motorway muckshifting

[IBH]

Cracking photos.

[nick lamb]

These pics show a D10N with the blade ram removed(again).This machine also cracked an engine piston and cracked the bevel casing behind the ripper.This is fatal in a ripping tractor as welding it up seriously devalues it.Nobody wants a D10 that doesn't rip.Dozers that are used as pushers or tip tractors on coalsites in this country tend to use D9's (except Becher).The 952 in the background was A C McKies of Inverness and was an excellent old machine.
The Terex 3309 was one of three on this job belonging to Gillespie's of Glasgow.They were Cummins powered and in good order.The tip it's on was filling in a valley next to the new M74.It was never benched in correctly and was later moved with the D10(about six weeks work!) so that we could bench it into the backside of the hillside.

[nick lamb]

The D9G was a great machine to keep up with the younger D9's.Morrisons had great respect for this D9 and my two old D8H's for some reason.For the record this D9 only suffered a cracked fuel tank and a cracked trunnion in about a year of ripping on this section.Unfortunately when it first came on site it blew a finaldrive like I had never seen before!.The gears were mashed,the deadshaft had pulled the studs out of the main chassis and the whole lot was a disaster.I thought it was scrap frankley but the fitters spent a week drilling out the deadshaft bolts,welding up the interior bevel casing and refitting the rest and back to work she went .Fair play to the skill of the fitters.My D8's were well behaved too.One didn't breakdown at all and the other one required a slewing clutch breakband.No big deal.Levacks D9L burst a couple of radiators and a track seal,Stokeys's new D9N had the eq bar bearings collapse and the other D8L's,D9N's behaved well too.It was the newish D10N of Fentons that was the most unreliable.
You have to remember the harsh conditions these machines were working in 14/15 hours a day.They took alot of generall maintenance in welding up cracks on buckets,blades,skips and trackframes.Morrisons were paying for the ripper tips which could last three hours or a day and a half.Cat tips were best.Esco weren't up to this type of rock.
The OK and Leihbherrs were more than a match for the Cat 245's and Ackerman HD25's.This site was not suitable for Komatsu excavators as with the exception of Balfour's who ran a PC 650 no one owned anything bigger than PC400 size.Also Balfours big PC 650 wasn't as good as the big Leibherr 962 and 972 machines.

[Tracshovel]

Great series of pictures Nicky!

[Joes1989]

Great Pics! Were there any of Stokeys Excavators on site?

Joe

[RichardJW~]

An absolutely fascinating account Nicky! Thanks for taking the time to post

[nick lamb]

Hi Joes,none of Stokey's 245's were on this site I am afraid allthough they did have a 245B and some Cat dumpers on a little coalsite a few miles away for Wimpey Mining.I had a D8 on that job for Wimpeys as Stokey's were finishing the coaling.I will post pics sometime.
Thanks for the interest to all you readers!
The last pic shows a rareish Cat D7H dozer.There weren't many around at that time and this one belonged to WM Grant Minerals of Bathgate.They also had some 35t Moxey's on this site too.
Also note the Stokey Plant livery of the time.

[nick lamb]

A couple of close ups of a D9L.These really are big animals.They dwarf the current D9T series tractors and when The D10N parked up next to it there was little difference apart from the blade.Becher and Blackwells still run D9L's to this day.I often had my D8's on either side of the blade trying to push it up the batter as they were so steep.

[John Gaunt]

Hey Nicky, What a great set of pictures and a great account of machine reliability. Thanks a lot for taking the time to share with us

[nick lamb]

Here are some for Joes.At the time I was starting this job I also had a D8 finishing at the section down the road where we had been the previous year.This was mostly gravel and shaley muck and was a great hire.Not much rock on that section.Their were three D8 and boxes belonging to Levack's,two 245B's,one 235C,and one 229 loading a fleet of new Volvo A35's and five old Cat 769B's which were in mint order.A couple of D6H's took care of the fill areas.Again the operators would swap around machines for a break in the monotony.Here I am in a 235 loading 8 wheel tippers(I'm not just a dozer nut!).The bottom pic also has me in it somewhere.This pic was taken by one of the lads in the pub on a Saturday whilst I was serviceing one of the D8's.