I am surprised to see hydraulic power as far back as the ‘thirties. Matt at DieselCreek is restoring a 1960’s D8 that still has a cable-driven blade adjustment. Any thoughts why the transition to hydraulics seemed to take so long?
What are the chances that this blade system was made out of left-overs by some farmer? Don't be fooled by the nameplate shown at 4:15 - it could have stayed on a convenient beam the farmer re-cycled. I had an old uncle that did things like this. He's sold a few of his Frankenstein machines, and passing through a few owners they have ended up in farm machinery museums - with museum volunteers rushing around trying to get manuals for something no factory ever did.
I was standing there watching it on Friday and it was on the tip of my tongue and you nailed it. It's totally a cable powered-esk setup turned hydraulic and it makes total sense now. Also didn't realize how old that machine is and it's pretty amazing the technical advanced they made in those 6-8 years. Big jumps
So awesome what a survivor. On a side note so awesome to hear WatchWesWork make reference to your incredible paint restoration quality on his latest Tractor no fire B JD video
Do you suppose those springs were an attempt at a very early blade float where as they had not yet invented the float option in the valve body? Just a thought especially after watching the operator
Excellent video that is a really neat survivor tractor the blade setup is quite interesting it was not meant to use down pressure on the blade apparently the shape of the blade helped the cutting the hydraulic system helped to raise it up and react quicker than a cable dozer. Keep up the great videos
Great video , what would be cool is find what the original dealer sold the unit for what JOB. Road,farm,orchard,what ever. Like you said it was a design on the cusp of the next step in machine evolution. It's still really cool. Need a hour of engine sounds workin dirt.
Clearly patterned after any rube Goldberg machine :) haha,. But seriously though I really do like the idea of the pivot being at the back of the machine, whenever I buy snowplows for my truck, I like the kind that have the pivot behind or very close to the front axle rather than out in front by the bumper, They just simply operate smoother :)
That is not the first one of those blades I have seen. I saw a few like it when I was a kid in the 1950 living in California. I was nuts about construction equipment. I remember watching one being used to push a scraper on a flood control project in Azusa.
If the blade system really is cable-inspired, and the ram only acts to lift up (not push down) the lash in the joints. cumulative or otherwise won't matter. The whole system should be permanently under tension, and thus any lash is always taken up.
Total genius of mechanics and physics. If the blade encounters to top of a huge boulder edge,buried. The blade can pop up and over via the spring relief. Dragging theblade mechanism its load has no unloading effect on the tracks. Just what the scope of continuous work and wear was going to be, still remained to be seen.
No that call max way to get injected with hyd fluid. Which reminds me of training class at CAT. Showed picture with guys hand with tiny pin hole in one finger where hyd oil went in. To clean oil out they cut his hand open like a fish. All fingers, palm to the wrist and little abit up the arm. Doctors have to swab hyd fluid out. Then showed his hand sewn back up and still did have full use of his hand after a year. I have picture somewhere hiding in all train material.
Looked for you everywhere on Saturday at the Nowthen show. As we were leaving we saw the "group" playing in the dirt on the south west corner of the show grounds. No mention in the Show information of the fun in the south west corner. Sorry I missed meeting you and watching the D2 in action.
Hello , im not sure how to get in touch with you otherwise, you wouldn't happen to know where i could get a main bearing/shell for the diesel engine of a D2 ?
What a nice machine! And it sounds sooo good. You,'re right - the design of that blade might look kind of awkward today. But it was not wrong, it was just different from what we are used to now. But design and development are constant and ongoing processes. Just take a look at the Iron Mistress with a rather conventional layout and compare it to a modern dozer with the elevated sprockets and the almost vertical rams in front of the radiator. What a difference! But the Thirty-Five worked 90 years ago and it still does 90 years later. I'm not sure if a modern Cat will do in a 90 years period.
Very interesting linkage on the blade. I can see a point can be made that the rear rock shaft (if solid and not just a heavy pivot) keeps the cylinders in phase with each other??. Makeing the blade lift and lower more squarely. While the pin adjust is a quick blade tilt without having to get out of the seat to turn turnbuckles on the front of push arms, as a cat blade has.
I think i can see the logic behind this through the fog of madness. Two things stand out to me, as Squatch pointed out, they were still in the old mentality (with the added mention that the riveted construction makes me think that this add-on is not in its original state, certain welds seen in this walk-around also raise my suspici-o-meter) and two, there's only so many places where you can discharge all that force, and it's on the drawbar. So they built the lower frame, that's putting all that force where the Cat can take it, and found themselves with a dilemma, specifically circled around poor metal. A more straight forward frame would've probably bent, so they chose to utilize the properties of all linear items of the ribbed construction and directed the forces back, from the top "acting" section as well. A mad contraption to be sure. I'd never sit in that chair, not for the scalding hot fluid potential as much as the very likely potential of getting an "injection". If there's one thing i fear above all when working with hydraulics... it's touching them with my hands. I've seen the end result of that kind of an accident and it haunts me.
Like you said- some of the early accessory designers were shooting in the dark with these fascinating designs. Fascinating and impractical, but necessary steps to get us where we are today.
That was a very fun machine to watch! That big 4 cylinder has quite the sound! I thought the blade setup was quite interesting. Thanks for doing a walkaround!
I was watching 'The West Coast Logging Legacy' U-Tube of 11 years ago. And What should appear.....That Wagner Dozer blade assembly. Check it out at 28:30 minutes into that video
I think the problem was the hydraulic cylinders that they could make or buy, that primitive rod packing doesn't seem to be able to withstand too much pressure...
Contraption I'd reckon,and your right about the hydraulic hoses I. had one blow on an old skidsteer once if I hadn't had sun glasses on it would had been bad.
From the “Rube Goldberg” standpoint it reminds me of an early Speicher tile machine. So many moving parts in so many places. Obviously they worked, but it had to be early engineering to the “nth degree”.
That’s the eisemann cm4 magneto, that same as what was used on the caterpillar r2, maybe this one should be the eisemann ct4 magneto, Basically the same magneto, but the cm4 had a internal rotating magnet rather than the fixed magnet on the out side like the ct4, you would know you have done a days working back in the day operating this nice old machine, great video
I was expecting that you would want one. that machine is ingenuity in progress in a time where change and innovation out paced production. that is an example of innovation in the most raw form that actually was production.
Wow your engineering about potential energy loss is great. Downforce was all about weight for downforce. It was all about lift … But like you, it was very cool and actually makes sense! I really like your take on it and it’s point on
Contraption is the correct word, years ago I saw something as strange on an oddball crawler that I don't even remember the model of. I appreciate your walk arounds at these shows.
I suspect that a lot of the excess mechanical linkage was necessary to avoid specific patent infringement. I have seen that a lot in the 'mechanical' era, where a simple logical linkage was granted a patent, forcing others to create alternate complex setups to accomplish simple motions.
You gotta build the first one before you can build the second one I always said in my production business. It's a problem in architecture, like if you build a house for yourself, there isn't a second one.
