I wanna find him...

So, last friday while tearing the boom mounts off of a 120 foot Deere sprayer, another of the farmer friends hired hands found me. He normally runs the sprayer, but was tasked with pulling the starter off of a Trashnational Eagle with a C15 Cat. He got the top and bottom bolts out, but couldn't budge the center. You know, the one between starter and frame rail. Ok, I'll come take a look. Wonderful, awesome, it's sitting on gravel.....FFFUUUdge. Anyway, I wiggle under, long handle rachet and the special Cat flex starter bolt tool I have. Nope... Cheater on the rachet. Nope....Wiggle under some more, get both feet on the cheater and....Nope. Wiggle out, light off the compressor and wiggle under with my 3/4 I.R. Nope.... I am rapidly running out of options. Ahh, I know....Dig around for a double box end wrench, 5/8 - 11/16, tie one end of a chain come along to my truck bumper and wiggle under with the other. 5/8 on the bolt, 11/16 0n the hook and proceed to put a strain on it. Yeah, nah, snapped the wrench. FFFFUUUU.....Try the come along on the rachet handle with the cat flex socket, just pulls the handle down, I can not physically hold the rachet up in line against the pull of the come along. You guys can see this, you been there. How to do this, what can I try. OK, how 'bout I put a little 2 ton jack on a block and hold the rachet and tool against the starter body. Yep, that might do it. And I tell the kid to crank the come along. BIG,BIG strain as I'm laying with my hands over my head so when anything breaks I can at least soften the hit. BANG!!!! Something went, huh, rachet works, socket isn't broke, what give? Heck, lets take another bite, and I saw the socket turn a tiny bit. 10 repeats of this, 2 clicks of the rachet at a time, then the impact spun it out. Loctite, RED forkin LOCTITE on a starter bolt, and it had been bathed in it full length. This is Tuesday and I still hurt from the gravel. But, I want him, I wanna find him. The devils spawn of A Dick that used the Loctite. I want his balls in a vise, I'm gonna crank it down, take the handle, give him a dull butter knife and set the building on fire..........

Damn just Damn!
I can certainly relate to how you feel.
Thanks for sharing this. I now have a new way to curse the b*****d that gives me a hard time.

That's typical horse-sh!tery there sled dog.

Had to change heater hoses on a Freightliner cab over years ago. Opened a new box of Napa heater hose
installed poured the coolant in could hear it dribbling on the floor. Looked like a soaker hose for a lawn,
someone had ice picked the entire roll of hose. Cab overs are not fun to change heater hoses on.

A couple months ago, I had to pull the starter off a 1900 IH with a DT466. That same "devil's spawn of a Dick" had replaced the 12 point bolts with extra long 6 point bolts. Almost an inch of threads was hanging free inside the bellhousing, getting corroded and cruddy. With the 6 point heads, each point rubbed as they turned, so the only thing you could use was an open end or a crowfoot, 1/6 of a turn at a time. I had to use a wrench all of the way, and double wrenches or my 18" ratchet on 12" of extensions on the crowfoot for most of it.
When you find him, you hold him and I will melt all his tools down with the torch!

mitch504 said:

A couple months ago, I had to pull the starter off a 1900 IH with a DT466. That same "devil's spawn of a Dick" had replaced the 12 point bolts with extra long 6 point bolts. Almost an inch of threads was hanging free inside the bellhousing, getting corroded and cruddy. With the 6 point heads, each point rubbed as they turned, so the only thing you could use was an open end or a crowfoot, 1/6 of a turn at a time. I had to use a wrench all of the way, and double wrenches or my 18" ratchet on 12" of extensions on the crowfoot for most of it.
When you find him, you hold him and I will melt all his tools down with the torch!

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Mitch, any dickwad that will do the things you, Truckshop, myself and others have seen, would probably come to your house, rape your dog, and scatter your garbage...

Being from the rusty part of the world once I started working that hard I probably would have grabbed the torch and heated the head of the bolt.

Wow.!!!
RED loc-tite.. I hate that stuff.. with a passion..
I UNDERSTAND starter bolts coming loose.. but the ONLY thing I use is BLUE.. service removable.

Tyler d4c said:

Being from the rusty part of the world once I started working that hard I probably would have grabbed the torch and heated the head of the bolt.

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Not a good place for a torch with all the plastic air lines. But I forgot I just go to Napa
and use their demo induction heater for those types of issues. Works like a charm.

Truck Shop said:

Not a good place for a torch with all the plastic air lines. But I forgot I just go to Napa
and use their demo induction heater for those types of issues. Works like a charm.

View attachment 263223

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I've been wanting to get one of those but sometimes you got to make do.

There’s a rule in this business that I’ve learned the hard way

if it’s a fastener or hydraulic line in a hard to get to area it will be tightened as if Jesus himself came down and put a 10 foot cheater on it. If it’s a component that needs to come off, say a hydraulic pump, it will be corrosion welded together and no amount of beating with a 20 lb sledge will move it, not that you’ll be lucky enough to get the room for said tool of encouragement because the damn thing is always in a tight packed area, the kind you’re luckily enough just to barely be able to touch what you are trying to remove.


The secondary part of this rule is that if its a fastener it will strip (and good luck fixing that mess down in the hellhole) and if it’s a hydraulic line it will spin the adapter or bulkhead fitting instead of just coming loose.

Truck Shop said:

Not a good place for a torch with all the plastic air lines. But I forgot I just go to Napa
and use their demo induction heater for those types of issues. Works like a charm.

