Big Cat with Impact Ripper in Germany

Our German friend Dirk Bömer spent a rather wet weekend at home delving into his extensive archive collection and scanning in some more interesting photos featuring Caterpillar equipment, to share with us all here on the Digger Man Blog.

The shots were taken by Dirk’s father and feature a major earthmoving project that was being undertaken in Velbert, near Wuppertal in Germany back in 1992.

The contractor whose name was Stewering was brought in to move around 380,000m³ of material to build a dam that would also connect an industrial area with the town.

The company initially deployed a Cat D8N which coped well with the upper layers of material, but the machine struggled to rip the extremely hard limestone banks.

So, the company looked for a heavier and more powerful option and they discovered a Cat D11N for sale in the United States that was also fitted with an impact-ripper.

According to the badging on it, the giant machine had come from Empire Equipment who were the Cat dealers in Arizona. It had clearly had some overhaul work done on its undercarriage, as it had new grousers welded on to the trackpads.

A young Dirk is seen above standing by the mighty D11N.

The machine worked hard achieving a productivity level of around 300m³ of ripping and pushing per hour, but the harsh working conditions took its toll, not only on the machine but on the operator too.

According to Dirk, Caterpillar eventually stopped offering the impact-ripper set up, as it was said to cause too much structural damage on the machines.

Dirk said, “It did not surprise me to hear that they would stop offering the combination, but I will always remember the spectacle of seeing the machine in action. The breaker itself if I remember correctly was an NPK, normally suited for an excavator in the 70-tonne class, it was pretty impressive stuff to see working hard!”.

We thank Dirk for sharing yet more of his historical photos with us here on the Digger Man Blog.