Buying & Fixing a Bulldozer, Cat D3 Dozer, Part 1/2

hey there welcome to Farm Craft I'm John and this this is a 1975 cat D3 and um you know I might have paid too much for it I don't know so I looked for a very long time for a dozer and I did not want to get one that was just a basket case full of problems I want one that I can use without too much work now this does have some issues but for the most part it's functional it'll run it'll push the blades move you know the undercarriage is in pretty good shape the grousers aren't all worn flat after looking for many months this one went up for sale and I snatched it up I had several that had gotten sold out from under me when I was looking at them so why do I think I might have paid too much well one reason in particular I mean it has problems those were obvious like some of the cylinders the Chrome's gone there but this cylinder isn't leaking both sides these cylinders which raise and lower the blade they're both leaking quite a bit and the one on the opposite side I'll show you in a minute it needs a new Rod so I knew that that was obvious the undercarriage actually looks pretty good [Applause] the chain the pins aren't terribly worn a little bit and all of the wheels turn I did notice that the tracks are on there a little tight I don't know if they had an issue with it throwing tracks so they tightened it down more or if they just didn't know it's not supposed to be that tight we'll have to look at all that same on this side everything turned this cylinder leaks you can see there it needs a new rod and there's a couple Nicks on these cylinder rods down here too but they're not leaking this probably won't be a big deal but you know this is they call it the governor but basically it's your throttle and it doesn't want to stay put while you're while you're using it you almost have to hold that in position so I'm going to need to do some work on that so this has been sitting here for a while because I've been into other things one of the first things I did was take the battery out of it reason for that is he told me that if you leave the battery connected it'll kill it so it must have a parasitic draw somewhere they had a battery kill switch here but if you look under there it looks like it got melted at some point so I don't think that switch is going to be functional so I want to check that out I got to get the battery back in it we'll pull it over to the shop and we'll start digging through this thing so to answer the question of why I might have paid too much it's behind this panel um I checked this thing out really well I I went to the place I looked under it before we started it and operated we operated it for a while I let it sit and I looked under it again there wasn't any significant leaks seen the only only thing I saw was this you know which leaks down onto there after it got here though unfortunately there's a pretty sizable leak right behind here and right behind here is the hydraulic pump so if I have to put a new hydraulic pump on this thing that's going to stink but hopefully it'll just be you know maybe a hose or a loose fitting man that would be nice just Tighten Up A fitting I honestly don't know and um I've never even uh gotten the tools out to take these panels off and really check this thing out I'm kind of embarrassed to say but I showed up to look at it didn't realize I was going to need a tool kit I guess I should have known that for a dozer and um yeah I kind of had to look in as best I can at the things that I could access and you just can't see much under there now I can tell you a guy who I know who is very experienced with dozers told me this was a twenty thousand dollar machine when I when I sent him the link before I went and bought it and um you know I I I trust him but the part of me just says twenty thousand dollars for a 1975 Dozer that's insane but um I don't know maybe that's just what they cost and I'm a cheapskate but I feel like 15 was high that remains to be seen though if it's not a big deal under there and all I have to do is fix a few cylinders and then I've got a functional Dozer I'll be happy with the 15. that's kind of what I thought I was doing oh that is a heavy battery I'm gonna check something here let's put this thing on amps I'm assuming the current isn't too big hopefully I'm not going to fry my meter here well that's not much it's four milliamps I mean maybe the guy just wasn't using it many months at a time in between uses that would that would add up but no reason I can't leave that battery hooked up for a little while assuming it's charging so left side is your gears and your throttle there's also a safety handle there and then you can see it says off there so that's no throttle that's full throttle and that thing just moves way too easy when this thing's vibrating it won't stay at Full Throttle these are your gears that's in neutral there you've got reverse first second and third so in other words that would be first that's second that's third and then just one reverse speed and over here you've got your blade controls blade up down I forget which is which one of these is to tilt left and right and then the other one is to angle left and right we've got a water temp gauge is it oil pressure I think that's oil pressure an hour meter that doesn't work unless this thing has zero hours on it amp gauge oh I think