Wonder why parts aren’t available?

[CliffordK]

I just started working on my CAT 977K. So far no big parts for it.

I took some hydraulic hoses to the local CAT dealer.

I've taken Ford, Kubota, and John Deere hoses to them and they've made them all on the spot. But for the CAT hoses, they only had the parts in stock to make 1 hose. 2 more hoses had to wait for fittings to come in.

I wanted it running last week, and pushed to get all the parts. Eventually I'll probably go through and replace quite a few hoses and clean up other parts.

 

[5030]

Watching the video, I'd say none of the stuff was final machined and that tells me they are rejects for whatever reason. I do some 'dumpster diving' myself and it's rare today to find anything worth keeping and most places will call the law on you for doing it anyway. My best dumpsters are at Lowes, Home Despot and Harbor Freight actually.

 

[CliffordK]

Watching the video, I'd say none of the stuff was final machined and that tells me they are rejects for whatever reason. I do some 'dumpster diving' myself and it's rare today to find anything worth keeping and most places will call the law on you for doing it anyway. My best dumpsters are at Lowes, Home Despot and Harbor Freight actually.

How much more machining do you expect?
A few track pads? Ready to install?
A pile of wear plates of some sort. Painted. Looked ready to install.
A bunch of nuts and bolts. I didn't see them closely, but could be the track bolts I'm looking for.
A few large bearings.
I'm not seeing anything that screams defective to me.

It more likely is spare wear parts for an excavator that either broke down or was sold, and the new model doesn't use the same parts.

He'll probably get $100 to $200 for a pickup load of scrap steel.

Throw it up on E-Bay, Craigslist, and Facebook, and it is easily a $10,000 load, but it will take some work to sell it.

 

[lincmercguy]

Throw it up on E-Bay, Craigslist, and Facebook, and it is easily a $10,000 load, but it will take some work to sell it.

Didn't watch the video on this one, but I've had pretty good luck selling power tool parts on Ebay. I had a DeWalt compressor motor die and a bandsaw I was trying to sell after I upgraded, but some parts stripped out and I didn't think it was worth repairing. I took both apart and sold the parts in small related assemblies, listing all part numbers from Ereplacementparts, a few pictures, and the model number of the unit. Almost all items sold without much effort. It was easier if it was something that would fit in a Priority Mail box of some type.

 

[CliffordK]

The problem with dozer and excavator parts is that everything gets heavy quickly. While one track pad might fit in a priority box, a half a dozen of them will be overweight.

There was one pin of some sort that was so heavy that the guy just left it in the dumpster.

One could ship one of those wear plates, but undoubtedly a buyer would want the whole pile. Freight? Local Sales?

 

[panamaguy]

To a company, that stuff has already been paid for, depreciated and charged off at a considerable gain to the company for tax relief. Selling it, in any manner, would subject the company to a host of accounting, legal and tax problems. It's not worth it so it goes into a bin.

Correct. I did contract work for a Ford warehouse in Canada and they did the same thing. Into the scrap bin, when I ask why they did not sell it to their dealers at a discounted price they told me in the bin is a 100% tax write off whereas selling it is only a partial tax write off. Standing looking into that roll off bin was heart breaking but the bean counters know there stuff. One of Fords security guards would follow the truck from. The warehouse to the gate of the scrap yard to make sure the driver was not unloading at his house on the way.