Crawler Tracks

Take a cleated tractor tire and cut a ring section out of the middle as wide as you like. Stretch it over the drive wheels. You could use small tires, and inflate them to tension the tracks. Or, for metal tracks, take large roller chain and weld angle iron across the link plates, spaced appropriately. There is a roller chain made with fastener plates already on it, but you did mention budget. The rubber track might be safer for a kid, anyway.

RJ

How about snowmobile tracks...???? Easy to come by, lots of sprockets,gears,etc.....

Get a bunch of really big door hinges (or make them) and bolt them together end to end for the length that you need and then bolt the ends together. Use the bolt ends as drive cogs. Take a set of garden tractor rims and weld lengths of re-bar across them (like widely spaced barrel slats) to mesh with the track's drive cogs.

How about 3 or 4 parallel v-belts spaced an inch or so apart on each side. since the youngun is probably gonna want to use this around the house there'd be less damage to the yard and such. Set it up as a half track with steerable wheels up front and you'd probably have a more practical vehicle/toy. That would save having to design and build a functional braking/steering system.

Harold Burton (Collum Puniceus)

That's what I was thinking too. Depending on where you are in the country, there are lots of snowmobile scrap/rebuilding places where one can probably get old tracks dirt cheap. One may even be able to get really old ones from the days where snowmobiles often had 2 narrower tracks about the width one would need for a tractor.

In Seattle, Bent Bike has several old snowmobiles sitting around. I seem to remember some place in Minnesota having a web site and listing a lot of trashed machines and parts also.

Koz

j.b. miller wrote:

The Lindeman tractor company in Yakima, Wa used to do a good business making tread kits for Deere tractors. I don't think that the company is still in busness, but the massive press used to make the treads is preserved.

Every summer at the Pioneer Power show in Union Gap, Wa (just outside of Yakima) a forge is set up and red-hot plates are run through the press to make replacement treads for club members.

I don't suppose it helps you much, but if you live in the Pacific Northwest, you might want to check it out.

I have track chain for sell.... More than enough to do a tractor...$100.00

A guy built one for his child including articulated treads. Check out his web site.

John H.

Artemia Salina wrote: : Get a bunch of really big door hinges (or make them) and bolt them together : end to end for the length that you need and then bolt the ends together. Use : the bolt ends as drive cogs. Take a set of garden tractor rims and weld lengths : of re-bar across them (like widely spaced barrel slats) to mesh with the track's : drive cogs. --Hey, this is a really neat idea; go to the local steel yard and you can buy "piano hinge" in any size and length. Cut a long one up and it's weldable stock, too.

-- "Steamboat Ed" Haas : "The Faceless Conglomerate Hacking the Trailing Edge! : you can trust...

---Decks a-wash in a sea of words---

crawler(bulldozer)

Back on 1/16/04 Mark Higham asked how to make simple crawler tracks for a bulldozer. I remembered a site that had a few different ways of acomplishing that but could not remember were it was since I didn't save it. I came across it again when I started looking for a way to make such tracks for a "snow cat" I want to scratch build.

I'd like to build something that would be a one person vehicle. It would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 to 6 feet long with a 2 feet wide chassi and 2 feet wide tracks. It's to be powered by a 4 cylinder engine the drives a hydraulic pump that then drives individual hydraulic motors for each track. It will also have a cab with heat and a snow blower attached to the front. In case you haven't got a picture of what this looks like, think of the snow cats used on the ski resorts minus the blower. Something along that line but smaller. Why? Ever try to start a diesel tractor when it's -10 and then ride it around without a cab. It's a bit cold. You guys that live in western upstate New York can attest to that in the last several weeks. Bascially what I'm looking to do is build an enclosed snow blower with tracks. I'm open to suggestions as it won't be till this summer that I'll start on this project and I don't need people saying it be faster to buy something like this. After all we do metal working don't we? It's always fun to design something and then build it. And now for the site that has great info for tracks.

These guys build scale tanks to the 1/5, 1/6 and 1/8 and other scales. Great info if you want to build tracked vehicles of any kind.

Regards, Bernd

That's seriously cool, even if it is mostly made of wood. The same ideas would work in metal.

Gary

Right but if one were to do that, then the next step would be to make a bigger one, and then you would just *have* to start driving it around the neighborhood. Just for fun and all.

Next thing ya know, the homeland security folks would get their panties in a major knot....

Jim

================================================== please reply to: JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com ==================================================

Yeah, well, you'd have a *tank*, right? Might be a bit like the cows with guns, though, you'd also need chickens in choppers to fly cover.

Gary

If you want tracks designed to power your vehicle through the snow, and readily available, go shopping at a nearby snomobile dealer.