Monday September 9, 2024 Guerneville CA.
Prep work
I thought I’d do some prep work on a road with Skiddy today. I rode on up into the hills and was just getting started and dumped a load of dirt on the road here and was doing a back blade drag to smooth out the dirt, when I heard the clunk, clunk of Skiddy’s track. Big oh, oh. I slipped a track. It didn’t fall off, but just went sideways a bit so it wasn’t working right.
Boo Boo Spot
I was on this steeper down hill spot when it happened and a car wouldn’t be able to get by me without me moving and I wasn’t sure I could move much.
I got out and looked at the track and saw it was off a bit. I thought maybe I could get it back on by backing up a bit, but no go, just clunk, clunk.
I was able to drive it slowly down the road a bit to a spot I could get off the road enough for a car to get by me and I tried again to get it back on by moving back and forward, but still no go.
Flat spot
I knew there was a flat spot a couple hundred yards down the road, so I carefully creeped down to it here.
I got out and looked over the track. It had slid into the machine and was not on all the bottom wheels the right way. I tried a couple things and decided I’d need some tools.
The track is half off all the bottom wheels but still on the drive sprocket correctly.
That double row of teeth is supposed to be in the center of that wheel on the bottom.
Need help
I was about two miles from my house, so I started walking down this road and through the park to my house where I hunted up my brother Tom for some help.
He was headed to the bank and would be back in about an hour.
YouTube to the rescue
I went in my house and had a look at YouTube as I’d seen a good video on an easy want to put the tracks back on so I hunted that one up and had a look at it.
Little logs
Little logs were the trick. I went out in my wood pile and got some of the size I thought I’d need and loaded them in Hondo and waited for Tom to return from the bank. I also put my small chainsaw in Hondo so I could made some more little logs if need be.
Getting it fixed
Tom and I rode Hondo up to where the machine was parked. I put some of the little logs in the bottom of the track and Tom got in and drove Skiddy back a bit and the track jammed tight. I’d used little logs that where just a wee bit too big in diameter causing the track to bind up. I cut some smaller diameter logs and we tried them and were able to get the track back on the back wheel properly. Then we tried the front wheel going forward instead of back and we eventually go the front aligned right too.
Basically, you put the little logs in the bottom of the track and then drive until they ride up on the wheel and the track falls back into place.
Just got the front track back on the front wheel. We did have a lot of problems with the redwood little logs I used being too soft and breaking up, but they worked. I’ll use harder logs next time and maybe make some out of steel pipe of the right size.
The track is all back on like it is supposed to be which took us about a half hour. Any other way to do this would of taken a lot of mechanicing and at least a couple of hours and a lot more work.
We just got the track back on and Tom is parking the machine.
That was the first time I’d lost a track and likely not the last time.
Because of the guy showing this way to do it on YouTube, things weren’t so bad.
Nice day.
