Right Side Sprocket

I finally got around to taking off the right side drive sprocket. It was the easy one because it was very loose because someone had replaced the studs with bolts and lock washers. As it says often in the discussion boards of http://www.cletrac.org/ never uses bolts and lock washers because they will not stay tight.

That advice is correct. The sprocket was loose because almost all of the bolts were loose. Therefore the holes on the sprocket are rather egged out from the sprocket flopping around. This caused me a bit of concern but I later discovered this can be managed (this will be explained in a later post).

I then went on to open up the final drive cover. I discovered about a half-gallon of "butterscotch pudding". It was some sort of nasty grease that had changed form over time. The final drives are supposed to be filled with straight 40W. Most bearings were in surprisingly good shape. The final drive bull gear had one of the old studs broke off in it. Hmm- that could be a challenge to get the old stud out and to re-stud the gear which has a few slightly reamed-out holes due to the loose bolts. We'll see how this goes in the future.