Some old Cats of mine

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Lars-Gunnar
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Re: Some old Cats of mine

Post #11 by Lars-Gunnar » Thu Aug 02, 2007 2:20 am

At least I had the previlege see a DC 6 as a person had during my childhood. Nice pic and thanks for charing.

Lars-Gunnar :thumbs_up:

Ps: Welcome Robert Vanatta. I´ve been on your site many times. Great one. Keep up the good work! :D
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dieseldave
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Re: Some old Cats of mine

Post #12 by dieseldave » Thu Aug 02, 2007 2:52 am

rvannatta, Ok, youre the guy with the bulldozer page :thumbs_up: Lars-Gunnar helped me make the connection- Im a little slow :dizzy: A pleasure to make your acquaintance.

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rvannatta
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Re: Some old Cats of mine

Post #13 by rvannatta » Thu Aug 02, 2007 4:04 am

dieseldave wrote:rvannatta, Ok, youre the guy with the bulldozer page :thumbs_up: Lars-Gunnar helped me make the connection- Im a little slow :dizzy: A pleasure to make your acquaintance.


that would be me......

its a little short on Cats because we never have enough money for a new one and in the used market the Cats are always overpriced compared to the brand x machines that nobody wants. dont get me wrong, the cat equipment is good equipment, just unaffordable. If you are buying new legends about it keeping its value are a good thing, but if you are buying used, keeping its value also means overpriced


Needing a variety of large equipment on a budget, our solution has been to buy what no one else wanted, and equip a very large and diverse shop. :o :o :o :o Most of the stuff with a bad reputation isnt as bad as its reputation, and if you understand what the issues are you can either modify them out or work around them.

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Re: Some old Cats of mine

Post #14 by Lars-Gunnar » Fri Aug 03, 2007 2:24 am

Robert, my first photo I saw when I enter your site year ago was a large Allis Chalmers type 41 I think. It seems as it was larger than the old DC8 or 9. The blade was of the large type on it. Our 10-tons former army tractor hauled it on a foto you have posted. Was it a bad or god caterpillar?

Lars-Gunnar :)
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rvannatta
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Re: Some old Cats of mine

Post #15 by rvannatta » Fri Aug 03, 2007 3:17 am

Lars-Gunnar wrote:Robert, my first photo I saw when I enter your site year ago was a large Allis Chalmers type 41 I think. It seems as it was larger than the old DC8 or 9. The blade was of the large type on it. Our 10-tons former army tractor hauled it on a foto you have posted. Was it a bad or god caterpillar?

Lars-Gunnar :)


It is Actually a Fiat-Allis 31. --- Ive operated a 41 that belonged to another fellow however. Fiat-Allis (the successor to Allis chalmers) build the 41 first which was the first commerically successful dozer over 500 hp. The 31 was a cut back
41 with most of the same parts, but a 100 less horsepower and a lot less weight. We still have the 31.

It has a Cummins KT 425 Hp engine which for its vintage put it in a class mid way between a D9 and a D10 with a weight
of around 55 tons. Ours had the same blade that was used on the 41s---as it was oversized a bit because it was a coal mine machine.--- the blade is an 18 foot wide u-dozer about 7 feet high.
Image

Its a full load on a lowboy---particularly when you understand that is an off highway lowboy with a 10 foot wide bed.
You can see why we set the blade up on the goose neck to haul it.-- it wont fit anywhere else.

In answer to our question--- the machine has treated us well. Ive hired out to neighbors to dig rock by the hour
and made more than enough to pay for it.


Image

This is a photo of one quarry I pushed rock in. It had a blade change along the way. the lower photo shows a straight blade which eventually we replaced with a U-Dozer.


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Re: Some old Cats of mine

Post #16 by Deas Plant » Sat Aug 04, 2007 6:30 am

Hi, DieselDave.
No, I never did get to run any early D9s. I started at the D9G and went on from there. Ive had my delicate posterior on a couple of older D8 2Us, and some older D7s, 3Ts and 17As, but none of the early D9s. I reckon I would have had fun with them too.

Rvannatta, welcome to this little corner of cyberspace which Holger has so generously put together for us. I too have visited your site on many occasions and found it very interesting, especially the sections on logging and logging machinery. I grew up in the big timber country of Western Australia in the 1950s when Cat 9U D6s were still in vogue. Its a different game now.
You have a wonderful day. Best wishes. Deas Plant.

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Re: Some old Cats of mine

Post #17 by rvannatta » Sat Aug 04, 2007 3:31 pm

Deas Plant wrote:Hi, DieselDave.
No, I never did get to run any early D9s. I started at the D9G and went on from there. Ive had my delicate posterior on a couple of older D8 2Us, and some older D7s, 3Ts and 17As, but none of the early D9s. I reckon I would have had fun with them too.

