Finally, got something done on my crawler!

[BKahler]

Had the day off today and the temperature was in the high 50s, perfect for getting started on pulling the engine out of the crawler.

My plan for the day was to get most of the prep work done so I could yank the engine saturday or sunday. One thing led to another and I ended up accomplishing the task today.

I did kinda make it hard on myself though, my crawler has a large brush guard welded on the dozer blade. Not thinking things through to clearly I used my backhoe from the front and lifted the engine up and forward only to realize I couldn't raise the bucket high enough to clear the brush guard. So here I am with the engine hanging in the air with no place to go. Being the brilliant sole that I am I went and got my Ford 2N with the front end loader and came in from the side to scoop the engine up. I then unhooked from the backhoe, backed the Ford up and then repositioned the backhoe above the Ford bucket and grabbed the engine again. Moved the Ford out of the way and proceed on into the shop with the backhoe hauling the engine. Long round about way of doing it but it worked!

I think I'll remove the front blade of the dozer before putting the engine back in, should make things a LOT easier.

I've got a bunch of questions but I'll put those in another post with a couple of pictures that I have questions on.

Thanks to Lavoy and everyone else on this site for the inspiration to finally get started on the crawler so I can use it.

[lastchancegarage]

Brad, I envy you for two things; 1.) you're able to break down your machine and start working on it and 2.) you have some great shots of the work in progress. How are you uploading your photos in your messages? I've spent the better part of an hour trying to compress my jpegs down to a point that the photo hosting service will accept. No luck. I'll be following your lead by using my old Case 310B when it comes time to pull things off. I've got a few projects this spring to knock out first. That's some brush guard on the front. You gonna leave it on to use?

[JD40c]

Resize your images to 72dpi and something reasonable like 5 inches wide, and you should be able to keep the size down. Save as .jpg as well, not .gif or .bmp. I usually save the .jpg's at about 50% compression ("6" in PhotoShop).

[BKahler]

Brad, I envy you for two things; 1.) you're able to break down your machine and start working on it and 2.) you have some great shots of the work in progress. How are you uploading your photos in your messages? I've spent the better part of an hour trying to compress my jpegs down to a point that the photo hosting service will accept. No luck. I'll be following your lead by using my old Case 310B when it comes time to pull things off. I've got a few projects this spring to knock out first. That's some brush guard on the front. You gonna leave it on to use?

The work started mainly because we're going to have about 3 acres clear cut and harvested by somone and there is going to be a lot of mess to clean up. Tree tops, stumps pulled (with the back hoe) leveling etc. I don't even want to consider driving the backhoe in that area at least until the crawler has cleaned it off so I can see where I'm driving.

I think I spent a total of about 5 hours from the time I started working on the crawler until the time it was sitting on the shop floor. I find the 440 a LOT easier to work on than my Case 530CK backhoe. I rebuilt the engine on the backhoe and found it a real pain to work on.

My pictures are hosted by a friends website so I can store any size I want.
Sure makes it handy for posting pictures!