calk-Ice on snowcats useful or useless?

[928mr2]

I just finished restoring a 1982 BR100 and I wanted to know if what Bombardier calls Calk-ice are useful.
There are 40 on this machine and as seen on the photos they are broken or almost at the end of their life.
I only want to use my snowcat to plow my driveway and to go to my winter cabin, about 8 miles of snowy trail.
Could someone give me an opinion?

 

[Melensdad]

Not really sure what those are used for.

Some tracks, on some brands, have little tabs to prevent side slippage on slopes. Could that be what those are for?

 

[pixie]

Even worn down, they will slow down wear on your aluminum tracks plowing and add some sideways resistance on packed snow. Remove the broken ones and either fix them or spread the others out so they're evener.
That's my opinion ! What part of the country are you in ?

 

[brianf]

they work well on side hills keep machine straight, they are worn but I would put them back on, they should be welded along top use a old grouser as a guide and weld them back together, you do not need them on every grouser

 

[928mr2]

Even worn down, they will slow down wear on your aluminum tracks plowing and add some sideways resistance on packed snow. Remove the broken ones and either fix them or spread the others out so they're evener.
That's my opinion ! What part of the country are you in ?

I'm located in Quebec Canada
In my thread I forgot to say that I knew these parts were to limit side slipping but I did'nt think that they could slow down the wear.
I'll have them welded and back on the tracks.

Thank's I had pretty useful answers. That's what I like

 

[brianf]

your grousers are getting down to limits before they start to separate (crack) so these will help them last longer on hard pack and ice conditions. check for cracks along edge and fix them now to get more life from tracks

 

[JimVT]

I have them on my bombi. They chew up the planks on my flatbed trailer some. They do dig into the snow some,
jim

 

[rfx]

without them you have almost no sidehilling capability the design was poor though as you are now experiencing. I ran the same tracks on an sv 300 and welded 4 by 4 inch alum flat bar to one end of the grouser tops which seemed to work well

 

[928mr2]

your grousers are getting down to limits before they start to separate (crack) so these will help them last longer on hard pack and ice conditions. check for cracks along edge and fix them now to get more life from tracks

Thank's again for great infos

Brianf when you mean crack is it like the one on the first next photo?
I had one fixed by a friend of mine (the one in the middle second photo) he welded it for all its lenght but cause aluminum is'nt easy to handle it had curved a bit but he went for another pass and it came back straight. I grinded it but it does'nt look like a new one...

 

[928mr2]

without them you have almost no sidehilling capability the design was poor though as you are now experiencing. I ran the same tracks on an sv 300 and welded 4 by 4 inch alum flat bar to one end of the grouser tops which seemed to work well

rfx do you have a photo?

 

[brianf]

that grouser is worn probally to far to repair, you have to catch them fairly early and weld them ,you can get some more time out of them,practice alum welding on old garbage one to figure out setting that works, problem with buying new ones is they do not match the wear on older ones and you will be surprised at difference in height, but they are not to expensive to buy new, maybe create a pattern with every 4th or 5th one new, some other brand tracks use this pattern