Volvo dozer????

[surfer-joe]

Volvo

Welcome to the site TopDeadCenter.

Your observations about Volvo equipment jive with mine in that most of the problems I encountered with them were electrical in nature.

The seal problems were not a big issue with us in the Volvo Artics, but our Moxy's leaked like crazy. Moxy's did not at the time have a vent in the final drive compartments, and if you ran them a considerable distance, the heat buildup would force the seals, not sure that Volvo didn't have the same setup.

If you run equipment near the coast in Florida, or anywhere near salt water for that matter, you may experience early and unstoppable corrosion problems in electrical systems and wiring. The salt in the air creeps into everything, and copper and lead deteriorate quickly in a salty atmosphere. Tough to stop it and some equipment makers haven't insulated or protected their systems enough to prevent the damage. Washing equipment frequently, even with fresh or city water, will oftentimes also produce the right conditions for excessive corrosion. This has been a real problem since manufacturers began relying on electrical components more and more.

Ha! Moxy rep visited our project one day, and he said, "you are not supposed to run our trucks that way!" (6-13 mile haul one way) I heard that from a Trabon rep many years ago in Wyoming. Trabon, unlike Moxy, then took steps to upgrade their equipment to the hard production schedule and punishment we were putting their equipment to. Moxy sniffed, and so far as I know, never changed a thing.

 

[equipmentjunkie]

Volvo Equipment

Volvo definetly has problems with there line of Off roads A-25D. The axle sealsblow out constantly, and the electrical problems that occur are, and can be very messy. Say anybody have any more info on volvo off road truck, and the axle set up they use?:usa

 

[surfer-joe]

Volvo

TopDeadCenter,

Just one more thought, as I spaced your comment on your lubrication woes. I never had any trouble with Volvo's reaching their recommended lube intervals, and that I can remember, never lost a Volvo compartment or a component to lubrication failure.

I generally used top quality name-brand lubricants produced by Texaco, Dryden (now Castrol), Texas Refinery Corp, Shell, Gulf (Canada), Mobil, and several others. Don't know what you folks are using, but taking a hard look at the quality might be in order.

Sometimes, due to operating conditions and other factors, iron just won't make it to the recommended interval. I used manufacturers and oil producers specifications as a guide, but my oil samples really dictated how often lubricants were changed. I generally sampled every compartment and watched the trends closely. The way operators treat their vehicle has a lot to do with it too. A hard charging hand can really stress internal components on a rig, and cause oil break-down. Maybe a close look-see at your operations might help.

You might want to consider the TRC 85/140 products for your trucks. They are not cheap, but I'd have to say that they reduced our long term costs considerably in scraper and electric-drive haul truck finals. The one product dropped final temperatures over a hundred degrees on a mining project in Arizona.

Good luck!

 

[Countryboy]

Welcome to HEF TopDeadCenter! :drinkup

 

[Countryboy]

Welcome to HEF equipmentjunkie! :drinkup

 

[Tegian]

Dozers have (For some reason) never been big on the Swedish/Scandinavian market which is the most likely reason for Volvo not producing one. Their stated goal is to offer a full line machines to keep taking market shares though so sooner or later their will be a Volvo dozer though.

If prior experiance are anything to go after they will enter the market by buying an exisiting dozer maker if there is one?

The articulated end-dumps now, they are a fine machine and I've had very good luck with them, better even than the Cat's and Moxy's.

Of course! Volvo are the orignal! Moxy and Caterpillar are just bad copies!

 

[Deas Plant]

Do I detect a faint bias here

Hi, Tegian.
I COULD be mistaken but methinks I detect a slight bias here.

Tegian
Probationary Member


Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Sweden
Posts: 2

Never mind. I'm willing to forgive a little national pride. Welcome to the forum.

 

[Tegian]

Me biased? I wonder where you got that idea


Just to back up my claim some: Where the articulated loader started 40years ago ....

http://www.volvo.com/constructioneq...ktell/Bolinder-Munktell+Livab+Moon+Rocket.htm

At that link you can click through Volvo's product history by the way and no dozers to be seen there except some Michigan wheeldozers. Caterpillar does have the lions share of dozer market here not that you see many dozers at all. You see some smaller Case every once in a while and I imagine (Never seen any though) that Komatsu (Who actually just recently entered the Swedish market) will be picking up market shares.


