The Canyon Assault with Guilin Dozer

Cheers guys. If you are ever passing, drop in 🙂 I'll put up some more pics of the progress soon. I'm down in the canyon now, but still a bit of a steep grade, so a bit more shaping up. The shuttle clutch has been going great so far, but she now seem to have have developed issues with the left track. The brake tends to slip, and the steering clutch tends to slip… I adjusted the brake tighter, and it helped, but didn't solve it. I tried adjusting the steering clutch linkage, but no improvement. I presume that the steering brake and clutch are dry? Do you think that suggests there is oil in there making them slip…?

Well I got through, and it is now drive-able with a soft roader. Here are a few more pics of the building of the track.

This is the cut as finished.

This is where all that soil went! To give me space to build this ramp down to the canyon ledge.

Once down on the canyon ledge it was plane sailing to doze a nice track along the ledge to the top of the canyon and out into the 'eighty acres'.

Even to get to the start of the canyon track involved some fun dozing. 

Map of route

Yeah fun country hey. I was brought up in Devon, England, so I thought I was used to hills, but when we moved here in 2001 I realized that our hills back there were more like ripples in the carpet. Also farm back there was smaller than a couple of our paddocks here.

I do have a few vids on Youtube… but not of dozing… more suspension development stuff. The problem with videoing the dozing is it would all be a bit slow. I guess if I did a couple of hours of vid and then speeded it up x12 then it might be fun to watch. If you are interested in my vids of suspension and machining search for 'self regulating pneumatic suspension” or 'Levitation'. 

I have a fair bit of experience with tractors and tracked excavators, but this was my first real project using a dozer. So my opinion on the Guilin dozer is from that limited perspective.

I appears to be a very capable little dozer, appears to be the right weight for its size, and the right hp/ton ratio. It would be foolish to expect it to work as fast and hard as a heavier machine. The blade seem to have all the movement and angle variation it needs.

The only limitation I found capability wise that I thought was not comparable to other dozers I had seen working, was reversing up hill. She seemed nose heavy and very inclined to stand up on her tip toes and rock over to one side, which was somewhat disconcerting.  particularly when it is a looooong way down if she did tip over. Maybe I should make a 1/2 ton weight to go on her 3 point to keep the tail down.

Having the rear sprockets three feet off the ground and the bonnet (hood for you chaps in USA) closer to vertical rather than horizontal somehow doesn't seem ideal! 

Rich, the Alec Molton hydragas system was one of the systems that got me interested in suspension along with Citreon's hydro-pneumatic setup. I wanted a system that achieved more with less compromises than anything I could find, so I built my own. Ten years of sketch on back of envelopes and over a 1000 hours at the old lathe resulted in prototypes of a  “Self regulating fully pneumatic suspension system” I think is what I called it in the patent. (Patents are a foolish idea, and I would take a lot of persuasion to go there again.) Basically it is closer related to air suspension, with internal mechanical height control. The ride height, spring rate, and damping rate is all achieved with the same gas, and as a result remains directly proportional to each other and to the load carried. I find practice far more effective and fun than theory!!! 

Been a wet couple of days over here, so it will be interesting to see how the track has settled and coped with the weather.