Well, it wasn’t easy but we got the Dozer moved to our land. That’s the good news; let me fill you in on the rest.
After working on my dad’s old John Deere 1010 Crawler Tractor (which I lovingly refer to as “the dozer” – much like he did) for the better part of the last three months, I was honestly at my wits end. I simply could not get the thing running.
It first started out with fuel issues; the fuel lines and the valves from the tank were simply frozen from moisture in the system. After getting them thawed out it turned out that the fuel filters were frozen in the chamber. After replacing those I realized that the fuel pump was varnished up. Finally, after rebuilding that I had solved all fuel issues and the dozer would run……in neutral….with the clutch engaged. Any time I tried to change gears or release the clutch the dozer would die.
This led me to diagnose the problem as ice in the transmission. The added resistance would kill the engine by not allowing the transmission to turn freely. It turns out, all I had to do was wait for warmer weather. Thankfully, we had an opportunity for just that about a month ago. As things began to thaw out, the dozer would gradually run more efficiently.
First, I could release the clutch in neutral and the engine would continue to run. That lead me to believe that the transmission had thawed. However, it would still die if I attempted to shift into gear. After much frustration I finally diagnosed this as the simple fact that the tracks and the bucket was simply frozen to the ground. Again, this added resistance was too much for the engine to overcome and it would kill the engine as it was trying to operate.
Finally, the weather warmed up to the point where it melted the surrounding ice on the tracks. Once again, I was able to operate the dozer, release the clutch, and break the remaining ice as I shifted into gear. With this final step I was overjoyed to be able to move the dozer forward and in reverse. However, my joy quickly turned to consternation.
Additional issues quickly arose. As I was operating the dozer, I quickly learned that I had no steering. Now, even when my dad used to operate the dozer I knew that it would not turn to the left; he had always suspected a steering clutch issue but had never replaced it (as it’s a rather large project to undertake). Unfortunately, I could no longer steer to the right either. Furthermore, it turns out that this dozer has a “reverser” lever which allows you to switch from forward to reverse without changing gear. With the loader bucket, this is a super efficient ability as you frequently have to switch from forward to reverse, so being able to do so without changing gears every time is beneficial. Moreover, I also found out that the hydraulics would not work to operate the loader. That said, I quickly found out that it wasn’t working. Unfortunately, these issues were small potatoes to what I was faced with next.
That would be a massive oil leak. As I was attempting to diagnose the steering, the engine died and I was unable to restart it. The oil pressure indicator light was not functioning to tell me that there was a loss of pressure, but I quickly found the residual on the ground. As I attempted to refill the oil, I realized that it was running out the oil pan as quickly as I was pouring it in. Luckily, I had a pan underneath. As I looked closely, I could see that there was a rather large crack in the corner of the oil pan, and that would be the end of me attempting to operate the dozer – for the time being.
Now, my hope was that I could simply drive the dozer up onto a trailer for hauling over to our land. With this oil leak, that simply would not be the case. Thankfully, a coworker has a truck and trailer rated to haul the 10,000 pound dozer. He also has a skidsteer, which we used to load the dozer onto the trailer. We found a hill in the driveway, to decrease the approach angle for loading the dozer. We used the skidsteer to lift the loader bucket on the dozer and chain it into place. Then, it was a simple yet timeconsuming task to tow the dozer to the trailer on the hill, and then use the skidsteer to push it up and onto the trailer.
Once loaded, all we had to do was tow it to our land, and then use my truck to tow it down and off the trailer. Now, he’s going to come back once the ground dries up a little so we can move it to a better location. We’re also going to block it up on some railroad ties so that I have a few more inches of clearance to work underneath it.
So that’s it for this year; I have so many projects underway that I don’t have the time or the resources to work on it now. Hopefully, next year I can give it some more attention and fix the following things in order:
- repair the oil pan, so that I can operate it safely
- drop the tracks and replace the steering clutches, so that the steering operates
- service the hydraulic pump so that the loader and hydraulics work
- service and repair the reverser so that I can gain the benefit of it
- replace cracked fuel and hydraulic lines
- drain and refill all fluids and grease all fittings
- hopefully, give the body some cleaning and new paint
That’s a pretty big list, but if I can at least achieve the first few, the dozer will be up and running again. We have a lot of projects on the homestead to which this piece of equipment will provide immense aid, and I am greatly looking forward to using it. Practically, it will be of great benefit to us. Sentimentally, I am just happy knowing that I’ll have his dozer with me.