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Lost the right track on a Ski Dozer

300 H and H

300 H and H

Bronze Member
GOLD Patron
Hi,

Feeling kinda low, our groomer is sitting trail side with reflectors marking it tonight. Coming in from a run, I was widening the trail a little bit running to the right a foot or so. I was trying to bring in some fresh snow from the edge to cover an icey trail we made gooming when it was too warm. I came upon a couple of frozen chunks of snow and hit them with the right side of the right hand track. They were maybe the size of a basket ball at most. Heard a couple of noises, and the machine pulled to the right, and it walked out of the right hand track.:sad::sad::sad:

SOOOO I am wondering a couple of things, was the track tension not tight enough? Or did I break a cardinal rule by edging a track on an hard object, projecting up a foot or more......I can tell you this I will NEVER do that again.....

I am considering my options as to what to do now. Right now I am favoring loading it on the trailer minus the track, and taking it to the shop for repairs. None of us have ever attempted to put a track back on in the field. Should we be considering this?:unsure: The good thing is that it is only 200 yds. from a road, on a very hard level trail. And we have a Caterpillar tracked skid loader to help load it along with a winch in the trailer nose.
With the temps we are having a heated shop sure sounds nice.:whistling::smile:

So what do the more experianced members here think we should do? I am all ears to any and all suggestions. And we have resources at hand, just a bit unsure of the right course of action to take to get our clubs 252 Ski Dozer back in action as soon as possible.

Thanks, I feel like a dope right now.....
Kirk
 
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by all means if you can move it up onto a trailer and get it into a warm shop,do it.the skidsteer should be able to do it.i know my tucker sure doesn't like it when i run along a surface like that.i've never thrown a track on it but have walked out of lots of dozer tracks before,due to being loose,wore out or whatever.it will go back on a lot better in a warm shop.....and you will do a better job....good luck with it..bill w
 
Been there...done that. Don't care to go that route again. Had my share of torn/thrown tracks in the past couple years. We tore a track on the BR160 a couple years ago 30 miles from town but thankfully, it was on the shoulder of the road. Not fun trying to get a track back on out in the snowbank but we did it. If you can get it back to a shop, do it.
 
Been there done it at least 4-5 times on the ski-dozers over the years if you get real lucky and see it happening you can stop and back up and most always they will pop back on. if it is all the way off laying along side twice I have put it back on with the aid of a skid steer. still allot of work the way we did it was to lift the side with the track in front of you. with a long set of forks. then you have to take the back of the track and get it under the cat and over the sprocket and starting in the back push it under the wheels are far as you can let all the grease out of the track tensioner cut a piece of plywood 3/4 or double 3/4 taller than the track edge place it in front of the track and push on it with the skidsteer now start the cat and with someone pushing drive the cat ever so slowly forward pushing on the side all the while
sometimes you will get lucky and it will go back on. otherwise resort to the shop and take it apart and redo it . Good luck !:smile:
 
The track is not damaged from what we could see, but we could have missed some thing....Was it my fault for hitting the frozen snow chunk, or was the track to loose? Or both? we were almost back to the storage shed when this happened, thankfully. In my mind I can sort of picture the boggies in the middle having the track pulled away by gravity, and the guides twisting around and the mid boggies riding up and over the wheel guides. Once this derailment got to the drive spocket in the rear, they climbed right up and out of the slot between the belts and out of the track....

Should I have known better?:sad: I have lots of experiance on tracks, I farm with rubber tracks, (Cat) and never have walked out of them, or damaged them. So this surprises me greatly.....

Want to learn from this mistake,
Regards, Kirk
 
Don't kick yourself too hard. I went 12 yrs without loosing a track then lost 4 in a 2 week stretch. Two of them were torn belts and the other two was when I got into a bad situation(covered in the adventures in snowcatting thread in great detail with pics) and lost both right side tracks.
 
Oh, I just remembered the fifth track I threw off. Got burried in a swamp up to the bottom of the cab on the first run for the season. Had a loader pull me out. The wheel loader spun out after pulling me out. I hooked onto the loader and pulled it 200 ft or so then tried to climb a bank onto the shoulder of the road. I big chunk of ice wedged itself between the track and boggies and threw it off.
 
Do you folks think track tension could be involved here? We pumped grease in untill we could not see any dips on the top edge of the track between the boggies.....straight. We made sure that the grouser bars did not cause indention in the front idler wheel where they contacted it. The machine moved freely, and would coast a bit when you hit the clutch, comming to a stop. But a were/are our tracks tight enough? Anyone know a better way to tension them?

Like I have said, I am surprised the track came off with just the hitting of some frozen snow chunks, and don't want to miss anything that would leave us in this situation again. Next time it could be in the middle of a section, on an old RR bed...in the middle of no where......

Regards, Kirk
 
How old are the belts? When I had the majority of my track problems, it was mainly because the track tensioners were maxed right out and the belts were so stretched they were still loose. New tracks solved that problem.
 
The belts are nearly new, very good shape. We just put them on a month ago, and they have maybe 50 hrs on them. Tensioners are not maxed out, maybe 1/2 way out. They are not any too long we noticed when putting them on. Things were going so good....
Regards,
Kirk
 
Have you checked the new track belt tension since installing the new belts? It is best to check them frequently when you have new belts in the first few hours of actual use and then re-tension the new track belts as needed. It is possible they were good and you just had one of those "one of a kind" incidents..... :ermm:
 
300 H and H said:
Do you folks think track tension could be involved here? We pumped grease in untill we could not see any dips on the top edge of the track between the boggies.....straight. We made sure that the grouser bars did not cause indention in the front idler wheel where they contacted it. The machine moved freely, and would coast a bit when you hit the clutch, comming to a stop. But a were/are our tracks tight enough? Anyone know a better way to tension them?

