I bought a parts manual so I can munch on all this info a bit more.
It looks like the track bar has been patched and broken off again, I was initially thinking this was just a missing part not having noticed the huge welded patch on there I don't have the bearing housing... so it would have to be sourced from another machine. I might entertain fabbing one from scratch if it were a hobby machine but I need it to work in the near term.
I haven't bought it yet but its close to scrap price it failed to sell at auction I'm sure nobody wanting to use it day to day would want to deal with this out the gate. Honestly myself am not sure its worth it.
here is a video of the machine audio isn't great but I can hear the engine isn't 100% up to snuff either but it is running at least. Might be several things, water in the fuel? stuck injector.. or worst case a bad IP or head issues. Since this is the lowest HP model of the 844 engine I kind of suspect water in the fuel.
The guy that has it current did drive it on and off the trailer as it is... so the transmission at least is probably working, dunno about the status of the clutches though.
There is another machine being parted out locally but it is a newer model so I dont' know if the track bars, bearing and axles are the same or not does anyone here know that? If that is the case I'd have a local source on replacement parts, but if not there is another dozer another 4 hours away in non running condition that might work as an alternate to this machine, its non running but might just be a fuel pump etc... or I might be able to nab a fuel pump / IP from the local part out machine for it.
The end goal would be for this machine to push down about 1.5 acres of small/medium trees, then live the rest of its life maintaining a 35 acre farm and 1 acre pond. The tipping point here is can I build a machine out of this cheaper than I can hire a local dozer guy to do the 1.5 acres of trees that he doesn't even want to fool with anyway, I think the answer to that is probably, also in the future there will be several thousand dollars of work on the farm most likely. The last cleanup of the farm was about 7k... I'd like to keep that as a max upper limit on what I spend so scrap price on the dozer + around 2-4k of repairs does that sound crazy to you guys?