How to Avoid Excessive Wear on Pins and Bushings

A crucial piece of heavy machine maintenance is properly caring for pins and bushings. These components are mechanical hinges that connect different parts of your equipment together and allow them to move and flex effectively. How quickly they wear is influenced by several factors, including jobsite conditions (whether you're working on dirt, stone, gravel, or asphalt), frequency of use, and your operator. To help you increase their longevity, we've put together several tips to help slow wear rates of pins and bushings on your tracked equipment.

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The cost of replacing worn pins and bushings can be substantial, potentially ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars. Moreover, your equipment might require transportation to an offsite repair facility for replacement, leading to expensive downtime and project delays. Furthermore, if the deteriorated components have caused damage to your machine’s metal frame, you could face the additional expense of repairing the structure through line boring, welding, and refitting.

Two key approaches to minimize pin and bushing wear and avoid these costs and downtime are regular greasing and repositioning.

Ensure proper greasing

Inadequate lubrication results in excessive and uneven wear of pins and bushings. The pin wears on the side that makes contact with the bushing and wears on the mating surface of its inner diameter. Worn components cause track stretching (known as pitching), which hurts equipment performance and reduces the lifespan of your undercarriage.

Most modern pins and bushings feature 'grease grooves' on the inner diameter where lubricants create a protective layer for pin rotation. Applying lubricant at intervals recommended by the manufacturer as part of your regular machine maintenance routine will help slow wear rates and expel contaminants from the bushing by forcing debris and particles out of the grooves.

Repositioning pins and bushings

To avoid pitching, pins and bushings can be periodically repositioned, moving the wear side away from the contact area with other components. This rotation exposes fresh surfaces to working areas both internally and externally, evening out wear rates. Turning also restores proper spacing on the track between pins and can extend undercarriage life by allowing the chain to last until links and rollers require replacement.

We suggest examining your pins and bushings before starting work with your machine for the season. If you notice track pitching, it may be time to rotate or replace them. The frequency of rotation depends on your working conditions, but it's typically necessary around the 2,000 hour mark.

If you have any questions about pin and bushing wear, need help with rotation or replacement, or require information on machine maintenance in general,please contact our team!