Guide to Replacing Excavator Buckets & Teeth

29 Jul.,2024

 

Guide to Replacing Excavator Buckets & Teeth

Guide to Replacing Excavator Buckets and Teeth

December 5,

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This guide will teach you how to change excavator buckets and remove and change excavator bucket teeth to make the most of your earthmoving machinery. 

Excavators and mini excavators are versatile equipment, suiting projects across multiple industries, from construction and mining to maintenance and materials handling. The bucket and teeth styles you choose will play pivotal roles in project efficiency and vary depending on the nature of the job. The correct bucket and bucket tooth type can reduce downtime, enhance productivity, increase cost efficiency and expedite a project.

How to Change Excavator Buckets

Like any well-used components, excavator buckets wear out over time. If you do not replace a worn bucket, you risk exposing and damaging your excavator&#;s shank. To prolong your excavator&#;s life, you must practice preventive maintenance, including changing worn-out buckets with new ones.

The bucket style you choose will also impact job efficiency. You might need to change buckets quickly on the job, as specific bucket styles are better suited to particular tasks. Knowing how to change your excavator bucket quickly will help keep your machinery in excellent condition and boost productivity.

Follow these steps to change your excavator bucket:

  1. Level your buckets: Place your old and new buckets side-by-side on a level surface. 
  2. Remove the bucket&#;s lynchpins: Use a screwdriver to remove the lynchpins from your current excavator bucket.
  3. Detach the bucket: Lift the boom arm up and away from the excavator bucket until it is no longer attached.
  4. Align the new bucket: Reduce your excavator&#;s throttle speed to its lowest setting. Maneuver your boom arm to align the excavator&#;s dipper links above the new bucket&#;s ears.
  5. Lower the boom arm: Lower the boom arm and maneuver the dipper to line up with the new bucket&#;s lynchpin holes.
  6. Slide the pins into place: Slide the rear lynchpin into place. Be careful to avoid placing your fingers in the lynchpin holes.
  7. Lift the new bucket: Carefully lift the bucket into the air once you have the rear lynchpin inserted. The rear lynchpin should snap into place.
  8. Retract the ram: Retract the excavator&#;s ram to insert the front lynchpin.
  9. Move the bucket: Move the dipper around, rotating the bucket to ensure the bucket is secure and has a full range of motion. 

How to Remove Excavator Bucket Teeth

Like buckets, bucket teeth also wear down over time. Periodically replacing bucket teeth is crucial to avoid damaging their adapters. Learn how to replace teeth on an excavator bucket in a few easy steps below.

1. Select a Suitable Bucket Tooth Type

The first step is identifying excavator bucket teeth that are appropriate. Each bucket tooth type has a purpose suited to particular excavation jobs. The different teeth varieties include the following:

  • Chisel tooth: A chisel tooth is an earthmoving tooth with a high stacking surface. These teeth allow you to expertly excavate large quantities of soil, sand and gravel.
  • Tiger tooth: Tiger teeth come in single or &#;twin&#; teeth. Both a single and twin tiger tooth can easily penetrate frost, rock and hard soil during digging and trenching projects. However, a twin tiger tooth has a longer shelf life due to its additional penetration surface.
  • Rock tooth: A rock tooth is a steel chisel tooth that penetrates and moves rock, iron ore, stone or hard ground.  

2. Identify the Correct Pin Installation Style

Next, identify your excavator&#;s bucket tooth-pin installation style and gather your tools or removal device kit. There are two primary pin installation styles for excavators:

  • Top pin: A top pin installation style refers to an excavator bucket with a vertical or top-to-bottom tooth pin. 
  • Side pin: A side pin installation style features a horizontal or left-to-right pin and requires a longer tool to disassemble. 

3. Locate Your Factory Bucket Tooth Size

Choosing the correct bucket tooth size is crucial. You can identify the style and size of your factory bucket teeth by locating the part number on the tooth&#;s surface, interior wall or pocket edge. You can also measure the pin, retainer or tooth pocket size to identify tooth size.

4. Replace the Teeth on Your Excavator Bucket

Once you have the correct tooth size and your assembly toolkit ready to go, follow these steps to replace your excavator&#;s teeth:

  1. Stabilize the excavator bucket on a flat surface.
  2. Knock out the existing roll or keener pins with a pin removal device.
  3. Use a brush to remove debris or stains from the excavator&#;s shank adapter.
  4. Place the new tooth over the bucket&#;s adapter.
  5. Hammer the new roll pin into the adapter&#;s pinhole opening until it is secure.

