My first track loader!

[boone]

I have spent most of the afternoon reading this, and I enjoyed it and learned a lot. Your machine is excellent and I agree with everyone that you done a excellent job getting it up to par. Keep it up

Thanks red_man!

Awesome thread! Just gave it an excellent rating. What I like most is that this is a family working together. Used to do everything with my step-dad. He's gone now but this thread brings back a lot of good memories...

It's certainly been fun spending time with dad while doing all of this. Glad it brought back some good memories for you.

Can't wait for my son to get up old enough to take on one of these projects with me.

Me too!

That's my dad's 1968 TD-25C just after he painted it, note the blade is still off. Picture is probably 20 some years old

That TD-25 is a monster and looks great! I'm glad you posted it here! I can still see the shine in the paint from the flash.

 

[boone]

Boone i will start off buy saying great thread and great job on the loader. I have never run a track loader, dont even see many areound here, but i will say i have always thoufht they were pretty cool. Anyways good luck with your tank, and pump. Little tip, when fueling up take the gun and pull the lever before you switch the pump on, this way the pump is pushing liquid as soon as it turns on and will improve the life of the pump. I dont know if that is common knowledge or what, but I never see guys do it and i was taught that way a long time ago and our pumps seem to last forever. If this was common knowledge sorry for my ignorance everyone.

Thanks and for the tip too. I read the manual on the pump and it did not mention this, but it makes sense to do it. Most of the time I'm sure two of us will be around the tank when we're filling the loader or tractor so one can hit the switch while the other holds the nozzle open.

 

[TD-20G]

My dad used to load the 175C without ramps on his LoadKing lowboy, (he took the ramps off, got tired of flipping them.) It was about as high off the ground as your trailer. He used to back up to it at an angle off to the one side, (maybe two feet or so?). That way one track would grab the trailer before hitting the counterweight. Once in the air he would turn the machine to the side and straighten it out. It takes a pretty strong beavertail for this method though. It looks simple when he loads it anyway. I loaded the 175C a couple times that way before we got rid of the LoadKing trailer. Just another option.

 

[boone]

Electrical

In the process of wiring to the tank, we realized we had no ground wire source. Just like every little project, there's always more work involved than expected. The power at the old shop is from the 40's or 50's. Back then ground wasn't used much. There's no ground wire at the shop where we were hooking on. We didn't feel too good about this as the tank and whatever was touching it would end up being the ground if we had a short. We installed a ground rod right outside the shop door and wired this into our three-wire UF cable. The ground rod was about 8' in length. We hit rock a couple of times while trying to drive it in. On the third attempt we just kept pounding and it broke through whatever was in the way. Hopefully it wasn't a water line Got the rod all the way in. It's buried here at the step:





We wired up a switch in behind the shop door which will give us power down to the tank. We'll install another switch at the tank.





Covered trench down to the where the tank will sit.

 

[boone]

Footing

We wanted to get the tank off the ground and give it a stable footing. The back of old tank has sat for years on the ground while the front has been propped up on diesel soaked brick, rock, and sickle mower blades. Grandad always had old sickle mower blades around from his old hay mower. He was just using what he had to shim it. Worked for several years. However, we wanted to make the setup a little more solid. Dad and I dug couple small footings about 5" deep and mixed up some concrete and poured front and back pads.





We couldn't help but think of grandad after sifting through all those old sickle mower blades at the base of the tank. I suppose those old blades had been there as long as the tank had and it almost seemed wrong to toss 'em. So we found a place for them.

 

[robin yates uk]

if it was me I would make the base wider, looks like it may be unstable after filling the tank with expensive red! As always, better safe than sorry

 

[boone]

The picture might be a little deceiving. Most of that concrete is about 5" thick. The skids on the tank are just shy in width of the base. We laid some block to get the back high enough to stay out of the ground and to give us some room for the drain. The red mortar was left over from a home project. We set 4x4" post on each side in concrete that will hold the roof structure we having going over part of the tank.

 

[boone]

Brought the tank over. It's been degreased, sanded, primed twice and painted with about three coats. Used CaseIH grey primer and paint.





We temporarily set the pump on to make sure we had plenty of clearance under the little roof dad put together.





Start wiring.





Everything is water tight with conduit. Installed a GFI outlet with a switch for the pump. We didn't realize the pump had it's own switch with a pick-up lever like on a gas station pump. So we have three switches for the pump!





Installed the pump, filter, fittings and hose.

