Hello folks. 

This is my first post here, I’ve been lurking for a while, and joined a month ago. 

Undercarriage parts always seems to be an issue,  hard to find, expensive if you can find it. Has anyone had any experience building up idler rollers and machining them to spec?  

Is this a good idea, or even possible?

Here is a thread on rebuilding bottom rollers that should be helpful. Be sure to follow it on all three "pages"

Welcome aboard Ryan

www.acmoc.org/bb/discussion-d72/27883-bu...s-by-welding?start=0

Lots of good information on those 3 pages!  Thanks for posting the link!  

Ryan.E wrote:

Lots of good information on those 3 pages!  Thanks for posting the link!  
 

See ACMOC saves time and money.

there is a lot of conservation info available. a fair bit of it is in the members library.

I built up idlers for my D7 and didn't turn them. Just guide on a portion of the rim that doesn't show a lot of wear, like the center part, and stay pretty close to a constant depth by it. 7018 rod on a Cat steel produces an alloy that is pretty darned tough. Machining might be pretty slow and expensive, and we're not building a pocket watch here anyway. I also zigzagged a hard-surface bead over the running surface, and it has yet to wear down to the 7018 layer. This was a bunch of years ago; it has worked well.

When the rollers were shot on my D2, I priced 16 bearing sets and seal sets, some new shafts and assorted. and hadn't even gotten up to the actual cols of welding up 8 rollers when the cost already had met the cost of eight D3 rollers brand spankin' new! It cost a bit to put about 5/8 inch of steel under the frames and drill and tap for the D3 rollers, but they work well and will easily outlive me.

Just a few things to think about.

I question the need for 1-1/4" under the track frames. Mine were done in the Halton Cat shop and they used 5/8" or maybe 3/4. If it's low, it sure didn't hurt the performance of the machine, and might have taken away some of the old rocking-chair effect of the short ag tracks. I took their word for it and it has been a good setup, but that call for thicker steel keeps coming up. Is it really needed? What is the measurement from roller surface on the rails to the top of the bearing? Is it actually 1-1/4" difference? Or more or less? I'm just curious, should have checked all of this while my D2 was in Halton's (Now it's Peterson's) shop.