Hi all, my buddy has bought the D4 Traxcavator advertised last year and it comes with a pair of sprocket rims. I was eyeballing it the other day and it occurred to me that a competent fitter/welder might be able to install them without having to remove the sprockets from the machine, since there is a lot of room around the sprocket area. 
Has anyone done this and could they comment on results, concerns, method. It looks to me like the old rim could be cut off leaving sufficient material so as to be ground down to concentricity, and then the new rims could be cut in half, say on a bandsaw to reduce the kerf, and then each half tacked on and checked again for concentricity. I'm not competent for this but I would think a full-time welder could do it ok. Thoughts?

Well, the cutting-in-half is to avoid removing the track frames which is a pretty big job for my buddy. If he could avoid that and get a decent result with fitting the rims, that would be preferable.

restore49, I don't know unfortunately as I've never been down this road before, but if someone has, it would be good to know how much effort was involved.
Wombat, that's a great idea since it would reduce the risk of misalignment. I might make a mockup out of plywood to see how well it would work