Hydraulic Press Jig for Grousers

[Buzz]

just fyi, with heavy use, the 1.5” bar channel grousers will begin suffering damage. 1” would be even worse. The best thing you can do is space them 4” or less to strengthen this flaw (3” would be better), but then your track starts to become very heavy. They also give up quite a bit of performance in comparison to grousers that have much more vertical surface area. They are a great budget track, but most of my customers have upgraded their grousers to the HD UV stabilized UHMW grousers (they are interchangeable on my tracks to help with upgrade costs). Also, unlike rounded edge, slippery UHMW, the square edges on the steel bar channel should not be run w/o track tuners. FYI, you can get around any middle tire slip-load on steel bar channel grousers by simply wrapping only (2) tires inside the track. Whether it?s front, middle, or rear half tracks, or even Quad (4) half tracks, the track grousers will centipede around the tires to perfectly match the tread speeds. So if you want to run steel bar channel grousers, just consider this. We no longer do it, but for me it?s a performance, bouyancy, and durability shortcoming. For the right shaped press dies (which is what I use), 20T is a bit weak. Also make sure each straight stick is cut to the perfect length (consistently with a jig stop) based on your grouser design and tire, mark the centerline of both your bar channel piece as well as your dies, and make sure all steel pieces are deburred and lubricated. And make sure your holes are punched before you bend. You will occasionally have to clean up rough spots in your dies with a flap disc to keep everything operating smoothly. I have made 10s of thousands probably of these grousers, but there are only a few applications where I will even bother because of what I mentioned previously. Time is a valuable resource, and grouser replacement sucks, especially when performance is a compromise. Adding tons of extra grousers defeats the cost savings pretty quick too. Once in awhile, a low profile bar channel grouser can be used when nothing else can (short of buying all new, smaller tires). But even then, I?m discouraged to do it anymore. Hard testing over time both myself and customers led me to giving you this advice/ Jeff ?ak buzz?

[Bennett20200]

Hi Buzz, thanks for the input. I'm not too worried about destroying the channel grousers due to heavy use, the machine I'm putting the tracks on is an older 88' Magnum and as much as I'd love to think it's the ultimate invincible machine, I know that it's aged and the combination of smaller axles and only 1 bearing extension (front axles only) means that I can't go hard on it like I could a newer machine. I'm speaking to another member now about picking up a set of used track tuners, so if they're in the budget at all I'll toss them on too. I'm glad to have the old high torque GU transmission here. I actually might pick up a second one if I can find it, just to have on hand. I have thought about half tracks, I'm considering adding an additional hinge in the middle of the track to make that a possibility while running in the spring time. In your experience, does running half tracks on the middle 2 tires increase the stress on them (especially the 1st middle tire) like it does the first tire when running full tracks? I'm wary to run them without a bearing extension on the first loaded tire. On that note, I think I remember reading a thread a few years back about someone designing bearing extensions for the older Argos? It's something I might look into at a later date. I mean hey, why pay retail price for something when I could make it myself for only double the cost + time? A bad habit of mine, but something I enjoy. When you mention spacing the grousers at 4", is that center to center or 4" of clear space in-between? I'm almost ready to start assembling the tracks, just waiting on a few lengths of back ordered channel to finish the last few bends. I took your advice earlier on on the belt sizing, I got a 9 inch belt cut down into a 4 and 5 inch strip and I think it should be ideal. I appreciate your input on this, I know you've made lots of these over the years.

For anyone who checks in on this thread for the original question (about the hydraulic jig) I've ultimately decided to make the grousers by bending by hand. I liked the thought of the jig due to the precise and consistent bends it could produce, but I found that ultimately I was spent more time thinking and worrying over making the jig then I would have if I just bent the tracks by hand. It's still an interesting thought, and there was lots of helpful comments to that end, but for now I'm just bending my grousers by hand. I'm most of the way through bending my grousers already and its only taken a few hours of work. It's taking maybe 3 mins per grouser including all set up time and cutting, much less than I expected. Although it did take quite a few attempts to get it right, once you've got your angles and distances sorted, I found the hand bending to be more precise and replicable than I would have guessed. I'll have just over 100 grousers when I'm done, so I should have a few spares.

[Buzz]

4” center to center max if using steel bar channel.

By the way, 6x6world spelling autocorrect sucks. And someone needs to increase the auto logout time to more than (1) min. Give me a break. People actually want info to help them and that must be thumb-typed

[john swenson]

my original half tracks i made i , i just used 1'' wide flatbar ( 3/16 '' thick ) for the grousers . not alot of grabbing area in mud , but they performed amazingly well . i think the tracks provided good footprints in the mud and the tire treads still did the grabbing . theres a video under johnboys half tracked max . have fun ....look forward to seeing your finished tracks . jboy

[Bennett20200]

It's been quite a while since I've updated on my progress here, life got in the way a bit and so did the spring hunting season. Last time I checked in on the site to post some progress, I actually thought they site had been decommissioned, so I'm glad that turned out not to be true!

Anyways, I more or less completed my tracks a while ago.. just in time for all the spring mud to be cleared up already. Oh well, I'll get lots of use out of them this winter and next spring I'm sure. I may try placing paddles on them and testing them out for duck hunting the marshes this fall, but we'll see. I *think* I have attached some photos below that show the mostly finished tracks. I did end up bending each grouser by hand, it took a while and there were a few that didn't make the cut, but overall I'm quite happy with the finished product. My only real mistake I think was that I made the bends a tad too steep, and as a result the tracks come too far up the sides of the tires and can, under the right circumstances, touch the front bearing extension. That was a design flaw on my part, I was worried that if I made the grousers too "shallow" that they may fall off the tire. However, they wrap much deeper than I anticipated when I was choosing the depth (and having only 22 inch tires doesn't help) so I've lost a bit of flotation there in addition to them sometimes touching the extension on the inside. Overall though, its not a big deal. I just need to reverse the bolts on the inside of the tracks to gain a bit of clearance that way, and then I'll form some UHMW sliders over the axle extensions to protect them if the inside of the track still manages to touch. If I have to replace them every few years, that's no big deal.

Thanks a lot to those of you who helped out with the tracks, especially Buzz & John, the information was invaluable and saved me a lot of time and money fooling around with different concepts. I hope to have an update in 6 months confirming the performance of the tracks in the snow and mud.

[BF6X6]

I like them. Nicely done sir.

[tbone9]

Nice job. Tracks look great.

[john swenson]

wow !! great job , they look '' store bought '' . looks like around 60 grousers per track . how many feet of channel did it take ? i think they will perform really well . maybe a video at some point . johnboy va.

[Bennett20200]

Thanks! It ended up taking exactly 100 grousers, but the tracks are a bit long so the final count may be 96 or so. I'll make sure to upload a video when I get some testing done for sure. As for the length of the channel, I can't remember now. Each grouser is, I believe, 22 inches. I want to say it was 5 sections of 40 foot is what I ended up using. You could do all the bending in a few hours for it once you got all set up. The step that took the longest was just figuring out where/how to place each bend on the metal bender. I had never used one before, so getting consistent bends to turn out the way I wanted took a long time. Worth it though!

[john swenson]

was it a homebuilt '' bender jig '' and did you use a wrench and cheater bar ? or what was the process ? just curious how you went about it . jboy va.