Equipment Track buying guide- what they DON'T tell you

aftermarket tracks are they as good as oem [Music] it's been hard to walk anymore and then i just kept pushing him around in a wheelchair taste it touch it feel it smell it that's not cold out unless you're wearing a polo shirt [Music] all right guys we're going to be doing a little bit of a fact finding mission today we're actually going to be going into the headquarters of a company that specializes in helping guys like me pick out the right set of tracks for their piece of equipment we're going to be looking at some of those misconceptions and falsehoods that may be floating out there around aftermarket tracks versus oem tracks and uh trying to learn as much as we possibly can today so without wasting more time well let's just get right into today's video you guys all right and before we get too far into today's video we're going to do a special drink of the day sparkling cold brew with cucumber lime ginger flavored made with real cane sugar coffee worst possible thing you can put in your head right here this tastes like a cucumber vomited into a cup of coffee then they didn't know what to do with it so they added a bunch of other ingredients like lime and ginger hoping to cover up the cucumber taste but you can still taste the flipping cucumber worst thing ever [Music] [Applause] all right [Music] how you doing good dude how are you good thanks for having me out for sure thanks for coming yeah yeah so so what is this place well so uh outside of the tracks i sell um my grandpa also has a sod farm that i'm kind of a part of too so okay you know during the summer we keep plenty busy with all sorts of other projects and whatnot so okay yeah hey garrett tell these guys the name of your company so these guys know all right yeah so we're uh skidheaven go to skidheaven.com and check us out carry a lot of rubber tracks and undercarriage parts for just about everything you can need and i told these guys that we were going to go through some of the the myths the the fallacies the misconceptions the things that guys what i really want to do is dial in for these guys the best way to get the best set of chat tracks at the cheapest possible price sure and that's what we're going to be talking about today right yep yeah absolutely uh do you want to head in the shop or do you want to go out here that's not cold unless you're wearing a polo shirt it's really not too bad out today yeah so where do you want me to start i guess one of the big you know misconceptions usually is that uh you know aftermarket tracks they just aren't the same as oem yeah and um in all truth and honesty a lot of people don't know the manufacturers don't make their own tracks you know they're so busy trying to make a great machine and rubber tracks are kind of their own you know really especially thing it takes a lot of expertise to get them right yep and there's a lot of other manufacturers that make their tracks for all the machine manufacturers so you know whether you're a bobcat guy i believe right now mclaren is pretty exclusive to the bobcat contract so if you go buy a new bobcat you need new tracks you know you can go with the dealer they're going to charge you whatever oem track so that's one of the first things that i really want to figure out is aftermarket tracks are they as good as oem traffic yes because they're pretty much if not the exact same thing in just about every case um so the companies that make oem tracks garrett also make aftermarket tracks in the same facility a lot of times right yes that's correct but do they use lesser quality when they're doing the aftermarket trip no so the process is entirely the same the entirely the same you know the cheaper ones are definitely going to be a lot cheaper for a reason so when you look at the really cheap ones like you know let's say these tracks for your kubota 95 or 75 sorry mine's a 95. um retail right now with everything going on is probably about three thousand dollars a set and most all the quality tracks are going to be pretty close especially with all the online retailers everything's going to be pretty close in price if you start finding the cheaper companies you know 2 500 200 no it's a big cost saving learning for you but you're probably going to get what you pay for in the long run okay how about the technical specifications on a set of tracks is there anything maybe it would help a guy understand because if you're going to order one off the internet you don't get to come out here taste it touch it feel it smell it whether you buy it for me or anybody else continuously steal lounge tracks is what you want to be looking for continuously steal one what does that mean um so inside the steel cording is one long continuous belt in there so you know they're only you know i don't know what they are about you know half an inch or something in diameter or whatever they are i don't know exactly but uh okay what else what else should we know about here um i guess some people have questions about using synthetic rubber um really synthetic rubber and natural rubber is about the same cost we're not doing it from the manufacturing point to save money something you do want to look at a manufacturer is probably never going to tell you but the cheaper manufacturers let's say they go through a big batch of tracks they have a lot of vulcanized rubber that's left over they call it crumb rubber they'll melt that back down into the next batch of tracks it doesn't mix up as nice you know it's just a cheaper way to do things save money but they're resize they're recycling the rubber and that's not the problem but the problem is how the process of how they're recycling that rubber is oftentimes inferior or all the times inferior or maybe just in certain cases probably most of the time i would say it's going to make for inferior tracking so you were saying synthetic versus natural rubber there's really no difference there's no difference in costs there um the reason we're doing it is synthetic rubber adds a little bit of durability of the track that's just not found in natural rubber okay um and also natural rubber tends to heat up a little bit differently so it might