What to look for when buying a used BULLDOZER!

[Music] [Applause] [Music] alright this video I want to talk about bulldozers one of my favorite pieces of equipment more specifically I want to talk about what you should look for if you're gonna buy a bulldozer or if you need a bulldozer what kind you should get this is my Komatsu d 41a i bought this at an auction almost two years ago now having got to use it as much as I'd like but the little I have used it I've been very pleased with it let's take a look at my machine and I can show you the parts you need to really pay attention to if you're in the market for a used machine alright so like I said this is a Komatsu d 41a it's mid 80s this is a six way blade on this tractor which I'll get into more here in a minute as you can see it's been parked awhile it's got grass growing up in the tracks here so she's been sitting for a few months I try to keep the operator's area covered up as best I can but mice and birds and stuff still get up under the tarp and make a little home so let's pull the tarp off and see if we can't start this thing up all right so first thing we're gonna do on any piece of equipment that's set for any amount of time or doesn't get run every day so you don't really know the condition we'll check the fluids this machine this is how you check the oil it's shown that we're a little bit low but we're on a pretty good little slope here so it's probably pretty close once we cut it on level ground next we'll check the antifreeze right up to the top that's good out here in the woods where I keep this thing there's a lot of mice and other things squirrels that make nests I'm kind of looking down in here along the motor especially around the exhaust side see if I can see any kind of nests or anything built because if we're to start this thing up for the first time in a while and there's a nest down in here on the exhaust or something it could catch fire and potentially burn the whole machine down so we definitely want to avoid that all right so that fluids good there's other fluids to check though here on the side is our hydraulic reservoir tank that's showing that's nothing in the sight glass but that's because the cylinders weep I'm pretty sure that's right below this sight glass and we're not gonna run it much so that'll be fine this here is your port converter fluid yeah that's right about halfway and plus we're on a slope like I said so that should be good [Music] back here is our transmission will hmm look to be over full-on transmission along interesting I'll get into what that could mean a little bit later yeah and this machine does not leak any oil from the final drives but down here's where you check those you'd get a ratchet and pull that plug out of both sides and I've checked those the last time I ran it and they were both good so the only other thing there is the check and we're not gonna do it right this minute here's the oil on the winch I can see it leaks a little bit so there's a potential for it to be low so I checked all the fluids everything looks good and we're almost ready to start but you really shouldn't start anything unless you know what the controls are so there's a few different control setups from dozers but most are all pretty much the same older machines like this one early machines up till I don't know there might even be some machines that are still new like this but I haven't seen anything last maybe 20 years but up until probably the 90s they made machines like this which this is a hand clutch machines so this is a direct drive transmission with a power shift so it's three speeds forward and first you got Reverse on this side 1 2 3 and then this is your neutral and then your forward is 1 2 3 same way and you don't have to decelerate or move a clutch or anything you just keep pulling that thing into the gear you wanted them but these are your hand clutches so what this does is you pull say this clutch here and that stops the power to the right track and lets the left track out track it so that would make you a right turn if you pull right clutch it disengages the track you start to turn if you need to turn sharper and this specific machine you can keep pulling further and you'll engage the brake on that side so it will stop that track altogether and you'll make a hard turn and a lot of other machines especially older ones you need to push the community to pull the clutch and then if you need to turn sharper you need to push the foot brake in addition and that'll stop the track and make you make a sharper turn this over here is your decelerate er not an accelerator your car has an accelerator and a dozer they think throttle was backwards so if you don't have your foot on the throttle it's wide open but you can push it down and when you push it down you'll drop the engine to an idle what that does is make it a lot easier for you to be smooth over rough terrain while you're holding on trying to operate all the other controls so it takes a little getting used to if you've never run a dozer but it's it's much preferable so what else here's your blade control this is a six way blade they call it because this machine the blade goes six directions it'll go up and down and it'll tilt side-to-side so that's four directions and then it'll angle which is this lever over here left or right so you can make a corner like a long left or a long right for keeping material to one side or the other of what you're trying to work on on this machine up and down and you have your tilt side to side and then this lever is your angle so forward and backward will angle your blade left or right this machine does have one pedal that I've never seen on another dozer and that doesn't mean they don't exist but I've just never seen it this is called an inching pedal on this machine and this is similar something most forklifts have so what this is is like a clutch and a brake you could be pushing something wide open and then just touch this pedal and it takes the power away from both tracks and stops you so that's kind of like a good pedal to have if you're doing something on the edge of a hill or something and you're getting close to an edge where you might break over the hillside you just hurry up and smack that pedal and it'll stop you dead but you really shouldn't put yourself in that kind of situation anyway so to start this machine now that we know