that's the transmission oil sensor and it does have glow plugs so you turn and hold if you want to preheat with glow plugs that would be doing the glow plugs and look the amp meter works this is a foot controlled steering so you've got your two steering clutches so that will break the right track and that will break the left track and that's going to take me some getting used to because I've never driven anything like that before but in other words if you want to turn to the right you push the right it stops this track and the left track will come around vice versa the center brake just stops the machine all right let's see if this thing will start up without any uh any preheating [Applause] hmm it's got fuel like I can see the uh the smoke going through the exhaust let it sit for a minute I'll give it another try I may need to do some preheating it's pretty warm out here I would think it maybe wouldn't need it but you know all right let's go plug it [Music] not charging [Applause] [Music] [Applause] foreign [Applause] [Applause] it's only three inches but that'll make me a lot happier underneath that thing we're going to be changing oil and everything all right we are going to cut right to the Chase and see where this thing's leaking from foreign you can see the cylinder it leaks a lot so this is what I'm seeing I mean there's definitely some oil here but I don't see it dumping maybe it was coming from the cylinder why didn't I just use my left there's no chance that Lyft could pick this thing up might break my left I'm glad I'm not just a little bit taller because I can walk underneath these and that clears up the space down here so it's easier to get through this is the hydraulic pump which you know I'm used to thinking like on an excavator your hydraulic pump is everything it runs every operation on the machine but in this it's only running the blade the rest of it is steering clutches that are coming straight off a drive shaft from the engine so it's kind of a little pump so if I ever had to replace that I mean I'm sure it wouldn't be cheap but it wouldn't be uh I don't think it would be horrendous so tell you what I'm going to get all these cover plates off and we're going to clean this thing up just so I kind of have an idea what I've what I've got going on here wait what's up looks like it has a new alternator on it so why isn't it charging oh gee I wonder like some homemade bracket here but there's no bottles underneath that might be all it needs maybe they put it in and it fell out and we'll put a new one in and Loctite that sucker thank you all right so I've been looking this thing over a little bit I see a little bit of a fuel leak from the pump gonna need to see how bad that is I don't see a lot underneath it so it might not be that big of a deal this fuel line here that can't be the main fuel line from the tank that's too small it goes to the bottom of the primer pump it looks like it broke and they welded it see that right there doesn't seem to be leaking I mean there's no fuel on that fuel filter engine oil filter gonna need to change both of those our alternator that isn't charging for some reason now this uh the exhaust this is actually pretty solid but it's got a hole right there and obviously this is a mess so I'll probably weld something new onto that the rest of the exhaust manifold actually looks pretty good and I don't see any evidence of exhaust leaks around it the radiator is a mess look at that I need to clean that up the good news is about the radiator is it's full of coolant and has been since I bought it and there's no evidence of leaking and it hasn't dropped so that's good wipe this down a little bit get some of that lovely stuff out of there so the first thing I want to see is what this is doing if it's just slipping on the belt and then I also want to see if this fuel line is leaking can you guys see that right there [Music] [Applause] thank you thank you [Applause] [Applause] there you can see what I mean you have to hold that throttle or it just won't stay put [Applause] [Applause] uh we're leaking I see it right there it actually looks like it's coming out of this fitting here I wonder if that's just loose [Applause] well it's a nice time for that camera to die oh yeah that fittings loose I'm gonna go ahead and put that thing up again it'll be easier to tighten that too [Applause] I think I just had a loose fitting here which uh boy that couldn't be any better take that any day and twice on Sunday foreign if I can just get a wrench on the darn thing this is not enough room to get this thing because it hits the pump above it and it definitely needs to be tightened more than it is so I have this wrench this is one I've had for many many years before I even bought this farm so and this I used for doing hitches I never use it anymore so I'm going to turn this into a flare nut wrench and hopefully it will be able to stand up to the force so I can slide it over that get it on there and tighten that thing up what do you think is that going to work a try oh yeah there we go that's tight and ought to do her [Applause] but I don't think that leaked I guess I'll have to review the footage and see now this guy here is definitely leaking accumulated a nice little puddle here well I think I discovered what's wrong with the alternator that lead isn't hooked up I think I can't really see it that well