How would you repair this? Weld/Fab on excavator bucket

Nice work Greg! 👍

I approve of your welds.

Looks like the strips of AR and the gap in between are working as intended, filling with material and reducing wear. 😎

What’s the top speed that excavator can hit on the rails? Can they couple it to an engine and pull it pretty fast? Just curious.

Bucket looks good too!

The_Lobbster said:

What’s the top speed that excavator can hit on the rails? Can they couple it to an engine and pull it pretty fast? Just curious.

Bucket looks good too!

Click to expand...

Technically, it's limited to 30 MPH... but it can go faster. That said, this machine has issues with fast travel and also distance. The hyrail axles are for a rail car mover, they're built for torque and moving weight... not sustained track travel at high speed.

The hyrail gear is driven by a hydraulic motor with a driveline connecting it. The company that builds these welds on the hyrail frame mount inside the tracks, which hold the a hyrail axles.

This machine has tossed the huge, short driveshaft 3 times so far, taking out a hydraulic parking brake, the shaft and coupler. It's a giant PITA to replace due it's location.

I told the operators they MUST track travel the machine at half RPM, not full RPM. I personally believe the driveshaft isn't rated for the speed it's ran up to at full engine RPM, gets out of sorts and comes apart. Since I told them to slow the engine speed down, it hasn't come apart.

The axles also get incredibly hot when traveling, like 250*'s or more. It needs to get parked and allowed to cool for an hour, after track traveling for an hour.