be a little more prone to cracks and you know we're only talking you know 20 synthetic to about 80 natural rubber and it's just to give the track a little more durability and lasts a bit longer for you so okay what other hot tips or advice do you got for these guys when they're in the market for uh when you're looking for tracks i know a lot of people are always concerned about warranties which is a good thing you want a great warranty yep um the thing is with these rubber track warranties there's you know rubber track machines have been out for you know 25 years now or so there's so much data now that shows if a rubber track's going to fail it's probably going to fail in the first 50 150 hours and very rarely after that you know rough time frame is a track and fail for manufacture default so the warranty has become more of a a marketing thing where sure we'll warranty the track a thousand hours 1500 hours but most chances it's never going to fail if it hasn't already failed and once you get up to 1500 hours tracks are usually worn down anyways so right you know but are there any companies out there building these warranties which don't include they have exclusions which really don't help the guys maybe they don't include if you you know some some way of getting out of a premature failure um you know they might argue with you that um like a lot of guys not so much in our area right here but running in really rocky soil where rocks are tearing up tracks cutting them you might get a rock that go through the steel belting and cut it you know that's probably not gonna be covered under warranty anyway but you know you know they'll start using excuses while maybe you were in rocks you know how do you know stuff like that where um like with our tracks you know we're pretty serious about it you know we can tell when a track's failed um replace it a lot of people confuse going with a wider track they think going with the wider tracks and they equal more attraction when really a wider track is giving you more floatations so you don't sink down and you don't get yourself stuck really that wider track is giving you less ground pressure um as you take away ground pressure you're losing traction so it kind of becomes specific to what your application is if you're constantly in mud or you find yourself sinking you're gonna want the ground pressure and you might have a little bit less traction but then you're not stuck you know um if you're always on hard dirt and stuff and you're not really worried about flotation and you want the extra traction if you're pushing you know huge amounts of dirt you need that extra traction to keep pushing or um if you wanted to so i'm gonna argue with you on that one because i don't know i'll be straight with you because here's the thing do you go in snow let's talk about snow in particular do you go with a wider track distribute that weight over the snow surface or do you want to skin your track bite through grab hold of that asphalt and go in general i'm going to go with the widest possible track i can because i also want to be have the option be able to use these year-round and to be able to float through mud yeah i think you got a really good point because these zigzag tracks for example the track pattern i think it's comparable to running a wheel machine as far as traction concerned even on the wider patterns um not not the taller narrow skinny snow plowing tires but you know normal skid tires right this will have just as much traction and you'll probably be fine plowing snow with them um it's just kind of like the you know the fundamental reasoning behind it is go a little bit narrower and more attractive so one of the things that you you mentioned the point about ripping and tearing your tracks in rocky gravely dirt so that's one of the things you guys may have seen on my channel we switch them every year okay so we switch them so when was summertime we put on our dirt tracks sure because we know we're gonna chew those up yeah in the winter time we stick on our all seasons now we could run with these all year long and the asv is a famous machine that has all season tracks all year long and the performance is phenomenal the only reason we don't tear those take those off and switch them around is because what would we switch them into and they came on the machine they're the perfect track for them but on a instance like a kubota something that comes with a dirt track then it's worth it to take those dirt tracks off save them for your demolition your rocky soils your spring summer winter fall slap on a good set of aftermarket snow tracks you're going to save uh the wear and tear because here's the thing the asphalt right because when you're still applying you're 100 on asphalt you know i mean maybe some guys aren't but we are yeah and just that and that turning right wears the tracks down hyper fast i mean it's it's really invasive on those tracks and so then it makes sense to get the most life out of your snow tracks for sure keep them as snow to get the most life out of your dirt tracks don't put your snow tracks out on a demolition site because you're gonna have cross tears yeah and that's gonna call lead to premature wear on your trash yes absolutely yeah okay so how do guys reach out if they want more information to ask you questions would you answer any questions yes i'm happy to answer any questions you guys have um skidheaven.com just like it sounds skit heaven uh we are on facebook um search for skid heaven um i don't have a twitter or anything like that i'm not on youtube but uh that's the easiest way to find me um garrett at skidheaven.com for an email or it's all on the website as well guys if they wanted to order more order tracks can they order directly through them yes directly through me on through the website and i thought we'd also do um i'm gonna put a coupon on the website as well if you do a dirt monkey i'll do it take a hundred bucks off yours so oh yeah oh cool yeah awesome yeah bonus right thanks man yeah appreciate it and i really appreciate you taking the time because we have been talking for two months we met at a show yeah yeah and we really wanted to bring something that you know