sultan
Senior Member
The operator's manual for my Cat hoe makes the point that you should dig and travel toward the idlers whenever practical, because the reason the track tensioners don't butt up to steel, is so that spring will absorb shocks and stresses.There are no springs to protect the final drives.
If you are slamming into things so hard you are bottoming those big springs and blowing tensioner seals....
That makes sense to me. As I said, I try to dig over the idlers for that very reason, but digging over the finals occasionally shouldn't harm the machine provided that I don't bang on it.