Steering under load...

Your ok have fun with it there made to do that .

Your ok have fun with it there made to do that .

When pulling farm equipment they are under load most of the time as you turn.Just be smooth with your turn and not jerky,and don't let the lever fly forward. Ray

Hi, D6c10K.

Steering a clutch-n-brake steered dozer under blade load is a whole different ball game from steering the same machine under a drawbar load. Firstly, the blade load is further ahead of the tractor than the drawbar load is behind the tractor. Secondly, with a loaded blade on a dozer, you are trying to force the load on the blade sideways against the resistance of the load resting on the ground. (A drawbar load is being dragged around behind the tractor which does not load the tractor frame up the same way as a dozer.)

The actual effects of this effort of forcing the loaded blade sideways depend on whether you have an outside mounted blade or an inside mounted blade. With an inside mounted blade - i.e. a PAT blade - the loads are transferred direct to the tractor's main frame and thus do not stress the track frames and walking gear like an outside mounted blade. Turning a loaded outside mounted blade causes stress on the blade push arms, sway braces, push trunnions AND on all the track frame mounting/pivot points, diagonal braces, etc.. The sharper the turn, the more stress is imposed.

Having said all of the above, most crawler tractors these days are designed to have some 'heavy-handed malcontent' ignoring the agonised screams of the tractor and turning a loaded blade anyway.

I can't say with any degree of certainty about other makes but I suspect that Cat have for a VERY long time been aware of the punishment that steering clutches and brakes take on a dozer and have designed these parts accordingly. My own approach is to turn a loaded blade as little as I possibly can, even to double handling the load at times. This involves pushing a reasonable quantity of material to the turn point, then getting behind it to push it the rest of the way in the new direction.

If I do have to turn a loaded blade, I use small turn increments with brief disengagements of the clutch each time, a second or two at most.

A little handy hint, if I may. (Hee, hee, hee, yer too far away to stop me anyway.)If you have a hydraulic tilting blade, using the tilt to lead you into the turn can make life a lot easier for the poor tractor.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the replies...kind of what I thought. The machine will take it, but shouldn't be done in a too jerky a manner. I do steer under load by tilting the blade when I can. To make that easier I just bought the joy stick blade control from a D6d to do away with the foot pedal tilt.

Thanks for the replies...kind of what I thought. The machine will take it, but shouldn't be done in a too jerky a manner. I do steer under load by tilting the blade when I can. To make that easier I just bought the joy stick blade control from a D6d to do away with the foot pedal tilt.

Hi, D6c10K.

Just as important as not jerking is not forcing the issue. If you do have to turn a loaded blade sharply, lift it a little to lighten the load. It can make a surprising difference to how easily a dozer will turn if you lift the blade by even as little as an inch or two.

I can relate to the situation with the foot tilt. I operated a D6C many, MANY years ago with a foot tilt and I thought it was one of the dumbest ideas that I had ever seen on a Cat dozer. In fact, I thought it was right up there with the hand-operated tilts that came out with the first Cat hydraulic tilt systems on the D8's and D9's where the tilt control lever was about 4 feet long and stuck up from the floor outboard of the powershift control. Steer (clutch and brake), tilt, lift blade all atta same time. Maybe also use the decelerater as well. A man needed a good few octopus genes in him back in those days.

BUT, they were still a LONG way better than not having a blade tilt. I cut quite a few double changes of elevation on S-bends with a hand-lever operated tilt system. The 769 pilots loved 'em.

Yer doo whut yer kin with wutchyer got.

Even something as simple as the way a hydraulic pump is powered makes a difference in operation of a new tractor driving style verses an old tractor. On our old oil patch tractors in PA. the pumps were all front mounted meaning as long as it was running, the blade was moving. Out here in WI, my D2 has a rear mounted pump meaning that at the end of a push there is a time lag before the blade goes up. Pushing dirt I always try to keep the clutch engagements smooth without too much jerk as I believe that it also effects every part in the system not just the clutches. When plowing or disking I try to go as long as possible without making a steering correction.