Posted by Sherman in Idaho [108.162.246.24] on Sunday, September 18, 2016 at 12:38:28 :
In Reply to: Re: O.T. D6 manuals wanted posted by Tom Petroff (IL) [172.68.58.165] on Sunday, September 18, 2016 at 05:15:09 :
Still working on the go-kart motor pony conversion for the 7U D4. Got a junk D4 pony motor (block froze) gutted it out and used it to mount the drive gears, a straight shaft where the crank went, modern sealed bearings, and a belt pulley on the outboard end. Now I need to mount a go-kart motor on the running boards with a drive belt and I'll be ready to see if it will crank it over and start it.
When I put an ad on Craigslist looking for a junk D4 pony motor a got a call from a guy who said "How about a whole D4?" He had one that supposedly has good undercarriage and a good pony but the diesel engine was taken apart years ago and is junk. Looked good to me, as much as I could tell without it running. Then we got to talking and he had a 9U D6 farm cat in really good condition with a Wheatland cab and hydraulic pump for implements but no blade, and another 9U D6 logging cat with a blade, hard nose, belly pans and logging-type "cab" (roof) that was in rough shape and only steered right, but ran if pull-started. His idea had been to combine the two, but he made me a good deal and now that's my idea. It'll be a next-year project. Had to walk them 5 miles down into my place, and towed the D4 with the M543 wrecker. Sure was nice driving that farm cat, though. Brakes and steering clutches worked at a touch, shift levers were tight, and it even has a turbo. All those cats must have been as easy to drive when they were new. We're just used to 60 year old machines that were rode hard and put away wet and have all kinds of troubles now as a result. Anyway, the plan is to make one good D6 dozer, and one (or possibly two) good D4 dozers out of the 5 currently in the yard, and then have enough spare parts to cover me for most future issues. Caterpillar is still making gaskets and a few small parts for them, which is really nice.
At this point, though, I just have to get that one D4 with the bad pony running by winter so that I'll have it ready to go in the spring. There's a perpetual slide on my road that needs to be catted out first thing every spring after the snow melts so I can drive in. It's a public road but it seems to take an act of congress before the Forest Service will touch it, so I do it myself each year.
Those old cats are fine machines. Half the troubles with them are with the pony motors. I got a junk D6 pony as part of the recent deal and I'm already thinking of how to use it the same as I'm doing on the D4. The old pony motors are very clever, the way they fit in a compact space (2 cyl, horizontally-opposed) and pre-heat the diesel engine's coolant and intake air, but they are quirky, hard to start, hard to work on, quick to wear out, and generally a pain in the butt. If I could replace them with disposable chicom honda-clone motors, that seems like the more practical way to go. Some people do an electric starter conversion, but that takes a LOT of batteries. Where I am out in the boonies with no grid power and it having to sit all winter with temps typically down to 10 below, I don't want to deal with batteries at all.