Tracking

[Flurette Farm]

Shouldn't your crawler track straight and if it doesn't in a city block what is the likely cause?
This is not a serious problem but a few feet in a block of travel......

 

[Dieselbreath]

Mine did that (would go around in circles if I let it) after I replaced one worn out side of tracks with a good set. (planned to do the other side when I had time) When I did the other side it tracked correctly again.

 

[RodinNS]

Count yer pads...
Sounds like somebody shortened a chain.
If not I'd wager you have a clutch problem on the slow side. That is unless this is a large Cat with differential steering, then all bets are off.

Rod

 

[JDemaris]

Usually it's because the tracks aren't the same size and chain not the same pitch. All it takes is one track to be more worn, stretched, and longer - and the crawler will always be trying to turn in a circle.

I've got one here that I turned the pins and bushings just on one side. I have to constantly correct the steering to keep it going straight.

 

[M Diesel]

Yeah they generally suffer from worn pins and bushing. The slop allows the pitch to vary a little bit on each link, and if the sprockets are worn as well... it just gets worse. There are a lot of other possible causes, mostly due to stuff being bent or broken and causing alignment problems.

 

[Grabatire]

My TD9-91 got treated to new steering clutches, a new set of rails as well as new final drive pinions and bull gears, but it will slowly drift to the right even while traveling accross flat ground. Walking it on the right hand road shoulder finds it wandering a bit more. If I walk it on the wrong side of the road it tracks straight. I'm blaming it on the sprockets. They were in real nice shape so I didn't change them, but one must be a wee bit different size than the other.

Your steering clutches would need to be in dire straights to allow them to slip while in travel mode. If the "slow side" pushes a load at all, it would be hard to blame your steering clutches.

 

[Billy NY]

In addition to what the others said, the track frames need to be parallel too, it happens on older caterpillars, requiring some investigation as to what is causing the misalignment and subsequent repairs, often times caused from hard or abusive use. I'd start with what was mentioned first then see if what I mentioned has any merit, what type of crawler tractor is it ?

 

[2x4]

some dozers had shims that fit between the yoke & where it bolted on. You could take the 2 bolts out & put in or take out shims that would adjust tracking.

 

[Flurette Farm]

Thanks guys for all the infomation. I'll go through each of these points of advice on the thing and see if I can get it to track straighter. Good luck to all.

 

[Anonymous-0]

That will sure do it DB. Worn track has longer pitch and the sprocket turns off a link at a time. The worn long pitch track will pull up the difference at the sprocket and gain ground on te unworn correct pitch track.
Later Bob

 

[Anonymous-0]

Also remember that roads are crowned, and the earth is round!