what kind of mechanism is this?

[junior]

you know new models use hydraulics for doing this, but what about this, what kind of thing is this, and how it works?

 

[Danial Doherty]

wow that rig looks weird.... something for moving your circle out?? the blade lift cylinders look awful short on that too...

 

[JonesBros]

Thats a 12F grader, we've got one left and had 2 at one time. Thats just how they raise the blade. The lever turns this pump which in returns turns this long driveshaft to the front of the lift pump (the front thing) and which it rotates the long thick 5-6" shaft which moves that back arm from like 12 - 6.

The lift arms have pins in which you have to drive a pin out and move the arm up and down. This is back before the G's full hydraulic cylinders were introduced.

 

[junior]

Thats a 12F grader, we've got one left and had 2 at one time. Thats just how they raise the blade. The lever turns this pump which in returns turns this long driveshaft to the front of the lift pump (the front thing) and which it rotates the long thick 5-6" shaft which moves that back arm from like 12 - 6.

The lift arms have pins in which you have to drive a pin out and move the arm up and down. This is back before the G's full hydraulic cylinders were introduced.

excuse me, i did not tell, this is a big one, 16, a similar to 12F i think, and it is normal to confuse about model because no way to compare to anything in my pic, sorry, now i am telling, a 1968 model caterpillar 16.

 

[dozerdave]

Is that a recent photo? If it is that blade has had fine care.

 

[JonesBros]

excuse me, i did not tell, this is a big one, 16, a similar to 12F i think, and it is normal to confuse about model because no way to compare to anything in my pic, sorry, now i am telling, a 1968 model caterpillar 16.

Damn I should have looked at the twin air breathers

How big of a motor is in that beast?!

Here's a pic of our F we just painted when it was not fully decaled, so you can easily see how I called it a 12F Ours is either a 77 or 78, I can't quite remember.

 

[willie59]

Damn I should have looked at the twin air breathers

Are you forgetin' stuff again Chris???
You do that at work, ya ain't allowed to do it at home! :lmao :falldownlaugh

 

[JonesBros]

Are you forgetin' stuff again Chris???
You do that at work, ya ain't allowed to do it at home! :lmao :falldownlaugh

I was just focused on the red rectangle. My parents always said keep your eye on the prize, so i was focused like a hawk

On top of forgetting stuff I do need to be more observant at times :Banghead

 

[junior]

Thats a 12F grader, we've got one left and had 2 at one time. Thats just how they raise the blade. The lever turns this pump which in returns turns this long driveshaft to the front of the lift pump (the front thing) and which it rotates the long thick 5-6" shaft which moves that back arm from like 12 - 6.

The lift arms have pins in which you have to drive a pin out and move the arm up and down. This is back before the G's full hydraulic cylinders were introduced.

is that a hydraulic pump, in the front?

 

[JonesBros]

I believe it to be gear driven since the whole machine works is basically driven by driveshafts.

 

[willie59]

I believe it to be gear driven since the whole machine works is basically driven by driveshafts.

I'm not a grader person, never had the opportunity to work on one, but I've always been curious about them. I remember these old "mechanical graders" as a youngster, watching all the shafts turn. My question; when you operate a lever, does the lever engage some sort of clutch from the power source to drive the function/shaft selected? And, do you feather it, or just stab it in?

 

[JonesBros]

I've never really ran the F, only moved it around on the lot a handfull of times. I started out on my G but I can tell you this, I noticed that the controls are a lot slower so i would imagine that no stabbing will be needed. You can wind the motor up real good and hit the leavers and it moves real slow and real smooth. I would imagine its a dream for fine grading a road! My brother started out on it and he would always say how great it was for fine grading for that reason, and the fact that you could always tell how much fall you put in the road by the position of those two arms that move the blade up and down as long as you had the pins in the same slot on each side.

But to answer your question to the best of my knowledge Atco, I would say that the 12F's didn't have any clutches. That they have a hydraulic piston that the lever moves that lets hyd oil flow through each port to move turn the yoke that turns the driveshaft to each gear driven motor. There are only 2 cylinders on the machine other than the steering and tilt. Thats to move the blade in and out, and the ripper.

Hope this helps answer any questions, I can get you some more detailed pics if you wish.

 

[RonG]

If you are talking about just the old mechanical graders,the early Cat graders at least,there is no feathering of their controls,they are all mechanical and the gears are either meshed or unmeshed,kind of like a boat lower unit,the water is the clutch.
In the case of the grader unless you are at the end of travel of the gearbox there is minimal load on the gearshaft and because of the gear reduction between drive and driven it works pretty good generally.It sometimes fights back but I think that there are wear adjustments to compensate for it.
The Cat 12 was one of the graders at Ft Leonard Wood training school when I was in the army.Everything that I have run since was hydraulic though.Ron G

 

[Komatsu 150]

We still have our 12 grader a 99E model from 1960 and it still does a job or two every year. There is definitely no feathering. There are a series of "dog clutches" that look somewhat like the engagement clutches in a Roadranger gearbox, that is with teeth, no slippage. The teeth are also sloped so that when a high load is placed on them such as reaching the end of travel or a hard cut with the blade the levers will pop out with great force to avoid damage. Damage to the operator was secondary consideration! On a side note, I've had a number of people grease our 12 including a couple experienced grader operators and I've always found grease fittings they missed - 84 by count.

 

[Engineer4255]

Chris, nice looking F model there. But I would venture a guess to say that its a 73 or older, as Cat didnt make any to my knowledge after that.

 

[JonesBros]

Chris, nice looking F model there. But I would venture a guess to say that its a 73 or older, as Cat didnt make any to my knowledge after that.

I'm not to familiar with the machine, so the year was a little fuzzy as you can tell

My biggest tie to the machine is I sanded and painted it :cool2 I really don't want any ties to it after running my G for a while. I'll ask my dad or brother today exactly what year it is, I know its one of the last years they made the F's so it very well could possibly be a 73.

 

[Taylortractornu]

Ive found out the hard way why they called them a knuckle buster. I ran one for a man on his farm one time when I was between jobs. They was a hunk of lime rock that was up through the road and I hit it while grading and I was applying down pressure. That thing kicked out and jarred my whole hand. My wrist swole up like a grapefruit. The scarifier also ran off this method to. I ve seen a large Caterpillar pull type that had sollid steel wheels that had a pony motor on it and ran a chain drive to a gear box that was set up all the blade hitch and wheel lean and side shift was run like this.

 

[tripper_174]

I operated my first 12F grader in 1969, the grader was a 1968 model. Earlier models such as the 12E 99E were a little harder on the operator as you had to essentially jam one gear into another to raise or lower the moldboard. Old operators to this day wear gloves because they dampened the impact somewhat. The more pressure you put on the moldboard, the harder the controls kicked.

The 12F was kind of a blessing as the lift mechanism was hydraulically assisted. You could hear the clicking of the gears inside the control box but it wouldn't kick the operator. They still had a shear pin like the older graders to protect the gears. In the day they were pretty nice graders and both older machines, (F's or E's) were much nicer to finish grade with than any of their contemporaries.

 

[Grader4me]

Welcome to HEF tripper 174 :drinkup Nice to see another Grader Operator join up!

Canadian as well...eh?

 

[tripper_174]

thanks!

Thanks Grader4me. Appreciate the welcome and am looking forward to learning lots here. And yep, a Canuck!