440IC Doing a little work around the yard

[NEpilot]

With five new rollers and other odds and ends she is working strong. I've thrown each track once due to my own stupidity of heavy loads with no counter weight, both times big rock got wedged.

I've put on about 60 hours since I got it back together. Working on clearing a couple acres in back that was all forest. I'm very happy with the little crawler.

I have a small leak on one of the lift cylinders. In that 60 hours of work I went through maybe 4-5 gallons of fluid. I just need to get around to taking it apart to get the seals / packing repaired.


To my surprise my welded link is holding up! You guys convinced me to give it a try and it is working.


When I took the track frame off I found the flange welds all broken, looked like someone tried (several time) to sneak an electrode in there over some time span to no real avail. I cleaned it all up and welded it back together.


The roller bolts were all frozen and no amount of heat or pounding would get them out. Ended up snapping them off, drilling, welding, drilling, then re-tapping everything. That sucked but I wanted to do it right.


I learned real quick that NOT cut down trees, push them over FIRST then cut them up. This was a 105 year old oak tree, many of the roots are over 6" in diameter.


My ever growing rock pile, going to use this to build a nice dry retaining wall. We have walls everywhere here in New England and now I know why most of the farmers moved west, dealing with these rocks sucks.


Progress, I take down some trees then check how the sun goes through before cutting more. We are trying to get a good balance between shade and sun and have some really nice sweet birch trees.


Good looking crawler.

[wizner85]

Awesome pics. Thanks for sharing. Can't believe u were able to take the track frame off the cross members. I've tried on a couple parts machine and gave up. Good looking machine glad to see she is working good.

[NEpilot]

I broke two pullers trying to get those track frames off, finally made my own that wasn't going to break. It was nothing more than a piece of plate steel welded to the track frame with a 1" fine pitched screw and a couple nuts. Just tightened the nuts, some heat, air chisel, beer, cussing, more beer, tighten the nuts, and repeat until a loud bang made me almost crap my pants which was the frame breaking loose.

It has been an interesting project, I need to find another one but this time with a 6 way blade. I'm discovering grading with a bucket sucks.

[Lavoy]

I just got a batch of track frame shims done if you need any. Usually they are rusted to pieces so I finally gave up and had them made.
Lavoy

[whiteclipse16]

Looks like you've been pretty busy. Those are some cool pics.
Do you have any pictures of your homemade puller. I tried to get one of mine off but was not successful. I need to get it off because it needs reshimmed for proper alignment.