A track drive, also known as the final drive, is one of the most crucial components in your excavator.
Suppose a track drive goes out of order during operation. You will have to rebuild or replace it with a new one.
With proper knowledge and the correct tools, you can rebuild your final drive and replace worn parts with new ones. Doing this will extend the life of your track drive – extending its resale value too.
Learn how to rebuild your final drive by following this step-by-step guide properly.
Steps You Need To Follow To Rebuild Your Final Drive
Several steps need your attention while rebuilding your final drive. Some of the main steps are as follows:
1. Clean Your Track Drive
The first step in rebuilding your final drive is cleaning. It would help if you cleaned it from the outside and inside. The outer or external cleaning requires a lot more time. The reasons are as follows:
- It prevents the internal components of the final drive from contamination
- It makes the external of the final drive similar to the new one
Different types of tools are available that help in cleaning process both internally and externally. You will find these tools right below.
Tools for Track Drive External Cleaning
The tools that are most popular for cleaning track drives externally are:
Pneumatic Needle Scaler
A pneumatic needle scaler helps in removing rust and scaling. It also removes dirt, dust remains, and other encrusted material. It applies high-pressure air or compressed air to the surface of the excavator’s final drive. It makes a clean, polished surface on the exteriors of the final drive.
Parts Washer Cabinet
Parts washer cabinet make use of detergent mixed in hot water. This mixture is in the form of high pressure sprayed over the exterior of your final drive. Doing this will help remove oil, carbon, and grease from your final drive.
Sandblasting
Sandblasting is also called blasting, blasting, and power cleaning. Sandblasting is a cleaning method that uses solid material or abrasives such as sand. It removes dirt and paints from surfaces if left.
Tools for Final Drive Interior Cleaning
After opening or disassembling your final drive. You can perform interior cleaning. The tools you can use for final drive interior cleaning include:
Parts Washer
Parts Washer is a washing device for the final excavator drive. It cleans the internal components of the engine safely and efficiently. It uses a mixture of extremely hot water and very hard detergent.
The benefits of using this washing device include:
- First, it dislodges all the rust present between the mating surfaces of internal components.
- Second, it removes the trapped grease and sludge.
- Third, it helps wash out any dirt and dust trapped inside narrow spaces.
Please note: that you cannot clean the bearing and seals. The only solution is the replacement.
2. Inspect Your Final Drive
Inspection is the key thing in rebuilding your final drive. It is essential to inspect the components after cleaning.
The contamination of different components makes it hard to see the extent of the damage. Therefore, before cleaning, you cannot decide if the component is fine or not. Sometimes, after cleaning, there comes the point of no hope to reuse your final drive.
For instance, if you isolate the rotor, you will see badly damaged piston shoes. Or you may come to see if the roller gets stuck in the rotary piston. You can easily judge that you need to replace these parts without extra cleaning.
Further cleaning, particularly for seals and bearings, provides aid in locating the cause of damage, if any.
Seals that feature the appearance shown in the figure above reflect expected contamination and leakage. You cannot overlook this type of damage. It is severe and needs replacement.
You can see the image below, and it represents the scars. Whenever you face this situation, there is a chance that the other components have adverse effects. After this case, there is only a little hope that you can redeem other internal components. This is because they have faced severe damage.
When you receive all of the components, the thing you need to do at first is carry out a detailed inspection. See the type of damages, including scuffing, gouges, scratches, pits, and wear, if any.
You can expect these from minor to severe levels—Mark those components you cannot replace because of their severe damage. Later you have to assign the grades per appearance or condition of a particular component.
Different parts can experience a different type of wear and tear depending on their function.
For instance, next, you need to observe the cam rings. See how it appears and marks on gouges, wear, and scratches. See the image below. It represents wear on cam ring.
When it comes to the braking system, inspect the damage signs on splines. Also, inspect the external part of the brake hub. The gouge or scratch present here does not need keen observation compared to splines. You can see the image of the broken hub, which you cannot redeem.
When observing axles, brakes, and gears, you should look carefully at the spline area. Splines are more prone to the wearing phenomenon. The reason behind this is they negatively affect the performance and efficiency of your final drive system.
