I can't claim to be any expert on the drive train of your 450, but your concerns about the additional grouser height by adding weld on grouser bar are certainly legitimate. All the crawler loaders I've ever run had the double bar type track pad, they're not tall like a pad found on a dozer, making turning easier and less disturbance to the work area. When they get worn on a dozer, slippage increases, I have seen many warnings to not exceed the original grouser height when re-grousering your pads. Re-grousering the pads is an option to mitigate the slippage from worn pads on a dozer, besides replacing them, but from my understanding the increased traction can be an issue if the finals or the rest of the drive train is not desgined for the increased traction. It may be possible to research what pads where available for that machine, and see what the grouser heights were on the pads offered with the 450. Like JD said, they will certainly tear up turf and your work area a lot more. I think you would want to research this fully as it is a lot work and some expense to weld those bars on, only to find out the hard way it may not be worth doing. I'd also wonder how it would effect steering, and what the reason is as to why you want or need the extra traction. If you just need the extra traction, for maneuvering, it may be fine, but if you are going to do some heavy pushing, it could be possible to stress something in that drive train, and cause it to fail, it's a valid concern, that sounds like a great machine to own with the hoe on it, I'd want to be real sure about doing that first. I'd also be curious as to increases in shock loads to the finals, especially on hard ground, compared to the typical crawler loader type pads, maybe nothing to worry about, but over time, those shock loads could shorten the service life of affected components. I've seen excavators on pipe jobs, where the soil conditions had lots of heavy rock, in that application they were using dozer pads and or undercarriage for extreme service purposes, completely different drive train, and no heavy pushing, but have not seen many crawler loaders with dozer pads, just older ones that were built on dozer tractors like the old caterpillars. A neighbor re-groused a 955 cat and did some significant shale excavation with it when he built the new shop, he runs a diesel repair business, but the bars were not excessive in height nor as high as a dozer pad would be when new, I remember seeing the machine blocked up and the work that went into doing it. I do know on some machines if you were to do this, it could definitely cause a final drive to fail under heavy load or abuse, especially if it had excessive hours and needed service, that extra stress has the potential to be the straw that broke the camels back, but this is just an opinion from some very basic knowledge on the subject, not an expert by any means.
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