but I'm pretty sure it's yeah I mean it's only got one connection right now and if it's relying on its connection to ground through the frame it doesn't have a very good one because it's barely even on there can you see that that terminal right there I believe is supposed to go to that my gut's telling me this is not the original alternator what do you think obviously it's not the original but this isn't the style of alternator that originally came on here yeah I want to get this off of here so I can clean this up this is one thing that I would not want to be power washing you know looking at this thing I think they had it on upside down yeah that thing's bent this way so if I bend it back it'll match up with that and then a bolt will go through here and actually hold that wires might need to be a little longer so we'll extend that out and hook it up and do this thing right when we uh when we get to that point I do a bench test of the alternator and in spite of spinning it quite fast I find I only get 2.4 volts out of it turns out that I have something to learn about alternators and we'll talk about that later I mean it's putting out voltage so probably not spinning it fast enough yeah we just need to go get it hooked up right but I'm going to get this thing cleaned up before we do that [Applause] [Applause] [Music] close your eyes hold your breath ah [Music] all right I'm willing to bet this has not been done in a long time 20 years [Music] so this piece is cracked but it's just a piece of plastic and the tape is also cracked but I think Gorilla Tape will fix that up just fine [Applause] the engine oil pressure works I'm not sure about the water temperature and the transmission temperature but maybe I didn't run it long enough we'll check those later obviously the hour meter does not work but since I don't know where I'm starting I don't really well I guess I ought to try to hook that up just for maintenance all right let's see what's going on with our air filter should be two filters in here doesn't look horrible I think it could stand to be replaced though that one certainly looks better all right I've got some new air filters on order I'll clean these out and we'll use these until I get them barely anything came out of that one this is the crank case breather and it's all cracked it has definitely seen better days so I've got one of those on order I didn't expect that thing to come out in two halves that sure makes it easy I guess this is like a mixture of dirt and grease that's just really caked on and uh it's in the it's in the radiator fins so I want to get all that out of there so this thing can cool properly so this took a while I used a pick and it was a combination of picking stuff out and also straightening out the radiator fins well it looks good from far but it's far from good no it's a lot better and that will certainly cool a lot better than it did oh I see why they did what they did the pulleys don't line up it's not even close what a rig [Applause] you can see looking down those pulleys they do not line up the alternator pulley needs to come out to like there then it doesn't work on that bracket these two plates right here that make the bracket are just bolted on there and you know just a nut on the other side it couldn't be any more simple you know I could take that off and maybe make a spacer and move this bracket out it actually needs to go out exactly an inch and then the alternator would go on there and then I can make another spacer on this side I could probably make that work it'd be a fair amount of work this isn't the right alternator and I'd rather not change the machine I'd rather change the alternator so the other thing that I could do is cut a slot right there in the bottom of that alternator could weaken it a little bit but there's still plenty of meat there and then it would just slot right in there where I want it to go and then the bolt would go through it wouldn't be able to move back and forth and then of course it'll be secured at the top on that guy I don't see any reason why that wouldn't work and uh this being obviously a cheapo alternator that I don't even know for sure I think it's going to work but I don't know for sure that it will that's what I'm thinking let's just cut a slot in here [Music] a couple more things I want to do before I start one I want to try to protect chips from getting inside this thing and then I'm going to put a hole down on it okay is that going to work foreign that should do it so I am having to file just a little bit using a round file to give the bottom a nice radius [Music] very nice foreign feels pretty solid I think that may work so I guess at this point I really ought to test it and see if this thing's even going to work before I keep the working on doing the wiring and everything thank you all right so I'm hooked to the positive which is hooked to the battery and I'm also hooked to the negative so I'm reading the 12.6 we started up hopefully it's going to be higher so I'm doing the glow plugs now so you can see a voltage drop foreign [Applause] [Applause] that's not making a lot of sense to me it's an alternator you can't spin it the wrong way let me disconnect the battery from this thing so that it's isolated and we'll see what kind of voltage we get [Applause] now this thing just uh where was it in there just came out yeah like this so