We Got Burned on a Government Auction Dozer....No First Gear

This 600-hour Dressta TD8 Government Auction Dozer looked perfect at the auction… until we opened the transmission and found the real damage. We Got Burned. We’ve bought a lot of dozers from government auctions over the years and most of them have treated us pretty well… but this one finally burned us. On paper it’s a low-hour TD8 – around 600 hours – but out in the lot we find out it has no first gear at all. In this video we cold start the old girl, show you exactly what it’s doing, and then start tearing into the power shift transmission. We pull the suction screens, find “Rice Krispies” in the lines, yank the transmission out of the TD8, and crack it open to find a completely smoked first-gear clutch pack and a gear pump that’s been eating metal. If you’ve got transmission problems on an older dozer (Dresser/Komatsu, Deere, Case, etc.), this is a good look at where to start: suction screens, scavenge filters, and pumps before you start hanging gauges everywhere. We’ll do a follow-up video putting this TD8 back together once the parts bill stops hurting. 0:00 – Intro & Chevy transmission joke 0:24 – Meet the TD8 dozer with no first gear 1:20 – Cold start and Harbor Freight jump pack 3:20 – Testing gears and confirming first gear is gone 6:30 – Tear-down starts: floorboards, tanks, and hoses off 9:50 – “Rice Krispies” in the lines – finding metal in the system 13:20 – Scavenge/suction screens full of clutch material 17:10 – Explaining suction screens and pump layout on these TD8s 19:00 – Fighting the transmission out without pulling the dash 23:40 – Rear end cover off – more metal in the housing 27:30 – $30,000 low-hour dozer regret & government auction talk 30:15 – First gear clutch pack cooked – real damage revealed 35:30 – Forward/reverse clutch packs and bearings torn down 41:00 – Press work and reassembling the good clutch packs 52:00 – Opening the transmission pump – housing destroyed 55:30 – Parts bill guesses, wrap-up & what’s next for the TD8