Looks like the right equipment to make that job easy.
You going with the bearing tape or the expensive uhmw sleeve repair for the slop?
Yea i need all the easy i can get, because when I'm doing it, even easy ain't that easy.
I talked to Clyde at Tucker a couple times about the journals. I'm inclined to do the sleeve, thinking I'm going to have this cat around for a long time. Tucker can sell and install the new sleeve journals (same ones used on new cats today) onto the diff housings. And of course they have the UHMW sleeves. But seems to me, the trouble with that as an entire fix, is that half the wear is in the track carrier tube part of the journal assembly, and without replacing that, while going the sleeve route, one has only solved half the problem. Tucker would also sell me the tube piece thats welded into the track carrier but would not install that into the carriers. Guessing, their busy time of year, don't have a jig for that? Perhaps either I could do both ends or the local machine shop I use could.
So I stopped by the machine shop with pictures in hand. My thought is if the wear isn't as bad as I expected it to be, and not much material would have to be removed to true them up, then maybe they could turn the journals right on the diff housings and the tubes right in the carriers. Would save a lot of trouble. Seemed like a long shot, but I have taken them a lot of odd requests over the years and we often figure something out. They laughed. They make and repair large mining equipment, and do similar things to much larger pieces, so just bring them by when I have them all apart and let them have a look at the actual pieces. Cool, hoping I get them there tomorrow or Tuesday. Depending on how much material has to be removed, I was thinking about wrapping the entire journal with the tape, essentially creating a sleeve and easy to replace. Or the machine shop said they could make sleeves for whatever gap is created.
So right now I still need to see what the maximum out of round is on the rear tracks and how much material has to be removed, and consequently how much that will take from the thickness of the original parts and make decisions from there. I'm definitely hoping to machine the original parts, and add UHMW in one form or another. We'll see.