Welcome

I've just got off the phone with HirePool.

They'll be delivering an 8 tonne digger in 24 hours. Bigger is better they say (this time with steel threads, which don't come off as easily as rubber threads).

PS: I'd like to bring your attention to the fact that it was always the right track that came off. Which I believe makes it highly improbable that it was human error. Probably was just had a lemon track that was time to be replaced. Happens. No biggie.

AB Solutions put the tracks on again…

We discussed causes and there was a bit of humming and uncertainty and they wondered if the track was shot, or if the track was half-shot and the rocky terrain might be a problem.

So after they repaired, and considering nobody could tell me if I was doing anything wrong, or if the digger needed some work I told Kennards (the owners of the excavator) they could come and collect it.

Considering it was now Friday, they could not get out there and I was going to have a large paper weight on my property through till Monday.

So the machine sat there and…and…and these machines are so expensive…that you just can't leave a machine like that alone…when it's free!..

And I fell to the temptation.

I went back to work, promising myself that I would avoid doing any reversing (as that was the move that was always causing the track to come off), and the pad pad for a future house at “Two Trees” …

This is the view from the living room:

And of course… Happened again.

But since I had said I wouldn't touch the machine, I couldn't exactly call Kennards or AB this time, I had to go buy a chain and emply my my trusty specialists.

Specialist #1:

And Specialist #2:

And this time we thought ahead and bagged the dog poo:

So that when we used the blade to push in the idler it was a smooth operation…

And when we hooked the chain around the track just as Francois did twice…

We got the track back on by ourselves.

I sheepishly returned the digger to the place where AB had left it, and we congratulated ourselves.

A week ago I was barely able to use a paper clip without stabbing myself, and here we were, whacking away at bushes and taking out shrub and taking down fences and putting on 400Kg tracks onto 5.5tonne excavators…

Pretty cool…. (Note that the following photo is photo-shopped to make my gut look a little bigger and middle aged to make it look a little more realistic).

All in all another nice day.

Note that In the meantime, back at the apres-ski lodge, the other assistants were totally unaware of it all…

But glad they could enjoy their holidays. They both deserved it judging from their grades.

We whacked away at the track with my crowbars and his sledge hammer. For at least a couple of hours, with him talking about all these techniques he'd heard would work.

Helen was pretty good with that sledge hammer.

But in the end it was a wash.

Next day, Tuesday, up came the pros from ABSolutions.

Francois (on the ground) and Cam (backside). Francois moved to 6 months ago from South Afrikans, where he was used to excavators that are 20 x bigger than my toy, and nothing can be moved by human labour. So he very elegantly used the machine against the machine, using the bucket to push in the idler to give us the slack we needed and then put a chain around the track and used the stick and boom to pull the track onto the sprockets..and then the same with the idler.

Frankly, it was practically poetic and graceful. In a muddy, clumpy, kind of way.

But I was giddy! With my digger back, I could roar across the hills and catch up on 2 precious days lost.

So I sped back and forth to cut the rest of the path and was getting somewhere:

But…life is cruel.

And it happened again on the same track.

It's embarrassing. Going to have to call back AB Solutions to help out again.

But I'm starting to think of the digger as my Stephen King thing…

The digger was still missing a track.

So Gareth came up to help, on a National Holiday, no less.

Gareth was sure we would succeed. Then again, Gareth had never done this before.

We whacked away at the track with my crowbars and his sledge hammer. For at least a couple of hours, with him talking about all these techniques he'd heard would work.

I asked him where he was getting his information. He mentioned brushing up on a web page before coming up.

Ah.

Helen got in on the fun too and turned out to be pretty good with that sledge hammer while we both strained at the crowbars, trying to not show each other, or the lady in our presence, that we were actually about to bust a gut.

But in the end, it was a bust. The digger was still missing a track.

Gareth was wrong.

First thing this morning, read the manual.

Page 83 showed how to open the “nipple” (who comes up with those names?), in order to let out the hydraulic grease from the track, releasing the tension and getting some slack, then put the track back on. The graphics and the text were very clean and straight forward looking.

So off to Bunnings to get a crowbar and some adjustable wrenches.

Then up to the field. Fog. Lightly Raining. Mud. And digger still in the ditch with no space to move in close to work on the track.

An hour spent to move three meters forward and one meter to the left.

Finally got the space I needed to lift that side of the excavator off the ground and see what's what.

It's muddy is what.

But I did found the nipple in the mud.
Except the nipple is hard and won't come off for 10 more minutes.

Finally use two wrenches and the thing comes out. Turns out that nipple is just a fancy name for a nut.

Then the grease starts oozing out slowly like blue dog poop.

Funny enough, unlike the nice drawing in the manual, nothing else happens. Track remains highly unmovable.

Is raining lightly, every time I look upside down into the underside to see what's going on my glasses are either trained out, misted up or simply slide off into the mud.

Clear off the tracks, scraping away with a crow bar, mud falling down on everything, including lunch.

Still doesn't move.

I call up the service center to ask about that. He asks me if I have a strap and sprocket to pull the track sideways. I don't.

He then suggests I use option two other tools: grunting and swearing.

An hour later I call Helen to go buy a strap and sprocket,but she says she can only do that after laundry, in an hour. More swearing.

Move on to taking more of the #6 staples out of the deer fence as we will be taking down about 60 meters of the stuff later in the week.

Helen shows up. With a strap. The strap is marvelous. The most expensive marvelous strap in the world that can lift 30 tonnes. So marvelous that I have no idea how to use it.

Is now 4.31 pm. I call the service guys again. Turns out that they closed at 4.30.

At which point I decide that with mud in places I didn't know mud could get in to, with feet as cold and wet as of is I'm walking around with foot basins on my feet and I've been beaten by a 59 dollar strap, that it was time to go home.

Stopped on the way home at the liquor store. Even though I did not succeed I DESERVED it.

Well, so there I am with the rented 5.5t excavator (because there was no 8t, as I was recommended) – having luckily spent the previous evening reading up on how to use them. Turns out that was lucky, because the guy who was suppossed to show me how to do things… didn't show up.

One small issue, the neighbours were curious and came over to check things out.

And would not go away. Had to hang out with them a while. Opinionated bastards called Paddington and Buster. Swinging their horns around ( to show that they didn't like me touching their head, belly fine though) a bit too close for comfort.

Finally started up after watching an expensive hour go by and they left when the dust started flying.

Things were going smoothly, and time flew by, although near the end of the day found out that treads can fall off. Bummer. Having to get a neighbour to come out and show me how to get it sorted out first thing in the morning.

Day 1 off 4 finished. Going to bed.