let's pull that off of there and bring it in the shop see if we can figure anything out [Music] oh goody that style of brush so that it's like almost impossible to put back together what do we got here so this alternator had me scratching my head I opened it up and I checked the internal components to see if I could see anything wrong check the slip Rings check the windings at the stator and capacitor resistor they all seemed reasonable all right this may have been user error this is a one wire alternator I've never come across that before yeah I think I was just measuring the voltage wrong maybe I don't know so I'm gonna go ahead and put it back together and we'll see what it does all that said this post here was loose when I first started working on it and that's the main battery connection so that could have been the problem and I did have to open it up in order to fix this I put Loctite on it and screw it back in place so got a good connection there now getting the rotor back in place with this style of brushes is always tricky you have to get the brushes which are spring loaded in place and then retain them somehow put the rotor in and then release the brushes so that they can ride against the slip rings okay and now you need to stick something down through that hole to retain it so I'm going to use this piece of wire because it's got to be something that you can pull out after you've installed the the rotor I've got one of them done and now without messing that up I get to do the second one this will be fun 10 years later once I get the rotor in I will be able to just pull that wire out and the brushes Will Spring against these slip Rings all right so I've got my wire going straight up here I am going to thread it through this housing there so now the rotor's in place so I can pull that out and the brushes are now in place so I'm not exactly sure what's going on with these one wires it's not just positive and negative the negative is the case that's the positive but I was reading that it needs a battery connection I guess to excite it maybe I don't know but uh let's go put it on we'll hook the battery to it and bolt it on so we'll have the ground on the frame yeah let's see what we get all right we are connected that goes to the battery this does need to run to F according to wiring diagrams that I found but nothing else is hooked up it's bolted to the frame it's also bolted here and should have a good ground connection [Applause] well it took me a little while but I got there yeah I really kind of took the scenic route on that one didn't I well just because I was testing that thing wrong and it turns out it's because it wasn't bolted to the frame is the reason it wasn't charging at first because the belt was still spinning although it was still bolted on the top so you would think it would have a ground connection there maybe it was the battery post I don't know it works now I'm done poking this bear [Music] the world is the purpose of that foreign it's not an armrest seems like a good way to make your tank rust out basics of a dozer you got your blade up front you got your tracks what's driving everything so engine obviously no big deal that comes back there is a transmission with a torque converter in it and then that has a drive shaft coming out of it goes to what they call the bevel gear which amounts to basically a rear differential and then on the side of the bevel gear both sides there are steering clutches and these clutches are what you're controlling with the foot pedals to engage and disengage after the steering clutches there are final drives and that is basically a planetary gear set that then drives the sprockets how's that first sprocket so we've got engine oil we've got transmission oil we've got bever bevel gear oil and we've got final drive oil on both sides obviously there's also coolant and there's a hydraulic system so there's a hydraulic oil tank and incidentally whenever you buy an old Dozer like this man you can't help but take a gamble there's just no way around it if any one of these parts fails you are in for some serious money just to get the parts obviously the engine the engine actually would probably be one of the cheaper things surprisingly transmission you know you might get lucky and find a used one but that's going to be tough these steering clutches you're talking many many thousands of dollars if those need to be replaced same with the final drives yeah any number of things in an old Dozer that breaks can total it unfortunately that's just the nature of things and I guess that's why the things are so darn expensive when they're when they're operational I think I priced it from cat the steering clutches for this machine are like 15 grand just to buy the parts now you can get aftermarket parts for probably half of that that's why you often find these listings where they're selling a dozer that's scrap price even if it runs because it needs new steering clutches basically you're going to be 15 000 into it before you can blink yeah I don't know did I pay too much still not sure all right so here under the seat we have this one which goes forward that's the transmission oil and it looks good and it's full and then this is the bevel gear oil and it also looks good and it's full I think somebody did a full mate or what they thought was a full maintenance on it before they got rid of