After getting the Dozer home, and a fair bit of driving it around the yard I began the process of working on my tiny bulldozer. Sometimes I call it my tiny Tank. I’ve always wanted a tracked vehicle, and this is just the perfect size for the homestead. It was cold, wintery, and I froze to drive my new Trackmaster bulldozer around the yard for a day or two once it was home. Then I started to fix things, and prepare to bring it inside for the winter.
For me the first thing that had to happen was the bucket had to come off. I have a small space to work on it in the winter, and though this small loader Crawler is small, it’s not THAT small. The dimensions of the dozer are roughly 40″ wide by 72″ long, and the bucket is 41″ wide, and about 28″ long sticking out in front of that. I wanted to pull the bucket to get the Dozer inside to work on during the snowy cold winter months.
My Trackmaster has two pins on each side for the bucket I marked with a metal punch numbers for each pin to be able to return them to the correct locations in case there’s any unique wear on these pins. Turns out after pulling them all that there is not a ton of wear on the pins, and it likely does not matter much.
For how terrible it looks in the photos, it was surprisingly easy to get the retaining bolts as well as the pins out of the bucket. The bucket is pretty heavy, but not impossible to move by hand. I can’t pick it up off the ground, but I can pivot it around. I’d guess it weighs 300 lbs +- 50lbs. it’s nice thick steel construction and fully welded.
That’s the bucket off the tractor and flipped up for the winter.
For the winter, I sprayed all of the pins down with a heavy coat of white lithium grease to protect from corrosion. I also took the time to remove and replace the Zerk fittings. In hindsight I might have left this till spring but it just happened quickly without much thought. The pins are all bushed with nice grooved thick bronze bushing bearings, and there’s nearly no wear on any of the pins or bushings.
After this I’ll show some minor repairs, mostly welding I did to get Tiny Tank ready to come inside the barn and and come apart this winter.
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!
