Newbie needs help!

[buzztracks]

First I would like to say hello and thank you to everyone for this forum. What a wonderful source for information. After years of keeping a watchful eye out for an HG or OC3 I finally found one roughly 30 miles from my home. I am now the proud owner 9WH994 with a 3HI Ware Loader. Its in pretty rough shape. I just finished the total disassembly and have run into a couple of "head scratchers". It appears as though someone replaced one of the Final Drive Housings with that of an HG which is roughly 3/8" longer than that of the OC3. After researching many sources and speaking with Zimmermans it appears as though there were three different designs used for the final drives and two different housings used which coincides with the two different frames used. So far I have seen one design that uses a tapered axle with only one ball bearing on the housing to support the pinion gear and uses a clip to hold the pinion gear on the axle. Then there is the design that is on my crawler which is the side I question. It uses a tapered axle with a ball bearing in the housing and another in the housing cover. It uses a pinion gear that has a shoulder on both sides that the bearings ride on. Finally, there is the design that matches the diagram in my OC3 manual and the other side of my crawler that uses a non tapered axle with tapered roller bearings. A large tapered roller bearing on the housing side and a smaller tapered roller bearing in the housing cover. Can someone please tell me if I am on the right track. I am ready to start my quest for parts and want to make sure I get the right parts. Any and all help would be greatly appreciated. Thank You

[hotratz]

As far as I know the later setup you described (tapered Timkin rollers and seperate bearing retainer cap bolted to the cover) is what you find in the OC-3 and OC-4. The earlier set-up with ball bearings and no separate bearing retainer cap is typically HG.

Welcome to the forum!

[John Schwiebert]

Late HG tractors also used the bearing caps with the Timken bearings. If you get the final edition of the HG parts book you will find both are listed. I used to have a serial number break on when that occurred.