View attachment 263223

Click to expand...

I’ve got one of those. I have a success rate of about 2 out of 5 tries with it.

Many years ago, I did a full rebuild of the (original) undercarriage on one of my Cat D6C dozers. My tractors always worked in a lot of deep mud, and it was often slightly salty mud. I was lucky in this rebuild, that I managed to score the free use of a good concrete-floor workshop (because at that stage, I didn't have one) and I was able to pull the track frames off, and flip them, and put them up on support stands to work on them.

But e-v-e-r-y s-i-n-gl-e o-n-e of the 48 track roller retaining bolts was installed at the Cat factory with NO anti-seize, and every single one of those bolts was 3/4 inch too long, so the bolts protruded through the track frame metal, and hung out in space on the inside, where they could corrode to their hearts content.

It took me 3 weeks to do that undercarriage overhaul, and in that 3 weeks, I reckon I broke off nearly half of those track roller retaining bolts. In that 3 weeks, I became an expert at removing broken bolts - bolts that broke flush with the frame, and below the frame level as well!

To this day, I still dream of finding those Cat designers and engineers who oversaw the manufacture of that machine, and putting them to work removing a 1000 of those rusty, excessively-long, track roller retaining bolts, that they arranged to install in the factory, with no anti-seize!

OzDozer said:

Many years ago, I did a full rebuild of the (original) undercarriage on one of my Cat D6C dozers. My tractors always worked in a lot of deep mud, and it was often slightly salty mud. I was lucky in this rebuild, that I managed to score the free use of a good concrete-floor workshop (because at that stage, I didn't have one) and I was able to pull the track frames off, and flip them, and put them up on support stands to work on them.

But e-v-e-r-y s-i-n-gl-e o-n-e of the 48 track roller retaining bolts was installed at the Cat factory with NO anti-seize, and every single one of those bolts was 3/4 inch too long, so the bolts protruded through the track frame metal, and hung out in space on the inside, where they could corrode to their hearts content.

It took me 3 weeks to do that undercarriage overhaul, and in that 3 weeks, I reckon I broke off nearly half of those track roller retaining bolts. In that 3 weeks, I became an expert at removing broken bolts - bolts that broke flush with the frame, and below the frame level as well!

To this day, I still dream of finding those Cat designers and engineers who oversaw the manufacture of that machine, and putting them to work removing a 1000 of those rusty, excessively-long, track roller retaining bolts, that they arranged to install in the factory, with no anti-seize!

Click to expand...

caterpillar loves to put in their disassembly and assembly instructions to use anti seize on the same parts they installed without anything

my very first go to on undercarriage bolts that look like they are going to give me a fight is heat every last one with the torch. I have had a machine that took an entire full set of Oxy and acetylene bottles with rosebud to convince the 40 year old undercarriage it needed a divorce.

OzDozer said:

Many years ago, I did a full rebuild of the (original) undercarriage on one of my Cat D6C dozers. My tractors always worked in a lot of deep mud, and it was often slightly salty mud. I was lucky in this rebuild, that I managed to score the free use of a good concrete-floor workshop (because at that stage, I didn't have one) and I was able to pull the track frames off, and flip them, and put them up on support stands to work on them.

But e-v-e-r-y s-i-n-gl-e o-n-e of the 48 track roller retaining bolts was installed at the Cat factory with NO anti-seize, and every single one of those bolts was 3/4 inch too long, so the bolts protruded through the track frame metal, and hung out in space on the inside, where they could corrode to their hearts content.

It took me 3 weeks to do that undercarriage overhaul, and in that 3 weeks, I reckon I broke off nearly half of those track roller retaining bolts. In that 3 weeks, I became an expert at removing broken bolts - bolts that broke flush with the frame, and below the frame level as well!

To this day, I still dream of finding those Cat designers and engineers who oversaw the manufacture of that machine, and putting them to work removing a 1000 of those rusty, excessively-long, track roller retaining bolts, that they arranged to install in the factory, with no anti-seize!

Click to expand...

19 years ago I had the pleasure of replacing the undercarriage on a 7H. On the gravel. I only had to dig out about 20 or so of those miserable b*****ds. Torch out as much as I could, dig out the rest with a chisel, run a tap through every hole. Took me a week to do the bottom rollers. Still have some scars from molten metal. Definitely top 3 on most terrible jobs on heavy equipment.

I had to do alot of work to a 955 that had been in a iron ore place . Every bolt on the track frame had to be torched out and rethreaded.

Had the Starter bolt issue on my '05 C15, ALL 3 had Loctite on them, PITA to get out.

You know who I want to get my hands on? The idiot that decided a blaring 90 decibel alarm horn that sounds every second on a piece of modern Cat equipment when it detects something is wrong (a level 3 event code such as aftertreatment fault or low oil pressure). Yes I know the intention is to create a notification that the operator can’t ignore but holy crap it’s not conducive to effective concentration on electrical troubleshooting when it’s screaming for hours on end while you’re trying to find the problem.

On some machines you can remove the fuse for it.
But, sometimes more than just the alarm is on the circuit.

I did a Cat 14A undercarriage years ago where the track frames were hollow and a bar was on the inside. It had the bolt threads and the bar could be removed from the track frame. I then used a drill press to remove the broken bolts. It didn't work that way on anything newer than 1955. Sadly, that was my parents generation who designed it and engineering went down hill from then on.