I buy a lot of used equipment – it’s cheap, tax free, and it gets the job done.  I peruse Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist everyday looking for good deals.  Most of the time I feel I come out ahead, but I recently purchased a bulldozer to make some improvements to the ranch and I think I may have gotten the short end of the stick.

 

When I bought this item, I was aware of some deficiencies that required correction, including broken bolts on the guide brackets that secure the blade to the blade carrier. While taking things apart to repair this, I exposed a deeper, more insidious defect.  This dozer has a six-way blade which pivots, tilts, and raises.  The tilting mechanism enables you to lower one corner of the blade to make a trench in the dirt (or grade on a slope).  The tilt function relies upon a central pivot point, and guides along the side to secure it.  The broken bolts mentioned earlier were part of the guide retainers, and upon removing them, I noticed that quite a bit of metal was worn away on the guides.  

Realizing that this issue was not a result of regular use, I became curious and decided to investigate further. It was during that exploration that I discovered that the central pivot point had separated from the blade.  It’s pretty hard to describe, but you can see from the picture that the circular pipe got ripped away from the blade.  This pivot point takes a lot of abuse as it carries the weight of the blade and transmits the lateral forces to the blade carrier.  Because this pivot point had failed, those forces were being transmitted to the guides – thus wearing them down.  

After taking off the blade to assess the extent of the damage, it became evident that this had been repaired previously. There were signs of previous efforts to restore the metal thickness on the blade guides and retainers, as well as indications of past welding repairs to the central pivot point. Repairing and restoring this is going to be a challenge.  I have no formal training in welding and limited experience practicing this craft, so this repair job will be quite challenging for me. Despite feeling disappointed that I have to make these repairs, I am actually excited about the opportunity to improve my welding skills.

In an effort to help other people who encounter similar problems (or to help avoid them), I am going to put together a few YouTube videos discussing “things I wish I knew before purchasing a bulldozer” and documenting the repair process.  If you were unaware that we have a YouTube channel, that's okay - there isn't much content on there yet. We have a few videos showcasing our animals and a couple of projects, but if you're interested in this kind of content, please subscribe and follow along as I work to restore this bulldozer and turn a difficult situation into a learning opportunity.