"Old school always rules" when it comes to reliability! In today's machines you have at least a dozen sensors that are prone to failure along with lord knows how many power/ground connections! Simple is always better when you need a job done right and right away! Great vid! 👍
When I was five or six my father ran a cat with a pony starter. I haven't heard the sound of a pony starter in over 60 years. Thanks for the great video and memories.
Thanks for explaining the whole thing before starting that pony motor. You're right that little thing makes such a racket you can't hear anything else.
Thanks for the memories. That was the high point of any week (1950's New Zealand) when the D 2 got a start up to do some work. When I was 10yrs old I was allowed to drive it from time to time - so cool!
Back in the late 70’s I bought a old road grader with a pony motor. At a auction. Wish I’d had these instructions on starting it then. I was blind to how it worked. Finally recruited someone to show me. Hard to resell something when you don’t know how it works. I could use a little Cat a round here at times. But don’t need that one
Old school operation is buried with the dead..so before i die..pony engine start up..engage the diesel..circulate the oil a bit..throw on the compression..then spray the oil bath filter opening with a shot of ether..the diesel usually fires and your done!..the whole process takea no more than a few minutes..
Construction jobs used to have Starting Engineers. Their job was to take an Oiler and get equipment running. At breaks, lunch, or any time equipment needed to be shut down or started, you called the Starting Engineer. Improperly done you could wreck a engine or get yourself killed if you had a transmission engaged and it fired up. High torque starters changed all that. I think Locsl 798 out of Tulsa OK still has a Oiler and Starting Engineer clasjfication.
Great fun. Great to watch. Well done. The reason that these engines went so well was the warm oil circulated before the load was applied to the engine. One thing, always leave the carby bowl half full of petrol. If it is full, it'll wear the fuel valve seat. If allowed to run out, the float will wear out the bowl bouncing around all day. Leave it with a puddle of petrol to float on.
I once asked an operator of a Bucyrus-Erie dragline what engine he preferred. He replied that he preferred Detroits over Cats because he didn't have to monkey around with Cat pony motors.
My experience with starting CATS is get the pony warm after a minute or so and simply pull the start lever and it splutters into life, Then close the valve lift. About 90 sec.
Cool, got the same version of this only it's a D4. My Cat T model buddies ask where the starter key is, I hand them the pull rope, priceless expressions. Mine has the over head frame cable system by LeTernou.
Hello , here in England I,ve driven one of these , it belonged to my mate,s dad , , I have done a small amount of grain seed drilling pulling a Lundell drill with it , absolutely fantastic pulling power WITHOUT DAMAGING THE SOIL , from just a modest sized engine , who needs all that terriffic horsepower when you can have tracks ! , also we accidentally got a big flat roll stuck at the edge of a poached - up ring round a cattle feeder , it was early springtime , the ground was not quite workable dry , couldn,t move it with a 75 hp Ford 2 w.d. at all despite using every trick in the book & inventing a few that weren,t , we gave up , went home , got the obligatory roasting off his dad , for doing exactly what he,d told us not to do in the first place , then went back with " The Crawler " , hooked up , & popped it straight out first time , as a kid this taught me it,s not raw power you need , it is sheer wide footprint grip , it wins every time over raw power . I remained in awe of the capabilities of crawlers for the rest of my life , & would love one for mole ploughing on our heavy clay .
jiji Xx said it all, me=71-1/2yo, I LOVE this "old" equipment. Great explanation and teaching Video ! I want to get one, move my truck out of the garage, and park the D2 in there !!
Great video! I've always wanted to know how the pony engine was engaged and disengaged, but forgot that the main engine started off with less compression. :)
I've started a lot of them, cranked myself blue on those worthless starting motors , few start like that one did, plus had a 4 with a loader, so very hard to even get to it to pull the rope
I have run many old dozers with a pup starter ( pony engine ) he did everything right the only thing that was drilled into my head was don’t put on compression until main engine has oil pressure especially on the D6-7-8s as it’s hard on the main bearings on the bigger engines
Turn the diesel over until it has 40 psi oil pressure, then run on compression to heat the cylinders before turning the fuel on. Got a 1936 D13000 power unit, and it's still perfect.
Seeing where that fly wheel is located reminds me how dangerous some of these old machines are! This is why so many old timers who spent time around this type of equipment are missing fingers, hands, feet, legs and arms!
The correct procedure, if you read the manual, is to allow the pony motor to run for at least five minutes to warm up the diesel before engaging the pony motor. Why wear out the starting gears?
