Cut my bucket teeth schedule in half after a dumb riverbed mistake

I used to run a full set of new bucket teeth every single month, figured that was just the cost of doing business on the Mississippi. Then last spring I got sloppy and let the dredge suck up a chunk of old rebar, which sheared two teeth clean off within a week. When I pulled the rest to replace them, I noticed the wear was way worse on the outer corners than the middle, so I started rotating them front to back every two weeks. Turns out that simple swap bought me six weeks of use per set, and I've cut my yearly tooth spending from about $4,800 down to $2,400. Anyone else run a rotation pattern, or do you just let them wear uniform? I'm curious if my luck holds on harder clay bottoms.

1 comments

1 Comment

baker.ben20d ago

so you're basically treating them like tires on a heavy truck, and that makes way more sense than just running them till they're garbage. i'd say your luck is gonna hold on clay, probably even better than sand, cause clay is more forgiving on the cutting edge than abrasive river silt. but watch the rebar thing... once you get a bent tooth, it throws the whole pattern off and starts eating the next one. i ran a similar rotation on a 300 series excavator a few years back, and the trick was marking each tooth with a paint pen so i knew exactly which spot it started in. saved my ass on tracking wear, plus it made the swap take like ten minutes instead of guessing. honestly, if you got six weeks out of a set, you could probably push it to eight if you flip them side to side too, not just front to back... but only if the corners aren't chipped.