Idler grease zerk ball bearing 450E

[drssink]

Greetings,
New owner of 1985 JD 450e Dozer. Swore id' never buy old iron again but couldn't resist! Hour meter shows 7800 hours and of course broken so who knows. Anyway going through machine fixing or replacing things that are obvious or clearly need attention. Have done fluids,filters,tightened up 6way blade, 2 hydraulic cylinders,several hydraulic hoses,etc. Dozer starts almost immediately. still have many things to do. Missing "Bolt" replacement is ongoing, everytime I look find new missing or loose ones. Turbo completley shot have new Chinese one arriving Monday. Gauges, Still have to adjust clutch/pressure, clean fuel tank, replace tank shutoff fuel valve and strainer, replace boat plug on back bottom of fuel tank with the correct water drain off valve, rebuild trans shifter levers etc etc etc

Have operators manual and big thick maint manual. Between those manuals, this forum and JD dealer have cruised through most things pretty easily.
Found almost all my issues have happened multiple times before just need to read and read to determine fix.

UC is in pretty good shape regarding idlers,sprockets,chains and pads. doubt i'll ever wear them out. however have to still replace wear strip under left idler and weld/fill wear on sides. Already did right side. In doing right side found out theres two different sized idler grease adjuster yoke pipe seals. Only had one sized outside wiper seal at time which was to big in diameter for yoke pipe. Inside yoke pipe seal was correct. JD dealer said opps, sorry. Not them having to break track chain again and redo............

When doing right side idler yoke the little ball bearing did not show up in the grease pile when I pushed the idler back to get slack for chain removal. So my questions are: Where specificaly/exactly does that little ball bearing go? If by chance the old one stayed in there how would I determine that? I
Don't want to put a new one on top of old one wherever it goes I would think. Appreciate the upcoming advice. David

[Jim B]

Welcome to the Boards.

The ball should go in under the square head set screw located beside the zerk where grease is pump in to extend the adjuster, IF that is the one you have. looking at the parts catalog it appears two different ones were used. One uses the ball and set screw the other uses a check valve. I have attached I link to the page in the online 450E parts catalog at JDparts,com. You can negotiate through the catalog from the page I linked so you might want to save the link for future reference.

The page.
https://partscatalog.deere.com/jdrc/sid ... n/pgId/613

The catalog index page
https://partscatalog.deere.com/jdrc/nav ... ment/72859

[drssink]

The idler yokes I have are identical, but they do not match either jd parts diagram in parts catalog. they are jd yokes, don't have part number (live 2.5 hours from property) Grease zerk is closest to Idler pulley behind it maybe 3" is second hole. left side has grease zerk at front hole and a plug of some kind behind it in second hole, right side same for grease zerk and nothing in second hole, it doesn't leak grease out of it so either clogged with dirt or plug broke in hole. I'll fix that with new plug,rethread etc. As par for course with old iron sometime somebody changed/lost original setup. Guess i'll run it and see if it spits grease where it shouldn't and tracks stay adjusted.
Still don't know if ball bearing should be there and if one is stuck inside. Thanks jimb for information.

[Stan Disbrow]

Hi,

The ball is under that plug. The plug pushes it down to close the release hole. When you loosen the plug, the grease passes out past the ball and through the hole to the outside. it can be slow going, so many folks remove the plug and then the ball comes out with the grease and is lost. My experience is that once the plug is replaced minus the ball, the grease slowly leaks out.

Stan

[drssink]

Under the plug not the grease zerk correct?

[Jim B]

The 450G adjusters used a check valve with a zerk in one hole, instead of the zerk and set screw ball set up having two holes, side by side. Some of the 450G adjusters also had hinged covers over the zerk check valve. The zerk/check valve would be between ears that had holes for the cover hinge pin. The covers were held closed with a 1/2" x 3/4" capscrew. The capscrew hole would be a bit to the rear of the zerk/check valve. Given you say you have a hole behind the zerk with nothing in it your adjusters might have been changed over the years?

Some of the adjusters use check valves now, no steel ball to lose.

[Jim B]

Duplicate post deleted.

[drssink]

Thanks to all of you who responded, Jd dealer finally spent about an hour yesterday looking at parts screens and found idler yokes I have. They don't have the little ball bearings and whatever the grease zerk is its not combo pressure relief so all is good.

Also for those tackling replacing idler seals there are 2 different sized inside seals and 3 different sized seals for idler yoke. I bought all sizes and will return ones that don't fit. If JD dealer had remembered/known there were all these size variations wouldn't be breaking tracks again on right side.
that said really wouldn't have expected him to remember that on a 39 year old iron. Fun...Fun...Fun