Undercarriage wear is a very expensive part of ongoing excavator maintenance. In this blog, we will cover 6 simple tips that will help you reduce the maintenance costs on your machines undercarriage. Tip 1: Work Your Machine Forward On your tracks, your final drive is at the back and your idler and track adjuster is at the front. You always want to work and dig over the idler because this is how the machine was designed. If you are digging over the side or over the final drives, you are going to increase the wear and tear of your undercarriage.
Tip 2: Loose or Bent Track Shoes
If a track shoe is loose, it means that bolts are loose and you may be on the point of losing a bolt. This is going to affect the alignment of the shoes and cause unnecessary wear on the tracks. You will notice that track shoes fit in and work together. The leading edge fits snuggly into the trailing edge of the shoe. If one shoe is bent, many people believe that this damage will remain limited to that shoe. In reality, due to their interconnectivity, that one bent shoe will start to damage other shoes. Pretty soon, instead of having to replace just one shoe, you will need to replace numerous shoes.
Tip 3: Debris on the Tracks If at the end of the day you find a packing of debris in the tracks, what you can do is swing the carriage, lift the tracks slightly off the ground (be careful not to lift too much because this could damage the other side of the tracks) and then roll that track to try and clear out that debris. This debris is going to increase the wear on your undercarriage.
Tip 4: Final Drive and Sprocket Inspection
You want to look out for oil leaks on the final drive and wear on the sprockets. The sprocket teeth must be flat – if they start sharpening, you know it is time to change the sprocket.
Tip 5: Track Tension
The biggest mistake is running your cracks too tight. A simple test to check your tension is to run your machine forward until a track pin/link is directly above the upper roller. Using a string or a tape measure, you want to measure the distance between the top of the shoe at this point to the top of the shoe at the lowest point. You want this sag to be between 4 and 6cm – if it is less than this, you are running your tracks too tight, which will place unnecessary strain on your key undercarriage components. You also want to frequently check that your master link has a cotter pin – if not, you are going to have issues in the future.
Tip 6: Idle Machines
If you let your machine sit idle for long periods of time, there is a risk that your pins will seize. To avoid this, you want to fire her up every couple of months and exercise the tracks.
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