New track loader owner

[Pat80flh]

Howdy guys. I am living in a property I bought to rehab. 30+ acres of forest with an old oil lease house from the 20's. House is mostly done and I've turned to rehabbing the property.
It was a private junkyard. I took a load of metal to the scrap yard, the guy knew the property, he said they pulled 130 hulks off the land. What got left behind is a lot of trash, and tires. The back field, maybe 300x500 yards, has tons of depressions where cars sat, as well as deep ruts where a log skidder came through.
I need a vehicle that is able to access these fields so I can start to pull these tires out, and get them recycled. There are also 10 or so old tractors sitting around and a couple of old trucks I need to pull out of the woods. 30 acres of logging trails to maintain.
I bought this beast, an 81 Case 850B. 2700 hours but clock doesn't work. Runs and works. It came with a shop manual and I ordered an operators manual. So far so good, I took onto a close, easy traiil and pulled 3 or 4 loads of tires out. But I'm a little nervous about getting into the back field, sections of which are very wet.
I guess what I'm asking, what are my traction limits? Should I be attempting this through light snow? Wait for ground to really freeze? Wait until summer dries things out? Start dumping fill where I want to go?
I am afraid I'm a bit of a nervous Nellie here, but I don't want to get way out there and stuck. I have no experience operating heavy equipment but I'm mechanically inclined and have half a functioning brain. I've checked the fluids, set the track tension, and greased it. I think someone must have removed the thermostat, needle on the temp gage never moves.
A diesel engine without glow plugs?

 

[Bob Bancroft]

Congratulations. I have a small dozer I have cleaned up my farm with. I found it impossible to hire anyone to do these little odd
jobs. Most everyone told me to stay away from owning a dozer. They were wrong.
I have the privilege of running it when I want. I don't run it in the mud, as I don't like filling the tracks, and then digging
them out. I think, with careful operation, you'll find out soon enough where, and how far you want to go. When it gets a little
tender, back off. Literally. You can help yourself back out with the bucket. I don't know how much of a disadvantage those street
type pads will be. Excavators with the same tracks seem to go most anywhere.
What part of the country are you in? Steep hills/valleys? If so, that could be a challenge for you which I don't have.

 

[Cash4Toys]

Good morning and welcome to the site.
Track loaders with the flat track pads
such as yours were used a lot, not very
aggressive and therefore didn't tear up as
much when turning, hence easier turning
possible. Draw back is their not very
aggressive, and traction is not as good.
On frozen ground you need to be extremely careful on
side slopes and steep grades, as those track bars become
ice skates, and in the right conditions
they will allow that machine to take off on a slope in the blink
of an eye. Snow packed on the tracks and
snow on the ground, or ice results in same
scenario. As for soft ground you just need
to feel your way into/through it. Nudge
yourself in a ways then back out and look
at your tracks to see if your sinking or
not. If soft, maybe run in a differant
track instead of running same track over
and over. Your machine has a counter
weight on the rear, so it shouldn't be
nose heavy which helps. That machine
should be equiped with the hi/lo for each
track for steering which is pretty handy.
You should make sure that the engine is
getting up to operating temp, would burn a
lot cleaner than if cold.

 

[Jim.ME]

You will earn where it will go and where it won't. As you get familiar with it you better be able to read the terrain and pick travel paths easier. Any crawler is prone to slide on frozen ground or ice. You will learn how fast yours can slide sideways on frozen ground and ice. Be careful, side slides have been known to lead to roll over in severe cases.

Street pads (triple grouser pads), like your machine has, are common on loaders as they put less strain on the drive train. Single bar grouser pads put a lot of strain on the drive train of a loader when the grousers are in the ground, due to the weight they carry compared to a dozer which pushes. I have seen final drives damaged when someone chose to put single grouser pads on a loader.

You need to clean the dirt and snow off the track frames, especially in freezing weather. Frozen material around sprockets rollers and idlers can lead to damage. A shovel with a long skinny blade (some call them trenching shovels, Jackson calls the pony shovel, or tree planting spade) works good for cleaning tracks.

If you park it outside, it is a good idea to run it up on blocks or short sticks of pulp wood to reduce the amount of track that can freeze to the ground in cold weather.