the controls and we've checked all the fluid you're gonna need a Komatsu key and that's something else if you're new to heavy equipment a lot of people that are new to heavy equipment don't realize as most equipment keys are universal this come on Sookie will start that come on Suho over there or any come on Suho and the same with Caterpillar case bobcat just about any brand of equipment the keys are all universal for that brand and some of them even crossover like case and Bobcat are the same key so this control over here is your master throttle so if you don't have your foot on that decelerator you don't want it run and wide open all the time this is your throttle so you move it right up here to the middle as a low idle all the way back is full throttle now to shut this tractor off you have to shove this lever all the way down which closes the injector pump off and kills the motor and then you shut your key off so let's start this thing up now and it hasn't been started in at least two or three months it's warm out today so you definitely don't need glow plugs in this machine you don't even really need the glow plugs ever I've started it when it's been very cold and it's fired right up with no glow plugs so I'll turn the key to the on position turn the key that simple I'll let this warm up a minute before we try and do anything with it [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right now that we've got this dozer moved to spot a fresh ground where we can see everything going on I'll start pointing out some of these things you should be looking for if you're in the market for a used machine like I said I bought this machine in an auction so I really didn't know the history of it but like anything you're looking at used you can kind of get the story of the maintenance on it and the people that owned it just by the way it's taken care of this machine when I looked under the hood I could see the filters and some writing on the engine and it said that this motor was overhauled at 5,000 in some hours so there's only 6,000 in some hours on it right now and I've put some of those on there so that motor only had around a thousand hours on it on an overhaul for a motor like this that's pretty pretty insignificant that's pretty low hours the only things that we're wrong with this dozer when I got it are the cylinders for the blade so all these chrome areas here like I said this video is kind of for people that are newer to equipment but these chrome things are your hydraulic cylinders those are going to angle your blade and push the push the blade where you need it to be so this side leaks this one leaks you can see that tilt cylinder right there is leaking right now it's dripping the lift cylinder on the left side was very bad when I bought this machine this one here was completely blown out and when you'd lift the blade up it would just squirt oil everywhere so I think that kind of kept everybody away from this machine at the auction but really that's very insignificant those are very easy fixes I haven't had the time to repair these ones yet but I did fix this one because it was crucial to even moving the machine you'd lose all your hydraulic fluid very quickly if I didn't fix that so I'm gonna eventually repack these other four cylinders I have one more lift somewhere over there the two angle cylinders and the tilt cylinder to repack it so those will all be fixed and that'll take care all this grease down here that you have on your hard frame things to look for if you're looking at a six-way blade downfalls to a six-way blade is just like I said these cylinders are prone to leaking at both ends of every cylinder and every pivot point there are pins and bushings that can wear out I sat there and started to figure out how many pivots and pins and bushings there are on this blade one time and I got disgusted because they're all things that can wear out so right down here you've got a knuckle there's four there there's this dog bone up here that helps support your blade there's two there each cylinder has two your blade frame has two there's just a lot of pivots lots of things to wear out but this one seems to be pretty tight you can set it on the ground and slowly start to lift it up and down and that's when you'll see your slop and all those things and run your controls all back and forth a good bit and you'll see your slop if there is any this thing is just about ready for a new cutting edge hurts your dozer blade on any blade you're gonna have corner bits which is this piece right here and you can see there's a line right here this is your corner bit that is what does your cutting and hard ground you'll use that corner to bust out the hard ground or rock or whatever you're in so there's your bolts that hold it on these cannot be flipped over and reused because they're made the shape they're made you have to buy new ones of these when they wear out you can tell they're wearing out when you get down to what's called the moldboard the moldboard is the back of the blade that they bolt do so this has about three quarters of an inch left before the blade needs flipped in new corner bits need put on these are not terribly expensive they're just like putting a bucket tooth on a bucket it's it's really common very reasonably priced depending on your size of dozer the cutting edge is here in the center this one has a two-piece cutting edge here and here they're just straight pieces so these can be flipped over and you get double the life out of these so you can see how thin it is from the bolt down to the bottom where it's worn and from the bolt to the top that's new cutting-edge there so this is really all about do to be flipped over and new corner bits put on because if you don't change them it'll wear down into your mold board on your blade and damage the blade and then you'll have to do a lot of work to get that fixed other things wrong with this dozer but are not big deals the blade skin here it's already been re skinned because there's a weld down the center here so that it's got a newer skin on it but somebody put this plate on here I'm not sure what that was for if that was for pushing up against the pan or what that was for but there's a crack somewhere here it is there's a crack down here that runs down in the blade not a very big deal I can just grind that out throw a piece of first I'm well than that