was relevant to the audience and i realized that i didn't really see a track buying guide out there and i wanted to clear up some of the misconceptions yeah and i wanted to save people from buying a bad set of aftermarket tracks as well all right you guys well let's throw these in the truck and then uh what we're gonna do is we're gonna throw these on the kubota and then put this the kubota head to head up against the asv and we're going to find out exactly how a set of all season tracks can affect the performance of a machine going right from dirt to all season if you guys haven't seen it yet we put the asv in my kubota up up bucket to bucket nose to nose they were both 74 horsepower machines and they weighed both within the 9 000 pound range were like actually legit 20 pounds apart so i just put my bigger operator in the lighter machine and made it equal [Music] no way let's put the asb against this right now you're good okay what we're gonna show is the difference from dirt tracks versus snow tracks kubota has dirt asv has snow and that's the difference between a good sense yeah it's slick isn't it and that's the difference good set of snow tracks makes on a tracked machine was that your folks uh that's my grandpa piece yeah yep 80 years old still going don't let them stop no the best way to keep them young is to work them yeah that's actually real that's i firmly believe that i worked my dad to he couldn't hardly walk anymore and then i just kept pushing him around in a wheelchair thank you [Music] [Applause] we've got this like prepped and ready to go what's the next step to get this track off alex we're gonna pop this bolt out this little grease shirt off okay let the grease out then we'll get the track handler pad into the front here it will roll around there makes it easier to kind of fork that off fork it off yep and you're saying you can do it by yourself yeah so here's what the so that's what the dirt tracks look like then you can see the the snow tread completely different design wider track too little wider minimal clearance back here with these bolts i mean i can barely fit my finger through there you know it's pretty close right what do you think of these grooves right here how long do you think those will last not very long like maybe there's nice snow on the ground but if it was on straight asphalt i feel like they get burned off pretty quick driving on it no are these the same as this no these cat tracks are a little bit different aren't they yeah so these so this is what our second season on these cat tracks and we run these just in the winter time so we'll kind of see the similarities it's got the grooves here the same this has all been wore off that cat tracks do have the center lug grooves but all right well we'll test it out we'll put the new ones on and i think we got good conditions that we could put the asb in this up nose to nose huh yeah give it a good test push yeah get it on top of this stuff slippery on top leave it on the ice yep all right [Music] it took alex about 10 minutes to change out that side of the tracks we've kind of got it down to a science we use a thing called a track handler but we don't use the entire kit we just use the pad and then we obviously use the skid loader to do the rest of the work but sure doesn't take a lot of work to get it once you've got a little bit of practice [Music] all right guys here's the tail of the tapes 74 horsepower 74 horsepower 9000 pound machine 9 000 pound machine the difference is within 20 pounds of the two machines this one's got asb tracks and an asv undercarriage this one has a kubota undercarriage but all season tracks have been retrofitted let's just see what difference my two cents on this contest is if the asv had brand new tracks like the kubota has they'd be a dead even heat the tracks on the asv got about 350 plus hours on them so they are wore down a little bit from one end all the way down to the other end yeah that was playing in there last time yeah yeah yeah whoever was in the kubota they went to the right yeah yeah yeah they went for the roll so there you go that's the difference i think tracks make well all right you guys i hope this video maybe has helped you guys out in some way shape or form i know uh if you don't know a whole lot about tracks boy it can be a little bit mis misleading some of the information that's out there and i really wanted to clear some of that up so we put the brand new tracks on the kubota and put it up against the asv which is actually designed and if you guys haven't seen that before this is not the first time we did this the last time we did the video where we put the kubota up against the asv and the kubota had dirt tracks the asb pushed it from there all the way back to the snow pile what two three times yeah something like that just it was no now it's now it's pretty much a dead even heat yeah it sure is now there's no reason why somebody can't jump in the kubota just as likely as the asb is like as likely as the cat because they're all gonna go big thanks goes out to garrett from skid steer heaven for uh being willing to answer some of those questions and doing the research and letting us know the differences in oem tracks versus aftermarket tracks which ones are actually better and did you know that a lot of the aftermarket trucks are actually built by the oem manufacturers that's what i learned these right here all they do is they stick a different rubber stamp on them a set of tracks like this will go to takahuji and a different suck in the same company made the same way we'll have the aftermarket tracks with their stamp on it they don't re-tool the factory they don't do anything else they just put a generic label on it it's like getting generic drugs from the from you know so anyway so that's about it god bless you guys go get them and we will catch you guys on another one that only took you hot 10 minutes to switch tracks on that one side yeah flew through it perfect you're getting to be a pro at that was this the eighth set of tracks you've changed at least at least you swapped right in the spring again too back to dirt tracks in a month or two yeah it's getting pretty quick to be in that time