rshackleford
Senior Member
when the county road department here went to "m's" they had two go from 10 machines to 12 in order to do the same work as the older series cat graders.
I've operated motorgraders for over 22 years blading mountain fire roads. I recently rented the 140M for a job on a very narrow steep winding fire road and found the 140M very frustrating. First the cab is way to small, I can't even fit my lunch box anywhere. You'll bump your head when you get in, it's got this wierd cab ceiling. If you do alot of windrowing of material you'll find the heel very hard to see clearly, the joysticks are in the way. You'll have to have the blade almost straight to see the heel without lurching your body forward. The cab widows are angled but don't really give you more blade visibility just more of the circle. Also the blade lifts conceal the front wheels and for my work I must see where my wheels are going. The steering is downright scary and I feel dangerous! especially when roading the machine. I found myself constantly zig zaging. It feels way down on power, I kept stalling it over and over. I could see some plusses with not having to remove your hands for blade control and I had mastered the joysticks by the end of the first day. But I feel Cat blew it with this machine! The joysticks may be the future but this machine in my opinion has serious design flaws. Cat always had the sleekest looking machines on the job site but this thing is UGLY! It may be OK for blue tops in the flats but keep it out of the mountains! I'll keep renting the 140H even though the local Cat dealer keeps offering free days just to get it out of the yard.
The only ones I can really speak to are the 24Ms. The operators here hate them, they have regular steering problems, and are grossly underpowered. Another big problem is how hard they are to keep control of when conditions are slippery.
Somebody up in Canada has been apparently getting a few new 24Ms. In the past few weeks, I've passed 4 different Mullen trucks in Wisconsin hauling brand new ones.
The steering has been updated twice and the new steering flash transitions through the gears very nice.
One issue that some operators have is that the friction packs in the joysticks are to tight causing the operator to use more force when modulating the joystick wich tends to leave the operator feeling like he may over correct. In my opinion the looser the friction pack the easier it is to steer. I use the old workshop saying that a blunt tool is more dangerous than a sharp tool to back up my theory.
A second issue that could hinder confidence is that 90% of the M series could probably use an articulation calibration by a trained person. Most machines articulation sensors are calibrated to the articulation lock pin wich could cause the machine to be up to a full two degrees out of cal. If driving behind the grader 2 degrees will be almost a full tire width offset from eyeballing itnwith the rear tandems This will cause the machine to constantly veer off the road when the steering joystick is in the center detent.
I have ran the M series with and without the center detent, it really makes no difference to me, but with a fine tuned M series the detent shouldnt be a problem. The only thing that removing the detent does is that it covers up the articulation sensor being poorly calibrated. When an operator drives an M series especially at high speeds he naturaly wants to hold the steering stik in the detent. On apoorly calibrated M series he will always have to counter steer slightly or he will always be bringing the machine back to what he feels should be straight causing him to make excessive steering corrections.
As far as power goes a the 140 M has a 3 liter smaller displacement engine tha the 140H. With changes in emmision regulations the good ole days having a huge heavy engine giving you that low end tractor lugging ability are coming to and end. You can thank your congress for that one. On the brightside the new 140 Ms are coming out with C9 engines Awd and tandem. If you are running an M with a C7 or a C6.6 what you can do is just simply set your cruise control button to the bottom side and then tap your throttle switch up to about 1100 rpm to prevent stalling at low rpm when hydraulics are in use.