Old meets New

Well, I got my 3 weeks in. My job with the cat m was leveling class "b" material. I would level and bring it as near to grade as I could. The second grader came behind with the trimble getting it spot on grade. After compacting etc. class "a" material would go on. I got a chance to operate a 140 H on class "a" with the gps system...wow! It was flat out work 13.5 hours a day, seven days a week. We averaged 10,000 tons per day.
Now my thoughts on the Cat 140 M...When I first got on the grader I asked if I could grade a small piece of road to get use to the controls before I started leveling. Steering was the hardest for me..rest of the controls was a piece of cake. I started leveling in about an hour. I keep remebering one posters comments here not to have a death grip on the steering joystick...completely correct...after I relaxed it was fine...still reached for the steering wheel and levers for awhile tho...lol
I really like the grader..only thing that I found is after I parked for a bit I had to recalibrate the steering by moving the joystick slowly back and forth..until you do that nothing else would work...sometimes it took a little while..not a good thing when your going flat out...I'll post a couple of pictures later.

Welcome back!It will be nice to see pics and hear the news.Ron G

Hey Grader4me. Where did you end up working? My 1 week stint has turned in 4 plus with no end in sight.

Wecome back snuffy.... i missed you (like i miss a chapped a**),, but i bet you made enough money to buy your favorite kid that corvette you so often talk about... your a good man, and men like you make the rest of us look bad! bwah hah hahha ef ef

Dad5 said:

Hey Grader4me. Where did you end up working? My 1 week stint has turned in 4 plus with no end in sight.

Click to expand...

Working on the Trans Labrador Highway for Humber Paving.....about 175 kms approx from Labrador City

Wecome back snuffy.... i missed you (like i miss a chapped a**),, but i bet you made enough money to buy your favorite kid that corvette you so often talk about... your a good man, and men like you make the rest of us look bad! bwah hah hahha ef ef

Click to expand...

Missed me ya old buzzard didn't ya..lol. Well guess what?...took a leave till the middle of October...going back!!..lol

I'm really pleased it's going well for you, G4, it doesn't come much better, than when you are getting paid to do something you really enjoy.

RnR.

Picture of my grader...will post some more pics later

Well I must say you don't look any better but the grader sure looks alot better than the green one you had your picture taken by and produced on Heo's Thread (Faces of Hef)....bwah ahh aha

Lol!...you're a very funny man...still a handsome devil ain't I?...lol

Grader4me said:

I really like the grader..only thing that I found is after I parked for a bit I had to recalibrate the steering by moving the joystick slowly back and forth..until you do that nothing else would work...sometimes it took a little while..not a good thing when your going flat out...I'll post a couple of pictures later.

Click to expand...

The "recalibration" is every time you shut the machine down, until the steering warning light on the dash goes out after startup, you're not calibrated and as you pointed out nothing will work. To make recalibration easier we recommend to our operators that they park the grader with the steering about half-way between straight-ahead and full turn. It makes picking up the cylinders with the steering joystick a breeze, you're not playing around moving the joystick this way & that with the wheels in the straioght-ahead position trying to figure out which way you need to move it until it finally calibrates and the steering picks up.

Glad to hear you had a good time.

Nope...it does it after startup at times..but it also does it at times when idling and in park. Thats when its a pain in the butt.

Great pic Grader4me. That is great that you are liking it up there. I don't think I could be that far from home but that is just me.
can't wait for more pic's.

Kyle

Hope you were able to get at least one time in fishing, I hear up that way its amazing

Your complaints about the steering calibration are heard often. I didn't pay much attention to the complaints in the beginning because CAT obviously used the operators for R&D. I thought they'd come with an upgrade at some point to fix that problem. Guess not.

I don't hear you complaining about much so you must fit the seat rather well.

I wonder, after you run joystick for a while will it be a struggle to go back to a rack?? Just seems like such a dramatic reflex change. As we all know when you are in tune with a machine it's purely reflex. positioning and moving the blade becomes just as natural as swiping your hand across a table top.

Nice looking grader when you go back how about some pictures of the inside. So we can see how you are roughing it, working those controls.

Great pic Grader4me. That is great that you are liking it up there. I don't think I could be that far from home but that is just me.
can't wait for more pic's.

Click to expand...

Didn't think I could either Kyle..but working with this group made it a lot easier. I'll post more pics when I get time.

Hope you were able to get at least one time in fishing, I hear up that way its amazing

Click to expand...

Lakes and streams everywhere...they say the fishing is amazing...good to hear from you again Murray.

ovrszd....I was switching back and forth for the first week as the trimble system was on the 140 H. Wasn't really a problem..but more time on the m would make it interesting to see how the adjustment back to a rack would be.

Here is a pic of the inside of my grader and a lake where I parked it one evening after work. Excuse the mess on the inside..lol

I really liked the visibilty of the Cat M

There was a couple of things that were a PIA for me that you haven't mentioned so either they fixed them or they weren't an issue for you. First the 140M and the 160M that I ran both had consideral lag when upshifting while carrying a windrow, would have enough speed and power to upshift but lag was so great that when it finally happened I had lost all momentum. The other was more a design flaw that Cat should have seen from the get go. They mounted a trans line on the bottom of the tranny with NO protection around it. Probably wasn"t an issue on their test track but in use, on rocky ground, it gets knocked off. There rant done, there were other things I didn't care for but I don't care for change just for the sake of change I understand that the NINTENDO generation likes buttons and joysticks, not me, guess I'll take my club and head for the cave now. PS glad you had an enjoyable time

I did find that starting out under load, for example waiting for a truck to dump and continuing with the blade full, it lacked the get up and go...darn near stalled it a couple of times..the amount that I have to push and level there is no upshifting..lol

Had a great time...thats why I'm going back...leave again this Sunday.