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Cat track loader purchase

ippielb

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 30, 2014
Messages
695
Location
Saskatchewan
Well, this job has been a gong show. Massive dead tree blew up when I touched it, cracked the plastic roof. Bent two handles. Took off the return to dig sensor, cracked my windshield somehow. And then the main hydraulic hose blew.... 18-5 is the hose that went. Right under the seat middle of the cab... let me tell you the pain lol. I didn’t remove the cab.

B569CAAD-4362-4B8F-B2F9-BA30D571D335.jpeg

But now I’m back and running with new hose. Here’s some clearing I did

A3C665B4-575B-4781-B038-7992E22DDB6A.jpeg
 

ippielb

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 30, 2014
Messages
695
Location
Saskatchewan
Long time no talk, this March i was contacted by a fellow on the classifieds looking to get some work done. So i drove over to his place in the valley to get a look at it in the snow. He has a 30x50’ shop beside about a 25’ hill thats cut away a bit to fit the shop. The hill is on a decent slope with a clay bank so it hasn’t sluffed down in the 20 years he’s lived there. The top of the hill is densely treed.

The new building is 40x60’, he wants a 15’ gap between the shops, and then the same amount of room between the shop and the new bank, side, and back. The front leads into a small clearing.

His plans were to start in April. But complications on his end happened with the permit, geo reports, engineering. And then once he got that cleared up, Family came up. Family is a priority, so i was not upset at all we didn’t have solid plans. I figured if he wanted the work done he would come back.

He did. A few weeks ago he contacted me wondering if i was still wanting to come out and do the work for him. I said sure, and went to take a look at it in the summer. Got a better look. Felt confident i could do the job And agreed to come out the next following weekend.

That was the plan anyways, friday night we got a wild thunderstorm come through. It rained over an inch and a half overnight, and my municipality put on 8” of fresh gravel on the road in front of the farm so there was absolutely no way i could ever make it. So i had to cancel that morning, not a good start...

Saturday evening it dried up enough to take the truck and trailer loaded to town to get on a scale to be able to get my overweight permit for the secondary highway.

Steer tires 5310
Drive Tires 16090
Tridem 23980

This is fully loaded, fully fueled with everything i would ever carry. I was 20kg shy of my legal limit on a primary. I can just move the machine further forward on the deck to put some more weight on the truck to give myself some room for the mud and snow that will accumulate. Plus now i know to haul my machine without fuel in it if i can.

Anyways got the permit and headed out for Sunday morning. Got started right away, hammered through the trees just to get myself a pathway up the hill. Which was a lot bigger and steeper then i expected. Once i got on the hill i pushed all the trees down to the bottom and then piled them in a clearing. Stripped the topsoil from the hill side, and from the base of the hill. There was a very healthy 2-3 feet of top soil from the grass and leaves composting and being untouched for many many years.

Once i felt confident about the bottom of the hill i climbed up to the top and went to work stripping the top soil on the hillside i would be pushing the waste material up onto. I stripped the top soil to the top of the hill and cleared the entire area i would expect to use, and then some extra for good measure. When i was up there i spotted the top of a rock probably only showing about 2 square feet. But i had a feeling it was a big one, and the land owner had mentioned he wanted to keep the rocks. So i dug it up, and it was bigger then a smart car. So i called him and he guided me where he wanted to put the rock on his driveway.

Once i had my work space cleared and ready for work, i went to the top of the hill that i was to strip and started making myself a little platform to work from. Then the push started, bucket after bucket. The start went by very fast, it was a slight downhill push. Thinking ahead i pushed my material all the way to the back of the stripped top soil on the hill side. Leaving myself room for the next bucket, the next lift i would take off. This went on for the full day, i put in a solid 10 hours of work. Made a lot of progress.

The next day, i woke up to 3” of rain. Thankfully my experience in road construction ALWAYS prepare for rain. So the night before i sloped the entire site to drain. And with 3” of rain i only had one puddle and it was only 1” deep and 5’ long from where i turned with my track and it dug in.

I fueled my machine up again, and then left it there. Letting the site dry for the next two days. Wednesday i went back after work and put in another 3 hours pushing up a ramp now. The entire hill so far after the top soil was pure sand. No rocks at all. I was concerned about the structure and stability of the bank i would create alone the side of the cut. Which was weird the bank existing by his current shop was a very nice yellow clay, but 15’ into the hillside, it turned into sand. So i saved that yellow clay for later when i could reuse and repurpose the existing into the new construction. Which that was a proven way to reinforce the bank.