Just look at this beauty!

 

[Deas Plant]

Biased????????????????????????

Hi, Tegian.
Re: articulation - and you - and others - may like to take a look at this link. Not wishing to rain on your parade or dent your bias - or anything - just thought it was interesting.

http://www.constructionequipment.com/article/CA508191.html

And if you want to chase it even further back, Robert Gilmour LeTourneau may have started it all off when he built his first prime mover equipped scraper back in 1937 'cos it was articulated. And he built a lot of other articulated machines following on from there.

BUT, like your Volvo example, to the best of my knowledge, none of the LeTourneau machines were centre-pivot until maybe somewhere in the early to mid 1970's, by which time he no longer owned the original LeTourneau company anyway. Scoopmobile went centre-pivot in 1953.

Now you tell me why I might have gained the impression that you are biased. LOL.

And just for chuckles, here's a link that some of you might find interesting. Steve, is this sort of link worth putting into a 'sticky' folder for future reference?

http://www.spec-check.com/

 

[PSDF350]

Dozers have (For some reason) never been big on the Swedish/Scandinavian market which is the most likely reason for Volvo not producing one. Their stated goal is to offer a full line machines to keep taking market shares though so sooner or later their will be a Volvo dozer though.

If prior experiance are anything to go after they will enter the market by buying an exisiting dozer maker if there is one?



Of course! Volvo are the orignal! Moxy and Caterpillar are just bad copies!

Curious why not. The rest of the world find dozers quit usefull. Why not there?

 

[Tegian]

Doh ... I see I claimed the articulated loader was a Volvo idea. I meant articulated hauler. LM 845 was the first articulated loader from Volvo in 1970 by the way.

I blame it on the silly word you use articulated hauler :beatsme Here in Sweden we simply call them "dumper" easy enough word that should work even in english! Makes for a confusing translation though ... but not as bad as "motor grader" which we call vägskrapa (=road scraper) in Swedish, what you call scraper in english is quite a different thing though :Banghead

Now let us see if I can snake my way back towards the topic:


The origins of the articulated hauler was a tractor with a driven trailer, those were quite popular espcially for mainly forestry work. They were also used extensivly by the Swedish army to haul everything from ammo to fieldkitchens. Remove the frontwheels of the tractors and you have todays articulated hauler and the nordic style forestry forwarders and harvesters. Which today are built by mainly by John Deere(/Timber Jack), Komatsu(/Valmet) and Caterpillar oddly enough.


As a further side note The Swedish army new 150mm howizter will be mounted on a modifed and armored Volvo A35 chassi. Such an easy and cleaver idea one wonders why it have not been done before ....


And now we get back to the dozers and why they arent used that much here in Sweden:

I dunno really. Looking at the offical numbers for number of machines sold in Sweden last year you can see that a grand total of 13 new dozers were sold :drinkup So the Swedish market is pretty noexistent. Compare it with the over 1000 wheelloaders sold during the same time.

Part of it will be different cultures. Things are just done differently in different parts of world. Even here in such a small country (9 million people) the choice of machines can vary from part to part of the country. Most due to how ground conditions vary, some will be due to traditions or other "culture" related things.
I should also mention that the numbers of sold scrapers dont even register on the swedish market. They simply dont exist here and from what I gather it seems that you need a dozer to push them to get them started. So right there less dozers should be needed. My father who have worked in the construction business for around 40 years at small and big projects remember seeing scrapers in action once during all those years and after that job he said he saw the scrapers stand around to rust as there was no more jobs for them ...
Also a dozer is quite useless for snowremoval (As long as you actually care if the road is still left afterwards!) and as large parts of Sweden have a long and quite often snowfilled winters dozers are out and wheel loaders are in even if the dozer might be more suited for certain things at a construction site.

 

[Countryboy]

Welcome to HEF Tegian! :drinkup

 

[CatSkinner77V]

Oilsands YEEHAW!

I was in the oil sands all last winter running a brand new D11R. That was the most memorable winter of my life so far.... running a brand new 11R and all the young newfoundland camp girls, it was a good time! haha :drinkup