Like I have said, I am surprised the track came off with just the hitting of some frozen snow chunks, and don't want to miss anything that would leave us in this situation again. Next time it could be in the middle of a section, on an old RR bed...in the middle of no where......

Regards, Kirk
Click to expand...

Sometimes it is the front flexator is wore out or the splines are gone and it is at a angle leading to easier derailment check you alinement of the centers of all your wheels you may also want to check all of the bearings. one time that I can remember it was a 41" wide track SV301 I was driving and the front wheel came right off it had unscrewed the spinde nut and the wheel came off.
 
Front Flexator?

Not sure of what this is....The front idler? If this were out of alinement it would have helped to derail the track...please tell me more boggie.......

Thanks, Kirk
 
300 H and H said:
Front Flexator?

Not sure of what this is....The front idler? If this were out of alinement it would have helped to derail the track...please tell me more boggie.......

Thanks, Kirk
Click to expand...

on the front of the machine you have your axle which is on a arm the arm has splines that go over a splined shaft that is cast into rubber over time and pressure the rubber degrades and allows the arm with the spindle to angle back causing the the wheel to sit at an angle as you apply more pressure to it. it gets even worse. you can see it better with the wheel off and you would know then if it was angled. it will get worse with the pressure of the tracks.
this one is bigger than all of the rest on each side it is rated at 5000 pounds
and the others at 3500 pounds. they are not cheap about 800.00 for the front ones. and that does not include the arm another 500 .00 Good luck
 
boggie,

We got the 252 back to the shop, and the splined joint between the arm and the axle had play in it, as well. Ground out the slot that collapses when it clamps so it can tighten a bit farther. Seems to have helped the splayed- out situation quite a bit. Since there is nothing we can do presantly to rememdy the front flexator axle, we are putting the track back on and getting ready to go grooming. And crossing our fingers......:neutral:

Before next season we hope to replace the front flexator axles as well. Thanks for your help again:smile:
Regards, Kirk
 
Hi guys and I guess ladies too. I just joined last night and have some similar problems. I have a skidozer SV 71, SV250 -98 and my front suspension has similar problems.It has been "repaired before" and now I need help in doing a proper repair.The proper position of the spindle arms on the Flexitor splines would be a great start. In this forum it states the front flexitors are 5000 pounds.Is this U.S. pounds, secondly is this each flexator or for the whole front axle ? thankx for any help. Steamguy
 
Steamguy,

Ours slipped the right hand track again last night. Even with the front idler alinement much better than before. Apparently running on the straight and smooth and level when it walked out of the track.:sad:

This thing is really starting to try our resolve and leaving us with a bad taste in our mouths to say the least.:hammer:
boggie mentioned to me about putting some flat stock between the frame and the back of the spindle arm, and weld it to the frame. This prevents the arm and spindle from toeing out from the flexator rubber taking a set over time. And it is still free to let the arm slide against the flat stock, letting it swing with the flexator when needed. Has yours had this "repair" done to it?

The inside guildes in the track are shiney and the outsides are not...A clue perhaps? How do yours look, by the way?

There must be something going on with ours we are not seeing...but we are just at this for the first season. Had the fan in the radiator the night before when the water pump bearing went out. See what I mean about testing our resolve?:whistling:

It's the weekend and it's time to ride, not work on the groomer. So I guess it will have to wait for a few days. But I am sure we are all thinking about it....

Regards, Kirk
 
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from steamguy,great to atleast have someone to talk with on this issue. I think our dozer had the flat plate repair sometime ago.I have learned that the spindle arm was straightened at one time,it is bent at this time.No doubt the rubber in the flexitor is getting old.We do need to realize that the two front flexitors are on the same frame-work and if there is a major difference in the track lengths from side to side this could mess things up a bit also.We also noticed that our wheel alignment was not to bad before installing the tracks, but alignment was really off as we adjusted up the track tension, probably due to the rubber really being soft and loosing its "memory".Be glad you can ride- we had fog and a fair among of rain last sunday, I groomed on the 12th our trails have been closed since the 16th.
 
I know it can be frustrating when there's snow and your machine is in the shop.:sad: I guess over the years stuff wears out or gets bent. My 1973 skidozer seems all right for tracks so far and judging by the weather cracks, they must be pretty old. I've not yet had tracks run off (maybe I'm lucky and it will happen today). Basically I think it's a pretty good machine and will work well for you once you get the bugs out.
 
steamguy,:smile:

If I remember correctly, boggie when I asked him, said we could reverse sides with the flexator assemblies, and the wheels would be toed in then. This might make them flex back to center when the tracks are tightened. Couldn't hurt if both tracks are off to try this I suppose. We are certainly tired of "extracting" this Ski Dozer from the trail. Twice in one week is enough for us, thats for sure. Even if we were getting paid to do this, it would suck.... but in a few days maybe we'll get back after it.

And to think some people think that we are having all kinds of "fun" Ha!:yum::yum::yum:

When it is working it is perfect for what we need. Easy on fuel, plenty of grunt, turns well, carries the groomer, when needed, ect. Just want to get the bugs out in the shop, not on the trail.

Regards, Kirk
 
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