Some sheduled maintenance

[nick lamb]

here's a few pics of them working last week.
The pics don't do the scale of those batters justice.They are big and steep and allthough some of them can be cut or filled sideways this section of the job was a vertical fill.
Basically we don't have enough overburden to fill the quarried face to the batter rails so we have to simply make it up as we go along and I have been down there myself for a few days over the last couple of weeks on the D5.
The fill has turned from deacent clay to the driest 'snuff' sand I have ever seen and is difficult to shape up.Each night I have been covered in layers of dust and even when the rain came last week it made no difference.
The batters are split into 2 benches each with a vertical fall of 70 feet or so and the bench is as wide as the D8 allows.The dumptrucks run the 'snuff' in and the D8 pushes it as far as it can upto me at which point I shape it up.
It's time consuming and very tight but we're making good progress and I take my hat off to the dumptruck men who clearly have a head for heights.It's no place for begginers.
As a point of interest The D8 driver is running an extra gallon of oil in the engine and two extra in the tranny.The D5 has a half gallon extra in the engine only.This is to avoid any nasty surprises on these slopes which in some places are less than 1 in 1.

[bigkit]

Re the extra oil..........you've been swatting up on the cat handbook have n't you!

Glad you're having fun!

[nick lamb]

well Clive,I was having fun until this happened on wednesday
I've never seen this before........
\it's back to work now(but rained off!)
I will explain this more in detail with some pics of how we did it and a prize for anyone guessing the price of a new one from Finning(which I didn't get).

[tctractors]

Those beams like to play their face when their is a bit of crap weather, lucky thing is they are a bit better to swap out on a D8H than a K, the rubber bits that bolt up in the centre are cheap enough from the likes of J Moore etc, you can repair those beams and add a bit more iron underneath them to help things somewhat, as for a stab at the CAT price, its going to be a tad over £100??, in the last pick the tractor looks still down at the front a fair bit, is that a before or after pose, I like to see the bonnet standing proud at the front end not bowing her head???

p.s. thats the first time Nick that I have seen you have some good timber baulks near that tractor, you usualy use little twigs

[nick lamb]

You're right about the pics being the wrong way around T.C.
The new Cat price was £7k.!!.A good welder could put it right but i managed to get one off the shelf at Jimmy Gaughans the same afternoon and at a good price.I will refurb' the old one in due course just in case.......
The rubber bearings were replaced 4 years ago by Cat Classic (£60 each side)and were not damaged.
The job could have been a nightmare with the pedastle bolts shearing or allready broken and been welded but they came out nicely.The trick was to get it high enough on deacent timbers and clean the trackframes out where the end of the eq beam sits.The rest was just big bar work and abit of sledgeing.We did it in around 5 hours and the track was getting greased back up.
I would expect Becher or the likes to do this job in 3 hours allthough with broken bolts and possible track removal this job could have ran into a couple of days.

[bigkit]

I bet your glad thats out of the way!

[Jeremy Rowland]

Looks an awkward job that one; its always good to get the bad jobs done out of the way and I am in no way surprised at the cost of a new part either!!

Jeremy

[Neversweat]

Good old ratchet come jack handle

Steve

[bigkit]

nicely spotted!

[nick lamb]

Good old ratchet come jack handle

Steve

I'm a real proffesional outfit (Bodgit + Scarper Ltd)