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TIL my mini excavator threw a track because I ignored one worn sprocket
I was digging a drainage trench behind a shop in Reno on Tuesday and about 40 feet in the track popped off the right side. Everyone told me it was just the tension, so I tightened it and kept going, but it came off three more times that same afternoon. Turned out the drive sprocket teeth were worn down to nubs and no amount of adjusting was ever going to fix it. A mobile guy came out and quoted me $850 for the sprocket plus a service call, which is way less than the two days of rental I burned doing nothing. Has anyone here run a sprocket past the wear limit and gotten away with it, or does it always end like this?
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davis.casey29d ago
Sprockets don't just wear out overnight, if you'd been checking it even once a month you would've caught the teeth before they turned into nubs. Tightening the track was never the fix, sounds like you were chasing the wrong thing from the start. And saying the service call was cheaper than two rental days just means you ate the rental cost either way, a working machine would've had that trench done Tuesday.
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