it these oils look like they've recently been changed to me but I don't know that for sure it can be hard to tell and I don't know if they put the right stuff in so yeah I'm going to end up changing all the oil and everything in there in here while we're checking fluids let's check the engine oil I checked these when I bought it of course let's see it's full and it's a little black but for a diesel not too bad I'm going to change it anyway but you know what the thing that I like I've checked both final drives the bevel gear the transmission and the engine oil and I've looked in the hydraulic oil and nothing has water in it so there's that so I'll tell you one thing I've noticed on this machine the batteries under here and a big wire goes forward to the starter and here's the control panel but there's no fuses to be seen anywhere I've looked it over really well no fuses that's a concern of course because if one of these wires is hot and it shorts to the frame because obviously the insulation is old you know you may end up it'll ruin your battery but you'll also end up with uh possibly a fire and we don't want that before I add a fuse to this thing I want to look behind here all the electrics Converge on this panel and there might be some fuses behind here foreign [Music] swarm of wasps haven't come out yet wow that's nice looking isn't it my daubers they're like wasp Central plus a mouse anybody home I don't think anybody's home looks like a great way to start a fire doesn't it pack that in all around a bunch of electrical stuff what could go wrong close your eyes [Music] okay there's hope here so this is the power wire that is coming from the well the starter but essentially this is the main incoming power to everything except the starter and it goes directly to this which I believe is a circuit breaker on the other side there's this little button which will be the reset button so I just need to make sure that that breaker works that wire is in this most of the time and I'm okay with that because if the breaker works then that would protect it but out here I can see the wire right there I could see it right there so I think I just need to get some protection on that so I disconnected the battery so this is the this is a direct connection to the battery no fuse on that one all right and this is the main power that goes to that breaker so I just need to connect uh protect that eight inches there got a nice little sheath here I feel better about that now we have pretty well protected wire up into the breaker foreign [Music] [Music] all right one sketchy farmer test I just want to see if this breaker is going to trip this is 150 amps so um and you know the last time I did this people said the battery was going to blow up it's not going to blow up with 150 amps it's going to put out a lot more than that just starting the engine um cold cranking amps on a battery is like 800. the wire that comes from the starter so the main input power from everything except the starter goes to the breaker comes out of the breaker comes to this my 150 amps breaker and then there's a good ground so I'm going to short it and we're going to see if that breaker pops and I believe it did let me see here yep no more juice and hopefully that didn't ruin that breaker I think it just reset so I should have voltage on this again yep 12 and a half volts okay so the breaker works very good trying to get this hour meter sorted out this is the hour meter here so the first thing I want to do is just go hook this straight to 12 volts and see if it works this is the positive side so that's negative this is positive let's see if it works yes here you hear it counting and see the clicker over there so the hour meter works it's just not getting power so here's the wire that we already fixed up this comes straight from the starter it goes down here to the breaker comes out of the breaker over here this is the amp meter so then this is becomes sort of the positive battery bus everything goes through the breaker and then the amp meter and then here so this wire right here is sending power over to this which is the engine oil pressure switch the sensor works or at least it seems to this is the sensor so and that's actually I think I think that's a tube sending pressure the actual oil pressure up here to the gauge but this is supposed to be an electrical switch when the pressure is there it makes a connection here and it and it does not seem to be so I get the 12 volts here I don't get anything on the other side even when the engine's running I'm going to clean those connections up and we'll look at it again and see if it gets any better I'll let you know what I find so the pressure gauge is working I'm not getting an electrical connection between these two points so this thing right here is not working let's take it off you can actually see the engine oil there so this thing is crimped on man it would be nice if that would unscrew and I could get inside I probably just need to clean the contacts I have successfully uncrimped things and then carefully pounded them back together and gotten away with it but I think what I'm going to do first is just do some compressed air in there all right so it took a little while but I did come up with a series of connections that would allow me to hook it to a little hand pump and now I've got my electrical meter set to continuity