track spring

CAT96J1374

New User
Hello Gentlemen, I bought an old Caterpillar D5 powershift dozer from a guy out in Kansas a couple weeks ago and need to change out the right side track adjuster spring. It's broken in a couple places. Is that a hell of a job to do? Im new to bulldozing and would sure appreciate any help y'all can offer.
 
Definitely not a job for inexperienced. Easy to get hurt replacing a recoil spring. Suggest you get someone who has doe it to help you.
 
On a machine that old the parts used to compress the spring enough to remove it are more than likely so rusted that they are worthless. Once removed it then takes special tooling to compress a new spring back onto the recoil assembly. If you've ever seen one of those springs unleash 20 to 30 tons of tension, you'd understand it's not something you really want to mess with.

To be honest, it's not something I really want to mess with, and I've been working on the old stuff all my life. On that note, I was putting one back in a 973 a few months ago when the spring shifted, and the spacers I had between the face of the spring and my ram decided to jump out. Thankfully the whole mess was somewhat contained within the track frame on these machines, but even then the release of that much force will definitely scare the crap out of you, and make you take notice........

That being the case, your best bet will be to torch cut the existing spring in enough places to insure 100% that there is no tension left on it. From there, call somewhere like Off Road Equipment Parts, and get a new recoil spring assembly to replace it with.

Good luck.
Off Road Equip.
 
my 941b spring had cracks for 30 years but finally gave up completely--numerous pieces fell out and had to torch the rest out. took a 14 ton load on a press to compress the new one--always use a new center bolt and i prefer 2 nuts to hold it together when handling it
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I was only one of 2 guys that used to do them at the dealer I worked for. Did a ton of PC200 Komatsu springs, those were easy. Never really cared to do the PC400 springs that had coils as thick as my wrist and were as tall (uncompressed) as my shoulders, and then mashing it down to the height of my waist. Those take a lot of pressure! No cage on the press either, didn't make it much fun.
 
I don't think a standard cage would have done much good anyways. Dad saw what happened when one jumped out of the press when he worked at CAT. I don't know what size machine it fit, but when it came out, it had enough force to hit the 20 plus feet high ceiling in the shop, and then bounce all over the place, damaging anything it touched.

If you'd seen what happened when the 973 spring jumped one me, I think it would take a cage made of heavy plate steel to have contained it.

In the end, I know the amount of force on these springs sounds like a lot, but it's still one of those things that you just have to see released to truly appreciate.
 

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