Parts and Maintenance

Date: 08.03.2008

A ripper of a design

Hiremax has been manufacturing excavator track guards and bulldozer rippers for the past five years.

The reason it decided to manufacture and sell trackguards was because, as a hire company, it found its diggers would frequently wear out chains, and operators were dropping tracks once the chains were slightky worn.

So Hiremax designed trackguards with weld-on blocks to fit a wide range of diggers. The trackguards are simple to fit and can be removed to replace a roller if the need arises.

The performance and benefits of the trackguards was so good that Hiremax started selling them four years ago. The feedback has been great, with comments like: "Every digger should have them from factory". The trackguards range from 6-30 tonne.

As for the bulldozer rippers, a lot of bulldozers have been imported into New Zealand in the past 10-15 years, most without rippers on the back. Hiremax had the same problem – rippers weren’t being manufactured in New Zealand and secondhand ones were snapped up fast.

Hiremax went into manufacturing them five years ago with a Komatsu D31P set of rippers, which was the beginning of the brand name "La Rippa".

Hiremax does all its own designs and, because the team has a contracting background, it knows what operators want on the rear of their machine, which often means they get good lift out and weight ratios.

Rippers save a lot of hard work on the blade of the bulldozer – breaking up the ground so you get a lot less wear and tear on the blade and the job gets done faster and more efficiently.

Rippers that Hiremax has built include: Komatsu D21, D31, D37, D41, D53, D65, Cat D3C, D3G, D4H, D5M, D6M, D6H, and John Deere 850C.

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