The ACERT engine is an altogether newer electronic engine than the 3508 it replaces. If we had too much, it would tear the machine apart under-powering would not meet the customer’s performance expectations.” “We wanted to make sure we didn’t over- or under-power the machine. “The horsepower and torque matching by Caterpillar was also part of the due diligence,” said Valantine. Because of the age of the Cat D11N dozer, the repower was not to the current D11T’s C32 instead a C27 was matched to the dozer’s driveline. The repower process had been in development for a year it was initiated for another of Johnson’s customers, though Sukut was the first to present the D11 for the work. “That was all part of the due diligence we went through,” said Duane Valantine, service operations manager at Johnson. Working with the Caterpillar team ensured that all phases of the project were covered and that engine specs were decided before any wrenches were turned. Nevertheless, with additional rework on the machine, it took around a month to complete. Johnson then enlisted the help of Caterpillar’s own Emissions Solutions team. The Caterpillar D11 dozer repowerįor this pioneering repower, Sukut enlisted the help of its Caterpillar dealer, Riverside, Calif.,-based Johnson Equipment. The company’s own technicians have become very good at repowering equipment in the field, taking as few as five days to complete the task. Ortiz says that better than 60 percent of its heavy equipment is Tier II or Tier III compliant. But while the California Air Resources Board has backed off somewhat in its draconian off-highway cleanup rules, Sukut had already embarked on an aggressive repower program. Sukut Equipment is no stranger to repowers, working in one of the most environmentally conscious states in the nation.
“The $350,000 ticket is a very cost-effective way of extending the useful life of the machine, while making it acceptable to bids for environmentally sensitive sites,” said Ortiz. Given the repower, and some other updating to the Cat D11 dozer, the expense is a fraction of the new cost. The repower puts a modern Cat C27 into the engine compartment of the earlier dozer, adding another two decades of life to a tractor that has already worked 20 years. Ortiz has recently added a new D11T to the fleet and says the price came out at $2.2 million. Since 2008, the biggest Cat is the D11T, weighing some 230,000 pounds. It superseded the D10 as the biggest crawler dozer in the Cat product range. The Cat D11N dozer was first introduced in 1986, powered by a 3508 mechanical Cat at 770 horsepower. Sukut Equipment’s Cat D11 dozer was an earlier version of the biggest Caterpillar bulldozer.
Sukut Construction is one of California’s major contractors. Sukut Equipment is a rental company, with more than 250 big machines, that supplies the equipment needs of Sukut Construction, among other clients. By doing so, the California-based construction company Sukut Construction is able to meet bid requirements in contracts that specify minimum Tier II emissions level on job sites, said Mike Ortiz, equipment president of Sukut Equipment. The task was to bring the older Cat D11 dozer up from an earlier spec with its unregulated Cat 3508 engine to Tier II emissions. The first repower of a Caterpillar D11N has been completed in a joint effort between Southern California’s Johnson Caterpillar and the Cat repower team.
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