Battery Charger rust removal for frozen pins and bushings

[BLS]

I have a 440 that has been sitting for about 7 years, before it was parked it rolled freely. now the tracks are frozen. I have been reading some of the posts here and other places, water seems to be the best answer to free frozen tracks.

Has anybody used the battery charger method for frozen track pins and bushings?

Thank you
Brian

[JimAnderson]

Brian,
If you are referring to using the battery charger for electrolysis
rust removal forget it.It wont work to free the pins from the bushings.
To use electrolysis to remove rust you need an anode and cathode
immersed in an electrolyte.To remove rust from the pin or bushing
with this set up the one part has to be electrically isolated from the
other part.This isn't possible with both parts held together by rust.
Lavoy has long recomended water to free up rusty parts.I have used
water to free up frozen track sections and it works.If you use any sort of
rust penetrant other than water to free the tracks you run the risk of it
attracting grit particles down the road.Luck,JimAnderson

[Lavoy]

Even if it would work, you would have to completely submerge them. If you can do that already, it will work without the electrolysis just by having them in water.
Lavoy

[BLS]

I was going to pick up a watering trough from the feed store that I could put the tracks in (one at a time). I thought that if they were in the water already, using the battery charger would speed up the process.

I guess it couldnt hurt to give it a try.

Brian

[Lavoy]

To any good, it would take a buttload of amps and a big anode. You also need to add some chemicals for the electrolysis to work, so all in all, not really worth the time. Power washer will do a lot more damage than a battery charger and simpler.
Lavoy

[Paul Buhler]

Power washer will do a lot more USEFUL damage than a battery charger and simpler.

In The past I've found that power washing the pins and bushings while rapping on the pads with a 2 lb sledge loosened things up pretty well. I made sure that there were no solid pins before trying to spin the tracks under power - this meant lifting the dozer enough to get to the bottom links too. I used a crowbar to lift them to see if they were loose. Once it appeared that the all the pins are somewhat loose, I spun one track at a time while in the air. I also made sure that they were loose on the frame ( loosen the adjuster) so that if something bound up, there was some slack and nothing would break. Working forward and back helped.

As Lavoy has said in the past, dumping a set into a pond and letting them soak also works. I tried this and was able to "uncoil" a pretty stuck set, one-link-at-a-time with a BFH and a long pry bar.