on the two leads to see if I can make any connection and the answer is you know 70 PSI is about the most you'd see out of oil pressure and I got nothing even if I go a little higher there's nothing so I'm probably going to need to buy a new one of those but first I think I will see if I can rip it open why not this looks like it's gotten hot I guess if the electrical connection started arcing that would be the only source of heat but uh it also looks like this this I guess plunger has melted yeah see it's and when I pull it all the way out it doesn't uh I don't think it was able to push on this anymore and that just needs to be pushed to make a connection between this post right there and this post right there while I would love to try to rig this up and fix it I don't think it's going to be a reasonable thing to to do mainly because say I remake this part and I get it the right length which is very hard to know how long does it need to be because the amount of travel that it has is only going to be maybe maybe an eighth of an inch probably not even that much the other issue is is this thing can't leak engine oil pressure is pushing right here and if this leaks I'm going to be dripping oil out of my engine into the into the console especially if I didn't notice it that could be a real big problem because now you're you've got a low engine oil situation not only are you making a mess in your console so let me go price what a new one of these is I bet you I can just get anything certainly don't need a cat part for that so I ordered a new seal for that 10 bucks and then I ordered a new oil pressure switch uh 13 bucks another thing this machine is missing they're supposed to be like you can see there's bolts here for guards that kind of keep the dirt off of everything and under here and this thing's going to constantly be just clogging up with mud and dirt when I use it I don't even want to check the price of having those replaced from the dealer so I'll be on the lookout for a used set but uh if anybody has you know this is a 1975 D3 uh if you have anything like that and willing to sell it for a reasonable price let me know all right I got my new oil pressure switch this is the hour meter going back in that's positive that's negative so this wire was for the old style alternator that we're not using anymore so I'm just going to leave that disconnected it's not connect on the other end either interesting how this thing works I was wondering because there really isn't like an ignition switch this key engages the starter it doesn't in the glow plugs that's it it doesn't do anything else so there's nothing to control like when does the hour meter run well it's the oil pressure switch it'll run because this is a constant power supply that's directly to the battery to here anytime this makes the connection in other words the engine's running there's oil pressure then the hour meter is going to be running come on I don't know it likes glow plugs it only takes like 20 seconds oh actually I can hear the hour meter because that made enough oil pressure to overcome that switch so it works the clock is running as this pressure drops off that should stop foreign nice I actually did get the seal for this uh Governor control shaft right here so let's work on putting that on [Music] that looks like a farmer was here before lose that key there she's moving right into the black hole it's just a little bit of Scotch Brite that look like the right part to you looks good to me slide hammer foreign yanking the screw out of there I'm going to try it again with a smaller bit [Music] I think I nicked the side of that unfortunately but I also don't think it's going to hit where the seal is I think I'm okay there the ceiling surface is just deep to that so I just want to make sure I drive this new seal all the way in a little bit of Grease all right we'll have to see how that does foreign there it is first try well I hate to do it guys but I'm gonna have to break this into multiple videos there's just way too much to do and there's no way I can cut it all the way down into one video what I'm getting ready to do now is change all the fluids but I need to take this thing out for a ride get the engine oil and all the transmission oil and everything stirred up warmed up and then we'll drain it all out continue on with getting this thing back into operating condition I've got a really cool job coming up that I think you guys are going to like to see that I'm going to be using this on as well as my excavator and my dump truck it's a big job that I'm kind of excited about something I've never done before but I'm going to leave you guys in suspense on exactly what that is maybe make some guesses down in the comments we'll see you back next week continue on this beast but before we go let's take this thing out for a ride and I'll let you see my first experience operating a dozer pushing around some dirt [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: FarmCraft101

Views: 532,125

Keywords: heavy machinery, heavy equipment, bulldozer, heavy equipment repair, heavy equipment mechanic, dozer, caterpillar, cat equipment, loader, track loader, compact track loader, D3 dozer, d4 dozer, d3 dozer steering clutches, steering clutch, steering clutches

Id: 001Tw0UDyJM

Length: 56min 25sec (3385 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 02 2023