my first crawler

Tomriker · Post by **Tomriker** » Wed Oct 24, 2012 9:59 pm

Just picked up this little 420c fella from the original owners of it, it's always been stored inside! they painted it a few years back it would appear, everything seems to work exept I can only turn right

pulled the track off today to take the back end apart to see what the deal is.. it's all frozen together on the left side and i have nothing better to do.. we bought it to use in our orchard, figured it'd be light enough.. we are thinking about trying to find some rubber tracks to fit it, after some modifications of coarse, to lighten it up some more. does anyone know what the set of tracks weighs on one of these things?? luckly we have a bridge crane in our shop so it was pretty easy to pull the track off, a lot easier than our TD14 was... here are a couple pictures of it, had some big lights shining on the side sorry for the bad pics/weird shadows/messy shop

Post by **Lavoy** » Thu Oct 25, 2012 10:11 am

Set of tracks would be in 1000lb range. Rubber tracks won't really save you much, maybe 500lbs. If PSI is your concern, the crawler will already be lower than a person walking.
Lavoy

Tomriker · Post by **Tomriker** » Thu Oct 25, 2012 3:53 pm

Ah, thank for the weight. We mainly want to do it is for transporting it, a few roads we have to cross and run down so with rubbers thought its be easier. Plus we like to do things different than everyone else

Willyr · Post by **Willyr** » Fri Oct 26, 2012 5:06 am

So the real reason for the need to change tracks is the desire to operate across paved surfaces? You do realize these crawlers are not known for speed?

Tomriker · Post by **Tomriker** » Fri Oct 26, 2012 8:18 am

Where our orchards are/will be there's a cross road that runs right through the middle of them. So we will need to be running back and forth across the roads quiet a bit. Not really worried about goin fast. You know what "they" say... Slow and steady wins the race! I found another thread on here of a guy that did it, got a worn out pair of sprockets and rebuilt them to fit the rubber tracks, it looks simpler than we originally thought it'd be

Willyr · Post by **Willyr** » Fri Oct 26, 2012 5:11 pm

His tracks unlike yours were worn out. Yours look to be very good. Your breaking something that isnt broke just to say you did it. Its your money, frankly I would use it and maintain it. The rubber alternative is for desperate measures. To cross a road with these tiny crawlers will not do that much damage. Now if you took a D-9 cat across the road I am sure some one would get very excited about what you are doing. The rubber tracks wont have the working effort of what your present tracks have.

77 Ford · Post by **77 Ford** » Mon Oct 29, 2012 7:13 am

Get a few old tires to throw down and drive over the road, that's they way everyone does it around here.

Pat · Post by **Pat** » Mon Oct 29, 2012 7:42 am

I use a couple of long pieces of rubber conveyer belt that a local quarry threw out. Rolls up easy. Use it on concrete in the shop, over roads, etc.

Howard Yoder · Post by **Howard Yoder** » Mon Oct 29, 2012 3:34 pm

also you can look around for some old belting works good easy to handle I was lucky to find some at an old lazurus store downtown Cols. that wen out of business what they where doing with it I have no idea only payed $20 for 100' of it

digitup2 · Post by **digitup2** » Mon Oct 29, 2012 3:37 pm

We use a pair of Challenger 65 tracks opened up and lay them across the road I do work for a few Mennonite groups with the drainage plows and they don't like to pay for a float truck to just cross the pavement so they decided that putting 3 inch hard wood planks down double wide was enough .Well not for a HD21B with 5 1/2 inch grousers and a drainage plow hung over the rear So with 43 tons in all I made fire wood out of that hard wood planking but didn't do much damage to the asphalt considering the mess I left behind of the planking (':roll:')I can get the cut challenger tracks for 400 bucks each and they ride nicely on the floats under the deep grouser machines to save the float planking as well we also use them on the shop floor

Post by **Lavoy** » Mon Oct 29, 2012 3:55 pm

We always used old tires, guess who was the gofer that had to shuttle tires from front to back as we crossed?

Lavoy

Howard Yoder · Post by **Howard Yoder** » Tue Oct 30, 2012 3:50 pm

I don't think belting would do much for 43 ton wow

Ray III · Post by **Ray III** » Sun Jan 06, 2013 7:04 am

It's your machine, don't be afraid to do what you want with it.

That said, you could not tell if I had driven my 420 across my lawn if not for the flattened grass. The grousers are worn down about the same as yours. It's when you're pushing hard or making turns that you will start ripping sod up and rubber tracks don't help that much. If you are able to make gradual turns you will be fine.

I also cross the road with it, I'm more worried about the dirt that falls off the tracks than damaging the blacktop. Just go straight across at about a walking speed.

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my first crawler

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