TD-14a Final drive weakness?

My great-uncle once told me that the final drives in TD-14a's were prone to breaking teeth off the ring gear when backing uphill, and he had done it on his on more than one occasion. He has since passed away, and I'm looking to acquire his cat, as it was bought new by one of his brothers. Just wondering how common this fault was, and was his experience common or was he just hard on it?
 
I was around when dad and his brother had td 14s 18s and 24. I do know revers in the 14s was pretty fast compared to pushing forward in low gear, but I don,t remember having any final drive problems to speak of. Seems they replaced a few main clutches but keeping the things starting food was by far the most troublesome thing about the early IH crawlers.
 
My grandpa bought the TD 14A in new 1953. It was his main tractor up till 1964 and he farmed over 1,000 acres. Also built a 3/4 mile road with it and some other dirt work. After 1964 we still used it off and on for any little dirt work projects on the farm and for cleaning the corrals. We probably last used it 15 years ago. All that time we never had any final drive issues. In fact the only issues was cracking the head.
 
As greenenvy said they were known for
cracking heads. Make sure to give it a good
amount of time to cool down before shutting
down. I don't know about final drives, the
ud14 and ud18 power units were common on
sawmills around here.
 
I sure don't remember any problems with them on the finals , In my younger days i worked for a vary large construction co. and if came with tires or tracks we had atleast one but usually a half dozen or each if not more . We had a few I H gas starts that cracked the head but that was due to operator error . For not allowing enough warm up time before starting to work it to death and allowing enough cool down time at the end of the day . The ones with weak finals were the A/C's from the HD 5's on up thru the H D 21's that we had and A/C had problems with even the H D 41's . Now if they were run low on grease or a seal went out and dirt and water got in then they all ate finals , and i can tell ya repairing a final is not a fun job even if you have all the factory toys to work on them with . Noting like usen a 100 ton porta power to remove sprockets and bearing in the field or shop . That gets scary fast when you max out a 100 ton puller and nothing has moved .
 
and to add.. crawlers are meant to be worked in forward gears. reverse is hard on the rails. just like my nieghbour was trying to load his excavator with the sprockets forward. kept slipping. i said turn that thing around and she will crawl right up there. he said i dont know what the difference is. i said big difference. with sprockets at rear your pulling yourself up. sprockets at front your trying to push the track under you. he turned around and crawled up like nothing.
 
our county road department had several, they were in the shop quite a bit for rear end and final drive problems. They finally sold them and bought Cats.
 

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