Rvannatta, welcome to this little corner of cyberspace which Holger has so generously put together for us. I too have visited your site on many occasions and found it very interesting, especially the sections on logging and logging machinery. I grew up in the big timber country of Western Australia in the 1950s when Cat 9U D6s were still in vogue. Its a different game now.


Yes, no longer to you have to wrap a rope around the thing and jump over the side to start the engine.
the rope start D-4s werent too bad--- I could pull one of those ropes, but I never got it down how to pull a rope
well on the 9u-D6 motor. I had a Cat 12 road grader with a 9U engine inn it, and though it had an electric start also occassionaly the battery would be down and I would get out the rope. It seems the rope stretches some, your arm comes partly out of the shoulder socket, and then the starting engine turns.

A friend of mine used an early 18a for a long time. It was really much like the other early cats.---- too heavy for its horsepower---though that is the reason that cat became an early legend of reliabilty. the machines were so gutless that they wouldnt hurt themselves.

I grew up on a 4g-D4. I think those things weighed around 10,000 lbs with the blade and winch and had 35 hp. Try to go up a steep slope with one of those and it was 1 track at a time because the engine wouldnt pull both tracks.

I was quite amazed when I got ahold of the newer dozers that would go any where you could keep it rightside up and get the traction.... :thumbs_up:

I havent done a lot on my website recently on the dozer section. What I have done in the last year is add a whole new section on shop, which features some of the tools we use to keep the relics running.

We are getting ready to do a little old style dozer logging as we have some monster trees down in a canyon and nothing else will drag them out, so this morning Im headed out to hook up the lowboy and load up our 16B in preparation for
for taking it to the jobsite. It has a nice powershift winch on it with an integral arch----a real doll for heavy winching.


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Re: Some old Cats of mine

Post #18 by dieseldave » Wed Aug 08, 2007 3:56 am

friend of mine used an early 18a for a long time. It was really much like the other early cats.---- too heavy for its horsepower---though that is the reason that cat became an early legend of reliabilty. the machines were so gutless that they wouldnt hurt themselves.



Maybe a real early 268hp D9 might be heavy for its weight, but by the time mine was made they had it cranked to 320 hp, and at 56,000lbs (probably 70,000lbs or so with blade, CCU, fuel, oil, dirt, etc) it compares very favorably to the brand new D6R series III Im running now (200hp, 45000lbs) both are right around 220 lb per hp. I agree that the early D2s thru D8s were heavy and overbulit for their hp compared to the competition.


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Re: Some old Cats of mine

Post #19 by dieseldave » Wed Aug 08, 2007 3:57 am


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Re: Some old Cats of mine

Post #20 by rvannatta » Wed Aug 08, 2007 7:41 am

dieseldave wrote:
friend of mine used an early 18a for a long time. It was really much like the other early cats.---- too heavy for its horsepower---though that is the reason that cat became an early legend of reliabilty. the machines were so gutless that they wouldnt hurt themselves.



Maybe a real early 268hp D9 might be heavy for its weight, but by the time mine was made they had it cranked to 320 hp, and at 56,000lbs (probably 70,000lbs or so with blade, CCU, fuel, oil, dirt, etc) it compares very favorably to the brand new D6R series III Im running now (200hp, 45000lbs) both are right around 220 lb per hp. I agree that the early D2s thru D8s were heavy and overbulit for their hp compared to the competition.


Of course this wasnt bad. The slow speed diesel engines had a high torque rise which worked well with a manual transmission. when you got to something it couldnt push, it would slow down giving you plenty of time to release the clutch, and perhaps even the torque rise would handle the problem.

by Ugly comparision the pre early 1950s Allis chalmers used the 2 cycle Detroit Diesel engine (in various sizes depending on model) those engines had a flat torque curve and only performed at full throttle. they pulled as long as you could keep them wound up tight, but if you lugged them, the fire simply went out. this made the machines really root and snorters
but also meant that they could on occasion bring amazing forces to bear on the drive trains resulting in failure.

Whereas one often ran an old cat at something less than full throttle, this simply wasnt an option for the Allis-chalmers. the Detroit worked find with a converter, but alas by the time converters were popular, Allischalmers had purchased Buda and had their own engines but they werent invincible, and their most popular engine---the D-6 sized one--- had a nasty habit of breaking crankshafts. These sorts of problems assured that Allis chalmers would never become a big deal in the construction equipment business. A reputation for making lemons can destroy a heavy equipment business very quickly,
and their successor Fiat Allis withdrew from the North American heavy equipment market in the mid 1980s. Some parts are obtainable by New Holland dealers now, but for the most part you cant get parts at least here in North America for Fiat Allis stuff unless you can find a part in a junk yard.


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