I promised a few pics of the damaged track drive sprockets to some friends, so the first pics of this post are just that. Further down I’ll get to some minor welding repairs pre dissassembly.
As you can see in the above photos, I’m going to have some fun fixing this sprockets. I’m not sure if I’ll weld metal back on nicely, and then remachine, or cut it all off and weld in a new hub, possibly of a larger more standard size. The spines on these sprockets, and the interior torque hub gears are bothe ANSI B92.1 1-1/2″ diameter shaft with 23 splines, 16/32DP and 30 deg angle. This is a standard involute spline that unfortunately does not seem to have survived to this day and age. Both the 1-3/4″ and 1-3/8″ see lots of use still today. I will have to figure out what to do after I see and learn more about the small Dozers drive setup.
The roller/tensioner dirt shield had been split or cut at some point. It was definitely snapped in the rear section, the front had signs of cutting. I clamped/levered this back together and welded it up. Both the upper and lower parts are attached solidly to the frame and it wasn’t hard to pull the split section perfectly together. It didn’t really require much work to weld this up quickly with some flux. I added a few small strips to the front section. I primarily wanted to prevent misalignment from happening if and when I choose to take this apart this winter.
Above you see the counterweight on the rear of the Trackmaster. some of these had backhoes on them. Mine has a counterweight. Near as I can tell, these are Solid steel/iron bars welded together, not tubes filled. I measured and did the math, this weighs about 650 lbs. I wanted to pull this off for the repairs this winter. To do that I needed to replace the Lifting hook on the top of it.
I found some 5/8″ steel round bar in my stock pile of metal, got my bender out, and bent up a U shape out of it. I’m quite sad I didn’t take a picture of this, I have a Harbor Freight Bending tool, I mounted to a hitch so I can put it on the back of my truck. I didn’t have a location to bolt it to the floor in my shop, and wanted an immovable rugged mounting for it. Turns out this 5/8″ round was pretty challenging to bend up using it. It does list 5/8″ as the maximum thickness, and it definitely is after trying this out.
It was a short quick fix, but it felt good to have actually made a repair. While I was at it I cleaned up the factory welds, metal finished them flat, dressed the corners/edges a bit and sprayed it with a weld through/cold Galvinizing paint to keep it all from rusting. I want to pull this with the tractor and it’ll sit outside all winter. Don’t want my new repair to rust.
Stay tuned for more exciting Tiny Tank Progress and repairs.
If someone stumbles across this page with any information about these Dfab Engineering Trackmaster Dozers Crawlers, I’d love to know more. I’d be happy to host manuals and or parts catalogs here on my blog if you have them and are willing to share them with me. Please leave me a comment or email me at my website name on Gmail (no dot com there). I don’t check often, but I eventually will get back to you to host the information. Thanks!