You can possibly recover or redeem some of the components, but you cannot expect this from all components. Lapping is a popular phenomenon for surface restoration. If the surface has slight gouges, then you get it restored. In case you have deep gouges on the surfaces, you cannot.
See the distributors in the figure; you can restore them to a completely new one. You can do this by lapping the table for some time.
3. Replacing Worn-out Components
As mentioned above, you must replace bearings and seals with other components that do not fulfill inspection criteria. At Xugong parts, we ensure different components, including seals, bearing, gasket, etc., meet high-quality standards. If only one planetary requires replacement, then as per our standards, we replace all of them.
The reason for this replacement is other planetary gear won’t survive much. Consider the other example, piston shoes which make up your axial piston motor. Suppose if one of them gets damaged, you need to replace all of them to make your motor work again.
See the above image Xugong possess higher quality parts that you may need to rebuild your final drive.
If the component you need is unavailable in our vicinity, then we can manufacture it as per your requirements. Take an example of hubs in the Bobcat T series final drives T190s and T300s. We can make it through casting and CNC machining processes. Xugong also can similarly build the housings.
4. Assembling
Once all the replacement parts or cleaned components are gathered in one place. The next thing you need to do is assemble. Make sure to tighten the bolts or screws at a specific torque level. Exceeding the torque limit may result in thread damage.
Another thing which you must take care of is seal installation. Try not to damage your seals. You can make use of Loctite Threadlocker. It is a type of adhesive that you can use to install fasteners. The thread locker secures them and ensures the critical fastener doesn’t become loose.
It would help if you also took care of the sequence while installing the bolts. Remember assembling is not the final step in your track drive rebuild. The main thing is quality control which is as follows.
5. Control on Quality
Quality is the key step when you are rebuilding a final drive. If you take care of quality, you can use your track drive in the long run. You can conduct various tests and record the results for each Test. Some of the main tests that you can perform include:
Pneumatic Leak Detection
Pneumatic leak detection is a method to detect leakage in your final drive, if any. It involves putting compressed air inside your final drive.
A layer of foam from the mixture of water and detergent is put over the exterior of the final drive. If there is any leakage, air passes through foam and bubbles. This helps in leakage detection.
Idle Test
Idle Test is a test that checks the quality of precision parts by measuring their output in the lab. It involves the operation of your final drive without putting any load on your drive.
The main purpose of the Idle Test is to check if the final drive has an optimal design so that it can distribute power efficiently at all times.
Load Test
A load Test is a procedure to gauge the probability of a final drive breakage.
In this Test, your final drive experiences a load similar to on-site situations (High power/ torque requirements). It helps to check the durability, health, and efficiency of various components.
Case Drain Flow Test
Case drain flow test you can use to measure the coefficient of friction and the time it takes to drain a sample of lubricant.
The drain flow test helps verify the case drain flow characteristics.
Brake Release and Engage Pressure Test
Brake release and engage pressure test is important in calibrating your final drive.
It ensures the machine is ready for moving and gives you a smooth start. It also ensures safety regarding moving and stopping your final drive.
RPM (Revolution Per Minute) Test
RPM Test is used to measure the rotational speed of a final drive. You can determine if it meets the specific standards of RPM.
Dual Speed Performance Test
The Dual Speed Performance Test is a procedure in which high and low speeds are applied to the final drive. This testing allows for detecting any stall or bogging with a load-carrying similar to on-job/on-site conditions.
If your final drive successfully passes all these tests on quality control, you can subject it to the final step. In other cases, if it fails, you subject it to troubleshooting or more working until it passes all tests.
6. Last Step
Once your final drive passes all quality control tests, there comes a final step. In this step, you carry out a thorough wash externally.
In the end, you paint your final drive. Now you can use it after spending a little on your final drive. But now, you can be sure it surpasses or meets the OEM (original equipment manufacturer) standards.
Verdict
Xugong Parts offers a wide range of high-quality OEM and aftermarket parts at reasonable prices. Whether you are looking to rebuild your final drive or need to replace some components. Xugong Parts has the right part of serving your needs.
We offer the stock on compact excavators, compact track loaders, skid steer loaders, and multi-terrain loaders. Xugong Parts is a trusted name in the industry, with decades of experience providing quality solutions.
Feel free to reach out to us today!