

CAT is coming soon to have a look. Maybe a trained eye will see something we haven't noticed(I hope)
 

John C.

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 11, 2007
Messages
12,870
Location
Northwest
Occupation
Machinery & Equipment Appraiser
Too bad the computer only counts forward and reverse on both tracks and not on each track. I'll bet the right side has an extra few hundred miles making those left hand turns.
 

bam1968

Senior Member
Joined
Nov 1, 2014
Messages
533
Location
IA
Occupation
Excavating Contractor
I don't think pulling a tile plow involves much turning. I think a lot of it is just straight line pulling.
 

Nige

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 22, 2011
Messages
29,310
Location
G..G..G..Granville.........!! Fetch your cloth.
You say the current tracks have 1600 hours on them. Has the RH track behaved like it does for all those 1600 hours, or did something change at some point and after that it started to run hard against the rollers..?
I'm going to stick my neck out here and say it's a dodgy SystemOne track that's the root cause of your problem.
 

watglen

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 3, 2009
Messages
1,324
Location
Dunnville, Ontario, Canada
Occupation
Farmer, drainage and excavating contractor, Farm d
I don't think pulling a tile plow involves much turning. I think a lot of it is just straight line pulling.
Yeah, that right. For a normal dozing application, i expect a long straight push would be around 200'. For us, a long straight pull is 3500'. Nothing shorter than 150'. Then, because of the distance, you turn around and drive back to the start again to begin the next run. There is some turning, but it is the shape of the field that determines the direction and number of turns, so I suspect it is pretty even left and right.

I THINK the wear began this summer. I noticed the right rail getting really polished and warm/hot kind of all of a sudden. At that time I don't recall seeing the amount of metal "burring" on the rail itself. At the time, it did a little testing, and found it was more a factor of speed than load: ie. tracking back in 3rd caused more heat than plowing out in 1st.

If I had to guess, I would say it just started this summer.

John, right now, IIRC there is about 2x the number of miles going forward as going in reverse.
 

John C.

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 11, 2007
Messages
12,870
Location
Northwest
Occupation
Machinery & Equipment Appraiser
Are you the person operating the tractor or do you have an employee doing it? You mention tracking back in 3rd? Is that reversing in 3rd or what.
 

Nige

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 22, 2011
Messages
29,310
Location
G..G..G..Granville.........!! Fetch your cloth.
Are you the person operating the tractor or do you have an employee doing it? You mention tracking back in 3rd? Is that reversing in 3rd or what.
I was going to comment on the 3rd gear issue also. Our tractors get 3rd gear both forward and reverse deactivated right from the get-go..........saves a world of hurt from operators who don't know any better and/or people in a supervisory position who simply don't care.
 

watglen

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 3, 2009
Messages
1,324
Location
Dunnville, Ontario, Canada
Occupation
Farmer, drainage and excavating contractor, Farm d
Are you the person operating the tractor or do you have an employee doing it? You mention tracking back in 3rd? Is that reversing in 3rd or what.
No no, sorry for the misunderstanding. I operate the tractor. 3rd reverse is disabled. Each tile run has a start and an end. When i get to the end, I turn around and 2nd or 3rd forward it back to the start, which is likely around 1000' drive. When I get there I turn around again, set up, and go. We do that all day every day.
 

watglen

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 3, 2009
Messages
1,324
Location
Dunnville, Ontario, Canada
Occupation
Farmer, drainage and excavating contractor, Farm d
Pulled the track off today.

All I can say is the idlers are as close to perfectly aligned with one another as I can measure with string and straight edge. Idler bearings seem perfect.

A better look at the idlers has them both about 1/4" off center of the sprocket. The idlers are outboard of the sprocket

We pulled the track into an arc on the floor to check for snakey chain as its called. Pulled a string along one edge and found the arc measured 1.5" between string and chain at its furthest point (over 24 links) Thats as close to new as you are going to get I think. New chains would have a little curve to them.

pushed and pulled on the front idler ( side to side) I wanted to know for certain whether toe in/out was even possible. Pushing on it and pulling on it to the point where the whole tractor starts to slide on the floor, you might see 1/8" difference between the front idler carrier and the tractor nose. Effectively no toe in/out at all.
That undercarriage is as solid as it can possibly be.

