D47U On Track!

Here's my story. I was cutting in a new road on my property when I heard the worst kind of noise coming from my Cat; that terrible knocking sound. I pulled it back into a cleared area and shut him down and checked the oil. Wern't non! This guy never burner oil so I was really perplexed. Walked back to the barn and got all the old oil I could find and packed it all back down the hill and filled him up then started him up again. Still slamming and banging so I knew the worst. Then I noticed the broken oil line from the oil gauge pumping out the life blood from my Cat and felt sick. It's about 600 ft up the hill and through the wood to the shop and I just hoped I could make it that far and I just about did, all but about 150 ft when the rod went through the block and hit fuel filter and lift pump destroying both. I picked up another engine and after a week of installing it and hooking everything up I got him started. Sounded like it was missing and I wasn't getting fuel to the back injector. When I took the cover off the injector pump the cam for the rear injector was not there. Strange you think? I took the cam off my old pump and put it back together. Still no fire but, of course, now had fuel to the injector. Oh, forgot to mention that I had taken the valve cover off at first and found that the adjuster for the rear exhaust valve was broken off and laying there. Called the guy I bought the engine from about it and he said that sometimes they break off, Sure! Anyway the next thing I did was to pull off the cover plate at the bottom rear to expose the crank and rod ends. There was no rod for the rear piston and the crank journal had a piece of rubber matting over the oil port held on with a hose clamp! He said he had run the engine and that it was a good running engine. Well I did get my money back but what a pain in the ass and a lot of work for nothing! I'm using lots of cribbing, house jacks and my backhoe to do this and I'm outside in SWWA with a makeshift tent! The good news. I found another engine and although it is older it's in and running.
The 'Track' part of my title is the track adjustment is out about as far as it will go and I was wondering if I could take a link out and if so, how do you separate the links?

Seems like some heavy duty thinking went into pulling the rod, injection pump and whatever else all do to one broken part!
As far as the links in the rail, find the master link pin, figure out which style it is, remove it based on its style, there is alot of other threads on this subject.

Make sure you have enough length before you remove the link, because without the correct press, it would be difficult to save the link you take out!

Once you get the master pin out, remove the pad on the link that had the pin driven into it. Do not remove the link the master pin was pivoting through unless you need to replace it, because that "master" bushing is shorter and has the 2 small "collars" to nest up inside the rails and take up the exess space.

If you can drive the pin out of the next one, great, you only have to cut the bushing with a torch to get the link out. But you most likely will have to cut the rails, pin and bushing with a torch. Just don't get on the rails of the next link that you will drive the master pin back through when you reconnect the track.

To reconnect, pull the adjuster all the way back (might be a lot more time consuming than cutting out the link), put a slightly smaller pin through the rails, the 2 small collars and the master bushing to keep it close to alignment and then start the master pin. Make sure the alignment pin is short enough to drop out as the master pin comes close to seating. As you drive the master pin through, check that it doesn't catch either of the small collars and lines up with the far side rail properly. You might need to back up the far side rail with something
heavy to keep it from bouncing.

Being able to properly tensiont the tracks will certainly help keep from loosing one, but the worn tracks will be "snakey"

[quote="drujinin"]Seems like some heavy duty thinking went into pulling the rod, injection pump and whatever else all do to one broken part!
As far as the links in the rail, find the master link pin, figure out which style it is, remove it based on its style, there is alot of other threads on this subject.[/quote]

The piston was still in the engine. You could see about an inch of the skirt showing. Don't know how you could get to the pin with the piston still in the engine. I guess they pulled the head, took out the rod and stuck the piston back. The crank journal was really scarred so there was no way you could just replace the bearings. So the guy put it back together and sold it to the guy I bought it from. This guy works at a Cat wrecking yard so it's hard for me to believe that he couldn't tell that it wasn't running right. He told me that the machine ran fine and that the steering clutches were the only thing wrong with the machine the engine came out of. Figured I was too stupid to be able to tell some thing was majorly wrong when I started it? I wanted to choke the bastard for the time I wasted! Think it ended up costing me about $100 what with the driving to pick it up and return it plus wasted oil and antifreeze.
Anyway, thanks guys, for the responses on the tracks.

Taking a link out because your track adjusters are out of adjustment is a last ditch effort to make the tracks last a little longer. If the track pins haven't been turn a half a turn yet, that would be a much better choice to do. There are track shops that specalize in doing just that. My D4 7U had the pins turned and they once again have lots of adjustment left. Running with worn out track pins will wear the sprockets faster than if you had the pins turned a half a turn. While using what you have, if the pins already have been turned, then you don't have any other choice but to take a track link out. Been there, done that.