not a very big deal the biggest cost you're gonna run into with a used machine if you're not careful is gonna be undercarriage that's the most common thing and that's a wear piece so you want to pay special attention to that and if you're looking at a piece of equipment in your undercarriage you've got the track chain the cleats the front idlers the drive sprockets top rollers and bottom rollers this machine has one two three four five bottom rollers it's hard to check those in a dozer on a hoe you can lift the track up off the ground and wiggle them with your hand and a dozer it's not so easy but you can kind of just look at the shape and the profile you know if these faces right here with this chain rides if they're all distorted and worn out that means the roller is pretty much junk now it can be bad without that being bad if the bearing goes bad say if the dozer works on a lot of saw a sandy ground the sand gets inside the seals and tears the seals out which lets the oil out and the sand in which just eats the bearings out of them so they can be bad without those being bad if you can track the dozer around and have somebody watch them while it's driving around you can kind of see some times if they're really bad they'll be wobbling same thing with your front idler it can the the pin through it could be bad and worn and it'll usually squeak or this face right here where the chain rides and this groove that can be all rounded over and worn out cleats are pretty obvious the browser here it'll be warm down to hardly anything when there's no good or check sometimes the pads a wiggle there's one on my hoe over there that Wiggles and what that usually all you can get away with is just cutting the bolts out and putting new bolts in them and they will be good as new the big thing to look for is your make sure this is focused that pin right there in the track they'll start to wear right in this area where the sprocket engages them back here right up in here where the sprocket grabs a hold of that chain it'll wear a flat spot on this pin and if it wears through all the way to the inner pin then your chains gonna wear out very quickly from there and not much left of it so these pins are perfect there is ZERO wear that I can feel on these pins which is ideal so that means to me that this undercarriage is practically new because these sprockets back here are also like new there's very little wear on these sprockets another advantage to this dozer over some other brands of this size and age as the sprockets are segments see all these brakes right here and all the bolts holding them on so you can change these out without having to take off the track if these wear out you just pull this up here undo three bolts take it off put a new one on move to the tractor back a little bit and repeat until you have all those changed and you don't have to remove the track to do that which makes life a lot easier okay another good test to do on anything you're buying with a motor on it let's get it good and warm and after it's warm I'm not gonna do it on this cuz I don't want to lose any antifreeze or get it all over the motor but you get the motor good and warm and then take a rag over top of your radiator cap and crack it loose and when you do it should be pressurized there should be water and pressure comes out of that cap that's why you use the rag so it doesn't spray all over you because it's hot it'll burn you so if it's pressurized that's good that means this is yours have a closed system there's no leaks or anything that you can't see also once you have that cap off of there let it sit and run on a low idle for a while and make sure you don't see any bubbles coming up into the radiator if there's bubbles coming up that usually means that the head gas gets bad and it's letting compression from the motor get into the coolant side let's talk about types of transmission than dozers these are what you call direct drive so the motor actually drives the torque converter which runs into a three-speed transmission I like these as well that's why I bought one there's other ones that are hydrostatic or manual so a manual transmission is gonna be just like this it drives a clutch just like a standard transmission truck and you'll have a big stick over here which is a master clutch and you'll still have a gear selector usually not like this I believe they're usually on the floor see you have a master clutch and a gear selector and some machines have a reverser but anyway so the clutch is just like in a standard vehicle only you don't use your foot you'll put it in the gear that you want and then you'll pull the clutch back and that'll start you in the direction that you selected this is nice because you don't have to worry about any clutch you just pull it and as soon as you're ready to back up and just slam it over to reverse and you'll start going backwards you don't have to clutch or brake or anything like that there's hydrostatic type dozers but I don't think I've ever run one and what I know about those is sort of like you'll have a drive control over here and you'll just pull it forward or backwards almost like a small lawnmower and that runs a hydrostatic transmission and you'll go forward and backwards I believe those could be pretty nice but I think you lose a lot of power with those so in a bulldozer like this you're gonna want to check your torque converter to make sure your torque converter isn't bad or slipping to test the torque converter in a dozer like this you're gonna want to do a brake stand push both your brakes on and then with the motor running wide open pull it down into first gear and see what the motor does you're gonna listen to the motor if the motor starts the bog you have a good torque converter and as soon as you hear it start to bog put it back into neutral or let off the brakes you don't want to hold the brakes on while the motor is trying to spin you just want to do that long enough so that you can tell if the torque converter is gonna slip or not if you're holding both brakes and you put it in the first gear and nothing happens the motor stays revved up right where it was and your torque converter is slipping obviously with anything you're gonna buy you should really try it out the best you can a place you're looking at it you want to make sure you drive the dozer back and forth good and get the motor good and