Revisiting Cat Pans

[DMiller]

Are seeing the abandonment of Deere or IH Case articulateds' with multiple pans and the resurgence of Cat Power Pans from old excavation yards. Primarily 627 base models. Lower fuel consumption, better materials transition, less failures and downtime.

 

[MG84]

I've been wondering about that myself lately. I've been causally looking for a small pull type scraper (5yds) for a couple years now. For not much more money I could get a Cat 613 or JD 762 with double the capacity. It would be something else to maintain but would be a whole lot faster and I wouldn't be putting undue strain on my farm tractors.

 

[OzDozer]

The difference is, Cat is built to industrial/construction standards - agricultural equipment is not. A lot of people don't understand the difference.

Used to get a lot of farmers here, mounting rippers on their wheeltractors, and then wonder why they pulled housings apart.
They thought they could do the same with the wheeltractor-mounted ripper, as a D4 or D6 did with a rear-mount ripper.

 

[DMiller]

A number of excavation companies around here from St Louis to Columbia MO went the articulated and drag pan combos attempting to cut costs. In conversations with contacts there they have found this less than economical. As you have noted these lighter machines are far more tender where are fine in soft soils to sand but in heavy compacted overburden or product are absolutely out of environ of use.

What most are managing is massive overhauls of what could be considered antique machines pre emissions so they remain efficient and less costly. Those that had significant fleets of these either eyeing scrapping or just field obsolescence parking are returning them to service.

 

[631G]

A good friend of mine is working on a new power plant north of Tampa and they’ve moved in 2 MTS scraper tractors with Deere 20cy pans. So far he’s telling me they’re holding up but they’re only pulling singles and push loading with a D6.

The last job I was on was also in Tampa back in 2012 and we then had Deere 9560 scrapers and doubles behind them that were cat pans. The Deere machines were all near new or straight from Moline and were scraper specials. They couldn’t handle the work of 2 shifts 6 days a week. The men from the Texas district that had the most experience with them said you need almost one spare for every three tractors to keep any production up. One tractor broke a front axle housing within a few hundred hours and the rest all had less catastrophic but still work stopping mechanical failures at low hours.

Also the hitches wouldn’t hold together with a push dozer chasing them after one of the pans was dropped off the train in an effort to increase loading speed and grade climbing ability when we built the stockpile at the soil cement plant we were running then.

Here in GA a larger earth works company is running a spread of 745 trucks with pans on them that I think are rated at 40cy. I think they’re K-Tech pans. Not sure how they’re hanging together but I did get to see two of them locally and was impressed. They’re only about a year old so time will tell

 

[DMiller]

Clay pits are the big ticket with small lakes/big ponds in this section of MO. Residential grading contractors still relying on four trax and articulateds on rubber tires with small pans, larger grade owners have nearly eliminated all the Deere and CaseIH stuff.

 

[terex herder]

The Case quad tracks were made to pull pans in sand. Not hard clay. The other problem with the pull pans is to get capacity, they made the pans wide, so more pulling force required. My elevator scraper had a 8 1/2' cut, 18 yd heaped. That capacity in a pull pan would be 16' wide. Another problem with pull pans is they won't hold grade like a scraper. As soon as they start digging in you have to start lifting the pan.

 

[Vetech63]

LOL.....My experience with pan scrapers............if you need to keep 5 working fulltime, you better have 10 on the job.

 

[DMiller]

That is NO Lie!! Devilish machines, really quirky as to how would fail.