 

[boone]

Finished

Full tank! We filled the loader and tractor up today.

 

[robin yates uk]

very professional setup but oh so much easier if you had built it on a bund, planted with local plants, and a lot cheaper but you do things your way I guess, good luck in all you do

 

[boone]

very professional setup but oh so much easier if you had built it on a bund, planted with local plants, and a lot cheaper but you do things your way I guess, good luck in all you do

Thanks Robin. The elevated tank is a great idea, however by the time you mentioned it this project was 85% complete so that train had already left the station. The setup worked great this weekend! Got a lot done with the loader.

My dad used to load the 175C without ramps on his LoadKing lowboy, (he took the ramps off, got tired of flipping them.) It was about as high off the ground as your trailer. He used to back up to it at an angle off to the one side, (maybe two feet or so?). That way one track would grab the trailer before hitting the counterweight. Once in the air he would turn the machine to the side and straighten it out. It takes a pretty strong beavertail for this method though. It looks simple when he loads it anyway. I loaded the 175C a couple times that way before we got rid of the LoadKing trailer. Just another option.

Sorry, I didn't see your post till later. I didn't have the joy of loading/unloading on that rampless trailer, but I could imagine it would have quite the pucker factor if you weren't using a berm or anything

 

[CM1995]

We couldn't help but think of grandad after sifting through all those old sickle mower blades at the base of the tank. I suppose those old blades had been there as long as the tank had and it almost seemed wrong to toss 'em. So we found a place for them.


View attachment 89582

I like your style.:thumbsup

 

[TD-20G]

Sometimes the 175C would jump one of the double grouser bars while getting the back end of the 175C off the ground. It didn't sound good, but it was a fast way to load. The old trailer was a 35 ton trailer so it wasn't too hard on it. The trailer was new in '68 and we sold it in 2009. My dad moves equipment a lot so it paid for itself many times over.

 

[boone]

Last month we took the 175 out of winter hibernation, greased it and put it to work. I love spring time - everything was just turning green. The three things we did were tighten up some brush piles, filled in some rock holes we dug last year and buried a few more rocks in new holes.





My brother brought his tractor over and went behind me smothing over the holes I filled in.











Tracks were really diggin in to get up this hill

 

[boone]

We finally filled in the large rock hole I had posted pictures of earlier in the thread. The stock piled dirt was beginning to grow trees it's been so long. It started to rain on us while filling and therefore I didn't take any after photos...didn't want to melt.

 

[CM1995]

Boone you getting the hang of the old girl yet? That's good looking topsoil.

 

[OldandWorn]

My oh My.....I almost forgot what good soil looks like.

 

[boone]

Hey CM, I'm getting there. Some days, I feel like I'm in the zone and impress myself. Some days, not so much and wonder how in the world I got into this pickle. Lots of techniques I could improve on. Clearing has been going ok, just try to take my time and watch for falling rot. I leave a lot of the clearing to dad...he seems to enjoy that more. As far as pushing up piles, I've gotten pretty good and can stack it pretty high...and I haven't put anything through the radiator yet. As far as digging, I'm getting the hang of it. As far as pushing dirt and staying level that's a trick. I'm trying to use the seat of my pants and nose of the loader as a gauge. If the nose goes down the bucket goes up. If the nose goes up the bucket goes down...that type thing. Everyday I use it, I learn a little more, but I'm a long way off from landscaping with this thing

O&W, it's been great soil for digging holes. It's funny, it seems we have huge rock or no rock at all and most of the huge rock are on top of the ground.

 

[CM1995]

Hey CM, I'm getting there. Some days, I feel like I'm in the zone and impress myself. Some days, not so much and wonder how in the world I got into this pickle. Lots of techniques I could improve on.

That just means you are starting to get the feel of the machine. A couple more 100 hours and it will start to become second nature. A few thousand more hours and you can go "autopilot".

 

[boone]

Little in-field service and repair

This weekend we performed a 200...er 208 hr service on the "new" engine. Probably should've changed the oil before now, but better late than later.





Changed engine oil, filters, and fuel filters. We took all the side panels off and went over it pretty good. Took the floor pans off and greased all the pedal linkages. Checked the oil in rear hubs.


It had developed a pretty bad leak end of last season on a line coming off the pressure filters. Simple o-ring replacement, but had to take the whole cabinet apart to get to all the bolts on the back side of the flange.







Degreased and pressure washed a lot of that oil out and gave the whole thing a bath as the barn swallows have been using it as a toilet.