First Photos From Pimpama - end of July.

[Deas Plant]

Hi, Folks.
Just got my PC back from a bit of an upgrade, going from 80 Gb of hard drive to 640 Gb hard drive. Storing all these digital photos takes up nearly as much space as my overweight ex-wife. LOL. Now I'm not too sure that she would like me saying that but she doesn't visit here so I don't THINK I need to worry about any hit-man behind me.

Now that I have the PC back, I can start posting some photos of a couple of rallies that I have been to recently. First, the local one, about 5 minutes away from home. South Coast Restoration Society, Rifle Range Road, Pimpama, Queensland, DownUnder. July, 28-29, 2007.

 

[Lashlander]

Nice pics Deas. Those old tow behind rippers look like they would have been a pain to use.

 

[72V]

Nice looking ol' 7. Is that the same cat that had its shift lever broken off and repaired?

 

[Deas Plant]

Of towed rooters and snapped 'mixing sticks'.

Hi, Lashlander.
Having tried towed rooters, mounted rippers and breaking hard stuff out with just the blade, I feel I might be faintly qualified to state with absolute certainty that a towed cable rooter may not be nearly as good as a mounted hydraulic ripper but it beats the bejazuz out of breaking hard material out with just the blade or trying to push scrapers through totally unripped material.

And you might be surprised at just how well those jiggers get into the ground. They pretty much 'suck' themselves into almost anything but solid rock. That one weighs about 3 tons. The bigger models, towed behind a D8, weighed 7 or 8 tons and would rip pretty tough shale. The trick is to go round and round in circles rather than back up for each pass. This does need an awareness of other traffic around the site, especially scrapers and push dozers, 'cos about half the time you are going in the opposite direction to most of the traffic.

Hi, 72V.
I see you've been reading through old posts on other sites. Yes, that is the same tractor that had the broken 'mixing stick' in March last year at Toowoomba. It was re-welded that same day and was back in action without a drama for the rest of the weekend. It does however need some slight re-bending to allow selection of 3rd gear in reverse.

On that same weekend, a small rock became wedged in a sheave at the front of the LeTourneau model M pan that we were pulling and stopped the ejector and apron returning to the loading positions. It took longer to find the rock - we didn't even know it was a rock until we found it - than it did to smash it to free the rope up again. Funny thing about it was that the sheave was about 3 feet ABOVE and AHEAD of the highest point that any load ever got to. Let me know when you figure out how that happened.

 

[Lashlander]

Thanks for the info Deas. Having never seen or had to use one I was curious about its uses.

 

[Deas Plant]

Moor Foe-ters

Koehring 604 dragline at work.

 

[Deas Plant]

The One That Didn't Get To Play.

LeTourneau Super C with LP scraper. The owner of this machine was recovering from 3 serious operations in 2 weeks and could not make the weekend. He gave us full permission to use the rig during the weekend but we couldn't get the flat tyre to seal so the old girl didn't get to play.

This machine and earlier LeTourneau 2-wheeled tractors had clutch-and-brake steering, similar to the 8R and 2U Cat D8's, except that the steering brakes were hand levers too. If you were going downhill with the load pushing the engine, you had to 'cross-steer', pull the steering clutch lever on the side you wnated to turn AWAY from. This allowed the load to push that side faster while the engine was slowing the wheel on the side you wanted to turn to. The other part of this trick was letting the lever go when you had turned enough and then pulling the other lever to straighten up again.

Quite a few operators were caught out by this system, many fatally. This resulted in these rigs being called 'widow-makers'.