alarm you want to try it and all three gears to make sure the gears shift nice and that the motor pulls right you wanna if you can push some dirt with it make sure you've got good power make sure that the that's another way you can test your torque converter if you run into a pile of dirt and the motor doesn't bog and you just stop then your torque converters slippin run the blade through all those functions just like I did so tilt the blade and do all that kind of thing while I'm on the subject of blades let's talk about the other kinds that there are like I said this is a six-way blade so it does all these fancy functions which is nice if you're gonna be doing a lot of grading work and slopes and that kind of thing if you're just needing a farm dozer to push trees out and that kind of thing you can get away with just having a stiff arm blade they call it which is usually a little bit wider than a six-way blade on the same size tractor and it's gonna have it's going to be a beefier stronger blade you're gonna have a see frame they call it that runs around the outside of your tracks and ties in back here in the middle so these bolts right here would be where the see frame would bolt to it would pivot there and your cylinders that lift that whole thing up and down and your blade will have arms that come down and engage that see frame now some of those tractors will still be able to manually angle and tilt which are my favorite kind so you'll have three different holes on the side you can remove the blade arms and angle the blade manually and then maybe it would still have tilt cylinders up there the other type of blade is that you blade that's usually on bigger dozers if you need to you blade you probably already know what you're looking for you're not watching this video but a you blade is for pushing material longer distances keeping bigger piles in front of you containing the material rather than letting it spill over the sides of the blade they're usually much taller the last thing I can talk about or accessories for a dozer my dozer is equipped with a Hyster w5b I believe it is winch which is a self-contained hydraulic winch this has 7/8 cable on it right now I believe it's either 7/8 or an inch I think there's about 100 or 150 feet on this drum and this is a very strong winch you can pull a lot of stuff with this thing and it's great if you get yourself stuck down over a hill somehow you can anchor it to another piece of equipment or a couple trees and use it to pull yourself back up over the hill or you can use it for letting somebody else down over a hill so they don't get stuck like we do in pipeline stuff we'll hook a bunch of dozers together bigger dozers and this will hook a bunch of dozers together on a big hill and connect the hoe to the end of it and let them down over a steep hill so that they can work safely without overturning the other kinds of accessories that can go on the back of a dozer like this or rippers rippers look just like big chisels that stick down into the ground and they bust up the ground to make it easier for you to doze it there's multi shank rippers and then there's single shank rippers single shanks more for rock and very hard ground Multi shanks usually for breaking up like hard clay and things like that and they really do make it a lot easier for you to be able to plow dirt up with the blade after you've ripped it so this is what your basic winch looks like there's other configurations you can get a winch like this there's what they call fairleads which is it'll have kind of like a frame built out around the end of the winch here with rollers on it so that this cable could pull in any direction and it won't wind up off the drum you can see there's a lot of wear here into the end of the steel which is what happens when somebody's not paying attention they're pulling the cable in and it's not winding up directly over the drum its winding up over the edge and it's dragging right here which wears out all this metal I didn't do this this is how I bought it I've haven't really used this winch at all since I got it the other kind of setup for a winch would be like a logging arch or a logging set up for a winch which would be just like your fairleads down here only it'll have like a riser box that comes up maybe about about 4 feet higher than the winch and all that does is get your cable from a higher vantage point so that when you lift up on the logs it gets the front ends off the ground a lot easier and you can drive without dragging the logs and the dirt as much and plowing into things with them so those are the things I look for when I'm looking at a dozer aside from the obvious checking for leaks and things like that when you get there try to look underneath the machine where it's been parked make sure the final drives aren't leaking make sure the engine isn't leaking make sure the cylinders aren't leaking that's that's the easiest leak to fix in my mind as the cylinders sometimes they're hard to get the glands apart but after it's apart they're usually pretty easy to change so that's enough talking about dozers let's see what this one can do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so that's my Komatsu d41 egg that's what I look forward a used piece of equipment [Music] let me know in the comments if you guys check for anything else when you guys are buying equipment or if you're thinking about buying them let me know what you're gonna get they're awful fun toys they do cost a lot of money to maintain and operate though but if you play your cards right you can make a lot of money running them so that's where I'm at [Music] [Music]

Channel: Diesel Creek

Views: 413,300

Rating: 4.8342619 out of 5

Keywords: autocar, heavyhaul, antique, classic, vintage, old, heavy, equipment, iron, bobcat, skid, steer, loader, caterpillar, gravel, stone, rock, dump, truck, construction, excavation, property, maintenance, international, 4900, dt466, eaton, s185, grouser, tracks, small, business, side job, diesel, kubota, farm, gopro, hero, black, dji, mavic, air, drone, saw, pipe, repair, komatsu, clearing, forestry, excavator, hydraulic, homestead, trucking, d41a, d41, d-41, used, bulldozer, crawler, tractor, mechanics, craigslist, facebook, marketplace, d5, d6, d7, d8, d3, d4

Id: u-IHInOCulk

Length: 32min 26sec (1946 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 30 2019