UNDERCARRIAGE AND RUBBER TRACK WEAR AND CARE GUIDE

Approximately 20% of your crawlers purchase price is for undercarriage. More importantly, nearly 50% of your maintenance costs will go into maintaining it.

The information provided below is for maintaining and getting the most out of your undercarriage and tracks. It is not a repair manual. This guide will show you what causes wear and provides you with the best method to maximize your production. By checking wear patterns on key components often and understanding the causes of wear, you will be equipped to make the best maintenance decisions possible.

What can cause wear?
An undercarriage works as a system. When a machine is in motion, there will be normal unavoidable wear. With good undercarriage maintenance and operating techniques, the rate of wear can be reduced.

Undercarriage maintenance.
Maintenance practices that can reduce wear are:

Correct tension on smaller rubber track machines is about 3/4” to 1”
Correct tension on larger rubber track machines can be as much as 2”.
Please refer to your owners manual for verification.

Track tension and track sag affect wear.
The most important controllable factor in undercarriage wear is correct track adjustment. Correct track sag for all smaller mini excavator rubber track units is 1” (+ or– 1/4”). Tight tracks can increase wear up to 50%. On larger rubber tracked crawlers in the range of 80 horsepower with 1/2” track sag results in 5,600 pounds of track chain tension when measured at the track adjuster. The same machine with the suggest track sag results in 800 pounds of track chain tension when measured at the track adjuster. A tight track magnifies the load and puts more wear on the link and sprocket tooth contact. Increased wear occurs at the track-link to idler contact point and track-link to roller contact points. More load means more wear on the entire undercarriage system.

Also, a tight track requires more horsepower and more fuel to do the job. Follow these steps to adjust track tension:

Track width makes a difference.
Select the narrowest tracks possible for your machine. The O.E.M. provided width track provided for your machine has been chosen because it optimizes that particular machines performance. Make sure they give you the floatation you need. Wide tracks used on hard surfaces will put an increased load on the track link system and can affect link retention in the rubber track. A wider than necessary track also increases stress and loads on the idlers, rollers, and sprockets.

The wider the track and the harder the under-track surface, the faster the track treads, links, rollers, idlers, sprockets will wear.