How to Change Buckets on a Mini Excavator

Mini excavators are compatible with several bucket styles, making them suitable for various projects across multiple industries, including construction, farming, landscaping and maintenance. If you are familiar with changing excavator buckets, you will be pleased to know changing the bucket on a mini excavator is a similar process, regardless of the bucket type:

  1. Remove bucket safety pins: First, set your bucket next to the new bucket on a level surface. Lift the retainer ring and slide it out to remove the safety pin from your bucket.
  2. Detach the bucket from the excavator: Once you have removed the safety pin, lift the boom arm away from the bucket to loosen the lynchpin. Remove the lynchpin to detach the bucket from the excavator.
  3. Align the dipper with the bucket: Reduce your excavator&#;s throttle speed and align the dipper links above the new bucket&#;s ears.
  4. Pick up your new bucket: Slowly pick up the new bucket and maneuver it so that the pinholes align.
  5. Replace the lynchpin: Slide the new lynchpin into place after aligning the bucket&#;s pinholes. Once the lynchpin is in place, secure it with the safety pin.

Order Replacement Buckets and Teeth From Stewart-Amos Equipment Co.

Turn to Stewart-Amos Equipment Co. when you need help locating tough, high-performing excavator buckets or bucket teeth to meet your performance demands and quality standards. We offer an extensive inventory of top-caliber excavator and earthmoving equipment parts from trusted, well-known brands. 

Get in touch with us today if you need help identifying the right parts for your excavator or mini excavator. Our friendly, professional team has decades of industry knowledge and expertise to help you locate the part style and sizes you need for your earthmoving equipment. We will help you maintain your equipment to increase cost efficiency, reduce downtime and enhance productivity. 

Contact us online or call 800-482- to learn more about our product selection today! 

Are You Losing or Breaking Bucket Teeth? Follow This Guide

Broken or overly worn bucket teeth that need to be urgently replaced is a common source of frustration for those in the earthmoving game.

For more information, please visit Komatsu Excavator Bucket Tooth Company.

Unplanned maintenance and machinery downtime is a costly exercise and so a key focus should be ensuring the right bucket teeth and other ground engaging tools are supplied for machines and their operating conditions.

Why am I breaking or losing bucket teeth?

The most probable cause of broken bucket teeth, or one lost in service, is a worn adaptor nose, however digging conditions and operator skill can also cause broken bucket teeth.

Firstly, consider the frequency of your broken bucket teeth. Earthmoving is not an exact art and breakages can and do happen, however if you are constantly breaking or losing bucket teeth, you have a problem.

The breakage point can offer some insight into the cause of the break, however the most tell-tale sign that the culprit is your adaptor nose is when you fit another tooth on the adaptor. If it is a poor
fit with lots of movement between the tooth and the adaptor, then that is likely to be your issue.

The bucket tooth should fit snugly on the adaptor. If there is excess &#;play&#; or movement, then it will likely lead to broken teeth, lost teeth or broken adaptors.

If you have eliminated the adaptor nose as a culprit then next you should consider whether the bucket teeth are suitable for the machine and the digging conditions.

If you are running with a profile that doesn&#;t suit the machine or digging conditions, breakages are more likely to occur.

Analysing Bucket Teeth Wear Patterns

With bucket teeth costs measured in lost production time, rather than the actual cost of the part, anything that can minimise both planned or unplanned downtime should be welcomed.

The type of material you are digging is the biggest factor that will cause your bucket teeth to wear. Obviously, if you are digging into rock and other high impact or abrasive material, you will see much faster wear than if you are digging into dirt.

In fact, bucket teeth in some West Australian mines only last a few days before requiring replacement. And if you operate your machine with worn bucket teeth, you will see reduced productivity, higher fuel burn and risk of damaging the adaptor nose and facing even more significant downtime and unplanned maintenance.

One way to assess your bucket teeth performance is to analyse wear patterns. If you are facing premature wear or spot wear you should review tooth profiles, operating conditions and digging processes.

You might decide that changing to a penetration tooth or abrasion resistant tooth will result in better performance. Or you might discover that the uneven wear is simply a result of how the machine needs to operate to move the dirt. In this case, you might modify your tooth profile to one with additional material in the high wear area, and/or add a hard-face Tungsten Longlife Coating (TLC) to deliver better wear performance where it is required.

This will serve to increase the times between those maintenance schedules and will also mean you are not throwing away perfectly good bucket teeth that would still be serviceable except for that one area that has worn prematurely.

Book A Complimentary Wear Parts Site Audit

Cutting Edges offers a complimentary Site Audit and Fleet Review to identify where you can improve productivity, processes and save money by reducing your total cost of ownership.

The company is the world’s best Loader Cutting Edges For Sale supplier. We are your one-stop shop for all needs. Our staff are highly-specialized and will help you find the product you need.

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