[Bill Schwab]

Soil type dictates track life. We have crap for soil, abrasive as all get out. Rocks, gravel, demo bad for tracks. Rich loamy midwest soil, you might just get 3000 hours out of your tracks.

The other issues are usage. If you side slope, you should work with both sides of the machine, otherwise the cleats inside will wear on one side. You can rotate your tracks and save the llife as well, just like tires.

Rollers, if you see delamination, that is warranteeable. If the sides are scored and scraped, you should replace the roller because the side is what keeps the track aligned. Cracking in the grousers, normal. Splitting chunking, cut oif the loose rubber and run it. Tears all the way across the primary cords, toss it out.

The Cat CD disk shows every type of wear, and what is bad and what needs to be junked, as they teach in the class.. Adjustment as mentioned is critical. Too loose and the cleats will spin off the rubber. Too tight and you wear the centers out. There was even an asphalt guy who ran his 277 every day on the streets he paved. He had over 1800 hours and just getting due to replace. The info at the seminar, I was going in and going to take with a grain of salt, but, to have 30 or so owners and mujnicipalities in as well, confirming what was being tyaught was pretty assuring. One other thing you need to check is the rollers on the drive wheels. They should all spin freely or you will wear out the drive wheels. The same as the ring that holds it all together. It should be replaced if it gets under 3/16" thick.

I bascially forced them to tell me the costs of replacement and when I could expect to replace them. All in all, i thought the class was pretty well done, not too muc Cat one way, and Bobcat the other. They had a bobcat machine there and showed it's advantage, the only one really being that the track will not derail. But, with the rigid frame, you get beat up driving it, and the vulcanized steel is a destruction unit after 1000 hours bacause of the heat built up from the steel gear to steel drive in the track.

And you are right..We can take a pallet of Keystone standard units up a 2-1 slope without any trouble at all.