MINI-DOZER® MD196K Assembly Part 2: The Body

This is Part 2 of assembling the MINI-DOZER® MD196K kit. This is what the manual calls “Step A: Body Kit.” The image below shows the pile of painted parts (we painted those parts in Part 1 of this series) that go into assembling the body of your MINI-DOZER® once you get it out of the box.

(Note: The information is provided by a Struck customer. Please follow all official Struck manuals when installing your equipment.)

So, you first need to lay out all the parts and sort them so that it will be easy for you to find each one of them as you follow the assembly instructions in the manual. You can lay out those parts on a board as shown below. Keep the different nuts and bolts in plastic bags or bins/buckets, so that those tiny parts don’t get mixed up.

Once the parts are all nicely laid out and sorted, proceed to the steps outlined in your owner’s manual. The first components to lay out and bolt together are shown in the following image;

When putting together the body panels, the instructions recommend that you bolt them loosely. Once all the parts fit properly, you can go back and tighten them. As the picture below shows, you can use masking tape to keep the downward facing bolts in place while you put the nuts in.

As each panel is put in place, your MD196K will start to take shape as this image shows;

When you get to the point where you have to stick some bolts in from the underside, tilt up the assembly as shown below for easier access to those bolt holes. As you can see in this image, some bolts have masking tape on them as we mentioned in the previous step;

You can also put the axles in while the external structure is still in the standing position so that once you lay it down again, it will look like this;

At this point, you can tip the structure up and use the wrenches to tighten the nuts and bolts installed previously. The image below shows how you can follow the specified order of tightening the bolts. (We advise to tighten all bolts using air tools or cordless drills, to proper specs provided.)

If you have a pallet, you can lift the assembly onto it so that the paintwork doesn’t get scratched up so much while you work. Here is an image of the exterior structure sitting on blocks placed on a pallet.

With the structure raised on blocks sitting on a pallet, it becomes a whole lot easier to get the washers and spacers needed to put together the axles. Use a tape measure as shown below to confirm that the axles are at the specified distance from each other.

Next, place the oiled O-rings into the sprockets and slide each of them into the axle as depicted in the image below;

Your MD196K assembly will at this point look like the image below once all the four sprockets are in;

Now is the time to place the side beams in so that the sprockets are held in place. This is what the assembly looks like once the side beams are in;

The last step here is to put in a bolt on each side of the rear axle to prevent it from rotating. This step is shown below.

At this point, the body of your MINI-DOZER RS196K is pretty much assembled! Before you go to the next phase of the assembly, there is a little trick involving using a hammer and a piece of wood while tightening the sprockets on the axles. Watch this time lapse video below to learn that invaluable trick!