 

[Nordic]

Congrats on getting your first trackloader, they are very useful machines. I've had many of them over my years in business, I'm retired now and down to one. As for working in wet and soft areas... It's very helpful to know what kind of subsoil is there. If it's a bog you don't want to get stuck for sure. As was mentioned already, do a careful trial run, if at all water fills into the tracks behind you it's better to wait for a dryer season. If you make tracks but no water in there the following day it's not too bad. If you have clay as subsoil you will have very poor traction with the presence of water. The smooth style of grousers easily become filled with mud and start spinning sooner than you want them to. When the ground is soft, be very gentle on your turns, sharp turning can be the beginning of trouble and can lead to getting stuck quickly. Another factor to keep in mind is clearance under the machine. On soft ground you can get hung up on a rock or stump your are straddling, or even get hung up on mud. If one or both tracks start spinning at such a time, you might move off with help using the bucket.
Unless you have gravel fill, don't use fill in the wet season. Summer is 'king' for using track loaders. With a bit of machine time you'll soon know when and where to work and when to stay put. I used to have two wide pad track loaders, they were great for working in nearly any weather and ground condition. With narrow pad machines you have to determine which jobs you do and when. Please keep us posted on your progress using your machine.

 

[Pat80flh]

Thanks guys for your responses. I'm in the north east , Allegany Co. NY, right on the PA border, in the foothills of the Allegany mountains, so the terrain is quite hilly.
I did a test run on an easy looking trail last week. I did a little more complicated one yesterday. It was just above freezing after 2 days of 2 days of light snow. It was a narrow path, straddling a berm, had to climb a steep bank to get there and then cross a ditch. It got muddy in a hurry but I never broke traction. Pulled 3 buckets full of tires out, turned around in a very narrow space and I feel a lot more confident of the machines capabilities. The mud was deep enough to require me to clean them out after.
I can see limited runs this winter when conditions are good, and there's one spot that'll sit until summer.
Thanks again

 

[Jim.ME]

Use care and keep the bucket low when traveling. You will find out the basis for the saying ''Things went sideways fast''. It will happen sooner or later, regardless of how careful you are. Stay alert and have fun with it.

 

[Bob Bancroft]

Welcome fellow New Yorker. Although still far enough apart, as I'm in the middle of the state, in the middle of the Fingerlakes.
Looks like some nice buildings in your picture. One thing I take seriously while running my little dozer is wearing the seatbelt.
I know of one farmer who was knocked, or thrown off his dozer and killed. I've been knocked in the face twice by a branch flying
back such that it felt like my face was busted!

 

[Keith True]

As others have mentioned,and I can't emphasize enough,clean the tracks in cold weather.I have repaired a lot of John Deere,Case,and International final drives because guys would drive off with ice between the sprockets and the track frame.Those final drives are not tougher than ice.

 

[rustred]

That is a loader crawler and them tracks are not much
good for anything other than gravel pits where they
would be used. Pretty much got to stay on the hard
ground. And frozen ground u will have no traction
pushing. But with a bucket you doubt be pushing much.

 

[caterpillar guy]

Those are street plates little traction with them as far as sliding. We have an old Cat No.6 Traxcavator older version of a 977. It has street plates on it and we used to pull 6-16 bottom plow with it and did lots of dozer type work with it. Dig out ditches and pushed muck out of the swamp and filled back with clay then pushed the muck back over the top of the clay . We also used it during times of dry spells for the swamp work then filled back during early spring when it was wet and to early to start regular field work with it. NOw we used old tires for under the tracks during winter so it didn't freeze down in case we needed it. A couple under the bucket too. WEet slippery mud is the worst for getting stuck as the tracks will spin and not move till you get some pull on it. IF on level ground you could try helping with the bucket to push yourself out sometimes. You will soon figure out how much is to wet and not. Clean off the roller frames each days end if you want to use it the next day in freezing weather. As already said we parked it on old tires for that too.

 

[WilBury]

Those track pads are relatively narrow, definitely not "low-ground pressure". As a rule of thumb, you can easily go half the height of the tracks in powder or wet snow. Experiment somewhere you can shovel it out if necessary & won't damage a building. Depending on the type of snow you might even get up on top of it or build a snow road till it thaws.
Ice in the tracks is a pain. I hack out the grousers with a chipping hammer. OK in mild weather but I finally broke down & got a tiger torch. Just be careful around seals. Frozen mud is a nightmare. I've seen it said that "all the fire in hell won't melt mud". I hose mine down in fall before I park it on timbers w/ramps for winter work.
If you have a decent set of teeth on your bucket, it'll leave little furrows in the ice in your driveway that go a long way to giving you the traction you need to avoid skating. Dozers don't have that.
I push my snow a long ways rather than making all those little turns to dump every bucketful. My 3/4 yard bucket can push 1 1/2 yards and more especially if I use the same path without widening it. The banks of my little estate are clean but you wouldn't believe the size of the push piles. Leave plenty of room for 'em.
Bottom line: stay out of the mud in winter!