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AB Solutions put the tracks on again…

We discussed causes and there was a bit of humming and uncertainty and they wondered if the track was shot, or if the track was half-shot and the rocky terrain might be a problem.

So after they repaired, and considering nobody could tell me if I was doing anything wrong, or if the digger needed some work I told Kennards (the owners of the excavator) they could come and collect it.

Considering it was now Friday, they could not get out there and I was going to have a large paper weight on my property through till Monday.

So the machine sat there and…and…and these machines are so expensive…that you just can't leave a machine like that alone…when it's free!..

And I fell to the temptation.

I went back to work, promising myself that I would avoid doing any reversing (as that was the move that was always causing the track to come off), and the pad pad for a future house at “Two Trees” …

This is the view from the living room:

And of course… Happened again.

But since I had said I wouldn't touch the machine, I couldn't exactly call Kennards or AB this time, I had to go buy a chain and emply my my trusty specialists.

Specialist #1:

And Specialist #2:

And this time we thought ahead and bagged the dog poo:

So that when we used the blade to push in the idler it was a smooth operation…

And when we hooked the chain around the track just as Francois did twice…

We got the track back on by ourselves.

I sheepishly returned the digger to the place where AB had left it, and we congratulated ourselves.

A week ago I was barely able to use a paper clip without stabbing myself, and here we were, whacking away at bushes and taking out shrub and taking down fences and putting on 400Kg tracks onto 5.5tonne excavators…

Pretty cool…. (Note that the following photo is photo-shopped to make my gut look a little bigger and middle aged to make it look a little more realistic).

All in all another nice day.

Note that In the meantime, back at the apres-ski lodge, the other assistants were totally unaware of it all…

But glad they could enjoy their holidays. They both deserved it judging from their grades.

We whacked away at the track with my crowbars and his sledge hammer. For at least a couple of hours, with him talking about all these techniques he'd heard would work.

Helen was pretty good with that sledge hammer.

But in the end it was a wash.

Next day, Tuesday, up came the pros from ABSolutions.

Francois (on the ground) and Cam (backside). Francois moved to 6 months ago from South Afrikans, where he was used to excavators that are 20 x bigger than my toy, and nothing can be moved by human labour. So he very elegantly used the machine against the machine, using the bucket to push in the idler to give us the slack we needed and then put a chain around the track and used the stick and boom to pull the track onto the sprockets..and then the same with the idler.

Frankly, it was practically poetic and graceful. In a muddy, clumpy, kind of way.

But I was giddy! With my digger back, I could roar across the hills and catch up on 2 precious days lost.

So I sped back and forth to cut the rest of the path and was getting somewhere:

But…life is cruel.

And it happened again on the same track.

It's embarrassing. Going to have to call back AB Solutions to help out again.

But I'm starting to think of the digger as my Stephen King thing…