GreenOrange- You pose an excellent question - I see the M Crawler Manual of 1948, page 86 shows both the skeleton and flat tooth sprockets but offers no explanation for their use. That said, years later after the H-3 and HD-3 and H-4 and HD-4 Chalmers arrived AC did clarify their use in promotional materials as follows:
Quote - The sprockets hunting tooth design with an odd number of teeth lengthens the life of the sprocket teeth and track pins. This is in reference to the flat tooth sprocket.
A second choice in drive sprockets available is the skeleton sprocket for operations where track packing conditions exist. The skeleton with the cut out track shoe, (note: later AC manuals refer to these as grousers) will allow material to escape the track chain.
Regarding the second choice, (i.e. skeleton sprocket) have seen many of those used where the crawler was used for opening roads in the winter to get access to the maple sugar lot. We referred to them as snow chain and sprockets. The open in the shoe would allow snow to fall through the track.
The grouser shoe or plate selected was typically specific to the intended application of the dozer. For the M, H-3/HD-3 and 650 series there were a total of 7 optional grousers as follows:
Full Grouser Cut-Out
Semi Grouser Cut - Out
Snow and Ice Cut - Out
Full Grouser
Semi Grouser
Street Plate, and
Rubber Faced Grouser
In closing, I will say that AC editors /tech writers that prepared the manuals did have some slips and misses on describing things or illustrating certain parts and pieces that were part of the overall machine. As you have found, the Sprockets offered for the M is one of those cases where there could have been better QA/QC on descriptions and importantly their application.
HTH's ~ Orangeman
Edited by orangeman - 22 May 2023 at 7:37am
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