After several years in development and field trials in abrasive Canadian oil sands, Komatsu’s updated bush structure for its D275A-5, D375-5 and D475-5 bulldozers significantly reduces wear on undercarriage components.
Instead of the conventional fixed pin and bush system, the dual-bush rotates, allowing the pin and bush to spin independently of one another while being continuously lubricated in a sealed gallery.
Unlike those traditional systems, Komatsu’s dual-bush doesn’t require operators to remove the track on larger dozers at half-life to perform pin and bush turn, thereby eliminating maintenance and downtime costs.
“The complete undercarriage system – pins, bushes and idlers, etc – are designed to wear at the same rate, allowing change out to be carried out at the same time, resulting in big savings for operators over the life of their machine,” said Bruce Gale, Komatsu’s national sales and business development manager.
In the company’s own testing, it found that the new undercarriage system achieved double the standard period of use at 3600 hours. Komatsu says this extended durability makes the dual-bush undercarriage particularly well suited to highly abrasive applications such as sand mining.
Source: Komatsu Australia/Customer Support Division/The Project Group