One question: We pushed and pulled on the track guide under the front idler. I would expect to see some rotation in the cannon by doing that. We couldn't make it swivel. It seems fixed and rigid. Is that right? I figured it was round for a reason.

And the only other thing we learned was the sprocket idler offset.

Still at a loss here. Rollers are worn heavily off center.
 

Nige

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 22, 2011
Messages
29,310
Location
G..G..G..Granville.........!! Fetch your cloth.
One question: We pushed and pulled on the track guide under the front idler. I would expect to see some rotation in the cannon by doing that. We couldn't make it swivel. It seems fixed and rigid. Is that right? I figured it was round for a reason.
I would expect to see no discernable rotational movement of the cannon in a reasonably low-hours well cared for tractor. If there was any movement it would be measured in thousandths of an inch.
 
Last edited:

Cmark

Senior Member
Joined
Jan 2, 2009
Messages
3,178
Location
Australia
Agree with Nige. The cannon guides only get any real wear when the cannon is pushed back against the recoil spring. It's common to see wear on high hours tractors which have been in rock but not on machines which have had an easy life.
 

StanRUS

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 7, 2016
Messages
767
Location
Cal
I would expect to see no discernable rotational movement of the cannon in a reasonably low-hours well cared for tractor. If there was any movement it would be measured in thousandths of an inch.
Nige, how would you define 'reasonably low-hours'? Under 20,000hrs?
 

John C.

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 11, 2007
Messages
12,870
Location
Northwest
Occupation
Machinery & Equipment Appraiser
I going back to you turning to the left a lot more than you turn to the right. You are turning 180 degrees at the end of the pull and then racing back to the other end of the field and turning 180 degrees again. Put a couple of counters in the cab one for right turns and the other for left turns. Compare them at the end of a weeks run time.

The cannons can't turn as they are locked to the track frames as the rear where you see the round cap with about six bolts on each side of the undercarriage.
 

watglen

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 3, 2009
Messages
1,324
Location
Dunnville, Ontario, Canada
Occupation
Farmer, drainage and excavating contractor, Farm d
Ok, finally got this resolved, and I wanted to post the outcome here so everyone watching can get some closure.

Toromont came out twice to assess it. Finally the top guy in undercarriage wear came out to have a look.

He didn't see anything that is particularly worrying. He said it is common for tracks to want to push to the outside under load. Mine is favouring one side more than the other , but not enough to be concerned about.

I learned a lot about the system one design. It has undergone 4 design upgrades to cure initial flaws. Mine is the final design.

Some of the features of system one:
The idlers don't wear, and last the life of the tractor. Because of this, they need to be resealed occasionally.
The idlers don't ride on the rails, so the rails don't scallop like the HD design.
The chain doesn't have pin bosses like the HD chain, so the roller flanges don't impact them as they wear.
As double flange rollers wear, the flanges can get into the bushing seal area. With no pin bosses on the outside of the rails, guys would run the rollers well past worn out, which would start to tear into the bushings. For this reason, system one normally doesn't use DF rollers.
The bushings rotate, so segments and bushings last much longer than HD. There is no bushing turns to do.
He said, due to our non-abrasive soils, the rails would likely never wear out. The chains will be scrapped when dry pins become too much of an issue to put up with.

Recommendations to maximize my track life.
Swap chains side to side
Continue using existing carrier
Pull the shims out of the idlers. Its about time to do that anyway. Should cut down on vibration
discard the 4 most worn rollers, and replace with DF rollers(the same ones used on the hd undercarriage) in the #2 and #7 locations.
Re-sort the remaining rollers, rotate them 180, and install with best rollers to the rear.


Thanks for everyone's input.
 
Last edited:

watglen

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 3, 2009
Messages
1,324
Location
Dunnville, Ontario, Canada
Occupation
Farmer, drainage and excavating contractor, Farm d
Follow up.

Been running the tractor for a few weeks now. Chains are running centered on the sprocket so thats a good thing.

Rail sides are evenly shined up.

Seems like all is good for the time being.
 
Top