The next few days were the same, work from 6am-4:30pm, drive out for 5:30 and then work till dark. Until one day, i found his shop waterline in the hill! At 130 PSI it really let me know when i found it haha. He knew it was in the hill somewhere, but didn’t know where. Told me to dig until i found it, or didn’t find it. It made no difference as he was going to run the house water to both shops come September. He shut the well off, and capped the water line the next day.

I got to a point i needed either a laser level system, or a gps to make a perfectly flat pad for the start of the building. But i chose to hire my gradesperson from work to come out and take shots for me with a string line and level. Cheaper, and i could get her to do little things for me around the job. Plus she had never seen my machine before, and wasn’t impressed by the pictures so she wanted to come out and see.

My ramp of sand had gotten ridiculously large, traction was getting hard to come by and it was taking a lot of power to climb up the steepness of it. But as i went down to my grade that the client wanted. I ran into a dense clumpy clay. It was very different to the eye, the clay would break up into little cubes and chunks and be covered with a white powder. Which when the client came out explained to me that it must be ground water, finding its way through the clay and its calcium build up. Said his well water has such a high calcium content he runs a whole house R.O. System. Before he had to replace his taps 3 times a year from build up and corrosion.

Anyways i got my 70’ x 90’ pad dug out of the clay, and was able to stockpile enough clay on top of the sand that i felt i had enough to clay cap all the sand i had pushed up there. With the pad for the surrounding of the building made. I got out my stakes and laid out the corners of the building, and then started to cut out the building’s pad. He is going with a 5” reinforced concrete pad, with a 3” foam underlay. So i went along cutting 8” out to get his building pad ready. And doing that i found about a dozen watermelon sized rocks just borderline in the way. I decided to take them out.

A few days prior the concrete guy had come out to get a quote for the land owner. And i stopped to ask a few questions. Basically saying that he didn’t expect me to get it close to grade or flat. But it didn’t matter he could bring in base to fill it and get to grade. I mentioned the whole hill was sand, and he said that alright to use as well. With the foam it didn’t matter what was underneath it.

Once i took those rocks out, i took another couple inches of clay to fill the holes from the rocks, and to make sure there wasn’t any more right there waiting to push up and make a pressure point. Then i went into the bank to grab a bunch of nice sand. I backfilled the pad with the sand to a 5” hole. Nice and flat, smooth, and grade. So im curious to hear what this concrete guy will have to say when he comes back.

With the pad completed, i had a bunch of clay i hauled up the ramp made a stock pile on the side to use later. Now the fun part, i got up onto the top of my small mountain i pushed up, and started sculpting. Pushing down hill, it got sketchy at times with the sand, being on a hillside. Turning and having the tracks dig in. Puckered up a couple times.

I got my sand all laid down and luckily i did have enough to clay cap the entire hillside. I also had hauled up all that 2-3’ of topsoil from the bottom of the hill to the top as well, and thank god because i needed every little bit of it to cover this massive hill i had made.

Now with my clay ramp in the corner still, i needed to remove it. Again i was lucky and was thinking ahead, i left my bank open, and cut back farther then it needed to be. Just so i could cut my ramp out and use it to reinforce the bank. And to fill the hole i dug into it stealing some sand for the backfilling.

Gave the pad i driven over a little touch up, leaving a little bit of sand on the end to use if they needed. And that was it.

All in, it took 31 hours to complete, start to finish on my part.

I’ll put the pictures up in the next post.
 

ih100

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 27, 2009
Messages
731
Location
Peterborough UK
Impressive work. CM will be offering you work, you being local to him...well, compared to me you are. Seriously, I like to see a tidy job, and as a 953/963 jockey I have a good idea what went into that pad.
 

ippielb

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 30, 2014
Messages
695
Location
Saskatchewan
Need to build you a Push Blade, something similar to a Semi U off a D6.

A local company makes a push blade called a Strongbox. If you google Degelman Strongbox. At work we have an 18’ wide blade. Works fantastic and slips on the bucket and is held on with chains and binders. Although at work I never chained it on so I could easily use it or not.

 

ippielb

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 30, 2014
Messages
695
Location
Saskatchewan

If anyone remembers i smashed the roof, and the windshield on my loader back in december 2018, i replaced the windshield on the loader right away, but put off fixing the roof. I finally got around to fixing it, still have a little left to do on it though fix the missing pieces. Maybe this will save someone a few bucks in the end like i have done.
 
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