What does catastrophic failure caused by a lack of maintenance look like? Let鈥檚 look at an example: a totaled planetary on a John Deere 332 final drive.
Here are some other Shop Talk Blog posts that might be helpful:
Here is the totaled planetary ring gear. If you look closely at the pictures, you can see where the gear teeth on the ring gear look like they鈥檝e been chewed. As you can imagine, the planetary gears are also severely damaged. And it all likely started with a leaking seal that allowed the gear oil to leak out so that metal-to-metal contact started. This ring gear is totaled -- we won鈥檛 even try to repair it.
There鈥檚 more damage to that planetary system than just the gears. Here, chunks of metal are missing along the top of the image. Again, that metal is going to stay inside the hub.
Here鈥檚 the inner race of the main bearing on this John Deere 332 final drive motor. Dr Drive has his finger on the top shoulder, but as he follows it there鈥檚 just missing metal. The good news is that we can build up the shoulder again if we refurbish this planetary.
There is no way the seal remained effective in the torn-up mess indicated by Dr. Drive鈥檚 finger. He almost cut himself trying to show how bad the damage was, but it鈥檚 something our techs can restore.
Now, look at the posts holding the planetary gears and their bearings in place. You don鈥檛 even have to look closely to see the damage. The gears got out of alignment along multiple axes and tore up the bosses through metal-to-metal contact. Our experts can restore those posts, but it will take a lot of surface preparation, welding, and more.
This final drive motor was a victim of a lack of maintenance.
When a leak starts, the gear oil levels start dropping. That leaves components like bearings, gear teeth, and splines to experience damaging metal-to-metal contact. Scratches, gouges, , and result as metal breaks off, generating metallic particles and slivers. These pieces of metal will lead to more damage in a cycle of mechanical destruction.
What could have prevented this level of catastrophic damage? Just one of these would have helped:
No doubt, this final drive motor had developed severe issues with vibration, noise, and overheating before it failed. This is why we encourage owners and operators to notice if there are changes in behavior or performance. Noticing a leak and refusing to ignore signs of failure will save you money.
The damage seen in this final drive motor didn鈥檛 happen overnight. Someone ran this drive until it was destroyed, and we see that quite a bit. We get it: you have deadlines and things that must be done. However, reactive maintenance, replacing something after it breaks, is not good for your final drives or pocketbook. Take care of your final drives and prevent costly catastrophic failures like this on.
And when something does go wrong, we鈥檒l get you back running.