Excavator: One Direction Only

Discuss non-crawler related issues here (keep it sane, please)
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CuttingEdge
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Excavator: One Direction Only

Post by CuttingEdge » Sat Nov 12, 2016 5:02 am

I have never heard of this before, but the owner of an Excavator I was using (Hitachi 160 (34,000 pound class), chided me for traveling the excavator "backwards", that is having the sprockets forward. He said doing so would "throw a track".

Now I know traveling in reverse on a dozer increases wear and so I try not to do it on my own machine much, but with an excavator I never thought it mattered? Your reduce a lot of wear on the tracks on an excavator because you pick the machine up with the bucket and spin the undercarriage around instead of dragging it through the dirt. It can be frustrating sometimes to stomp on the pedals expecting to go forward and you end up going backwards, but other than inconvenience I never thought either form of travel would cause a track to be thrown on an excavator.

Any thoughts on this?
I have no intention of traveling to my grave in a well manicured body; instead I am going to slide into heaven with a big power turn, totally wore out with busted knuckles, jump off my dozer loudly yelling, Woo Hoo, another Shepard has just arrived!

B Town
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Post by B Town » Sat Nov 12, 2016 8:06 am

I have not heard or been taught that about excavator traveling. I have been schooled about "not digging on the travel motors." I was taught to walk all of the track equipment backwards. I asked why, which can be dangerous when you are young around older experienced operators. They stated it would even out the wear on the front and the back of the bushing( while walking backwards). Lots of wear on the back of the bushing/ front of the sprocket tooth when working and lighter use/ longer distance on the opposite side when you walk backwards. Bruce

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Lavoy
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Post by Lavoy » Sat Nov 12, 2016 12:03 pm

Consistent wear could be a logical conclusion, but throwing the track makes no sense at all. If that is the case should we never back our crawlers up?
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Stan Disbrow
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Post by Stan Disbrow » Sat Nov 12, 2016 2:00 pm

Hi,

Well, the wear on a chain and sprocket won't differ from a crawler. Pulling the chain from the bottom will make less wear than pulling it from the top.

Throwing one simply means it is too loose in any case.

Hmm. Could be a pun there, but I think I will leave it be. ;)

Stan
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CuttingEdge
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Post by CuttingEdge » Sat Nov 12, 2016 4:31 pm

Yeah it did not make sense to me either.

On my own dozer, I actually limit my reverse travel on account of wear. I read somewhere (Dresser I think) that traveling in reverse a lot puts a unique wear pattern on the sprockets. High speed reverse is even worse to which they even have a special name for it Reverse Rotational Wear as found on page 7 of the link provided.

This was confirmed by Caterpillar when my friend's D4 Cat had accelerated wear on his sprockets and chains. They replaced them citing the steel was inferior on his D4 in the year it was made, but told him to limit, or go slow in reverse. Well the guy is 82 years old and he was pretty clear to Caterpillar that "they made the machine to go as fast backward as reverse and he intended to do so"...and he does.

I will say, on this John Deere 700 a simple dial in the cab allows me to speed up reverse faster than forward, or change it to go faster in forward then reverse. It is a nice feature because I am traveling a long ways on my pushes now (750 feet).

http://www.tractorparts.com/PDFs/undrcarguide.pdf[/url]
I have no intention of traveling to my grave in a well manicured body; instead I am going to slide into heaven with a big power turn, totally wore out with busted knuckles, jump off my dozer loudly yelling, Woo Hoo, another Shepard has just arrived!

kosoca
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Post by kosoca » Mon Nov 14, 2016 6:09 pm

The track throwing does not make sense to me either. I would think there would be less chance of throwing the track in reverse because you are pulling the track around (allowing it to follow) rather than pushing it?

Any case, I understood to limit your reverse travel (especially over uneven ground) to save damage/wear on the finals and sprocket, since you no longer are using a suspension (idler spring) to absorb any impacts.

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