If you go back to the books it is recommended to freewheel as in no compression . the main engine during warm up. That will allow the coolant to warm up from pony to speculate to main engine. I've also owned 3 of these in dozens, graters .
The gear selector was in neutral and the master clutch was disengaged two pretty important steps that ya might wanna mention........ And back in the day when we worked the bigger iron pony's were great in the winter because as he explained they preheated the main diesel as well as got the oil moving and a little thawed out in the days before glow plugs and now manifold heaters that heat the intake air. We didn't have seat belts roll over protection or cabs with heat/ AC either. But even a bad day outside is better than a good day inside........
Pinslayer 45 AARP , My dad ran them for 70 years, plowed snow with a D8 for years ,no heater ,no cab out in the open when he came home he had frost bite. He also had a D2 of his own for 50 years , we sold it when he was close to 90. Lived and breathed Caterpillar till he passed.
I drove an ancient U-2 international? crawler. You first started it like a gas engine, then once it got warm you threw a big lever that shut off the gas and opened the diesel. To turn right you had to back left
Imagine it being 2019, and you have to pull a rope start in your king ranch powerstroke Ford to start the pony motor 🤣 but with modern technology they've routed the rope up into the cab and put it on a recoil like a push mower
They still use these in places like Africa. I once saw one on a bonded shipment coming from a refurb facility in Canada going to Africa. It was a Komatsu 1980 model . The thing was an exact clone of the 1959 D4 7U I have in my field. It looked like it just rolled off the assembly line back in the 50s. Strange
yes,but the exhaust of the pony preheat the intake manifold,and then the air intake to the main engine hot and the start is easier, but is true,,the pony is noisy!
yup mine too.........ive been thru it from front to back......I rescued it from the scrap man ...shes a 1948 with a hyster winch...360 feet of 3/4 ….…..rope on it....I have one for spares...…...
I don't think I've ever seen a pony engine run quite that long, even when the temperature was below freezing. You said it warms the main motor so I guess that explains why.
I've seen worn out pony motors but my God, there's no lower end left in that one....for those who doubt me, go back and re watch the part where it's being filmed from the rear and watch the movement ...the shaking...of the flywheel. It's got a hell of a lot more movement than .016 max permissible clearance and .025 end play.
I wonder why in spanish this starter was called "el mico" instead of pony. Was it because you had to monkey (mico) around the machine during the staring procedure?
No electrical system means no lights, right? Well, they obviously worked only at daylight - they weren't so busy. The good old days were sometimes actually good....
Once the Diesel motor is warmed up... and you stop it... when you immediately want to restart it, can you start it with a battery, or do you always have to start it with the pony motor? Thanks
There is no electrical system on the tractor . No battery or electric starter so you always have to use the pony motor or pull it with another tractor to start.
Batteries drain. As long as you have gas, you're golden. I worked on a Vietnam Era D9 (surplus actually), that had the pony motor which required you to hold the clutch and disengage as soon as the main engine started. Damn that thing was loud.
For remote cold areas, the Cat could not be beat, these old pelters are still widely in use in AK. I have friends using them right now to mine with , old D8's in perfect shape running every day , that said I much prefer an old Allis with a Detroit
Have no clue about CAT’s, but on soviet tractors, if accidentally or on purpose left in a gear after parking and shutting down, pony motor easily moved the tractor. Plus on newer motors, still with ponies, one had to engage bendikss, connecting pony motor clutch to diesels flywheel, did some finicky stuff with carburetor, in most times winded up the string, pulled and it went off, if penny started then engage the clutch and you where ready to go. For smaller motors, like for MTZ -80 motor was running in seconds, no warmup ratcheting on pony. And if main engine was well maintained, startup was on half turn. And no, there where no safety circuits, or they where disabled in most cases, that would prevent any of engines from starting. As a kid, I saw once or twice how does pony engine moves the tractor. Still, I remember the pony engines. They where almost all the same on most of the tractors - bigger bulldozers had two piston, smaller only one, two stroker, but every tractor was different - without knowing how many pushes on a carburetor, how wide to open butterfly valve, or maybe not to open fuel valve on start, or any small detail, one could pull the string all day long and that bloody thing won’t start.
Um....no. I run an old D4 sometimes, and when you engage the pony motor to the diesel you can hear the drop in power. There's no way the pony motor can move that machine. It takes a lot of power to move the machine.
Soooooo use of tiny gas motor to get the diesel engine cranking, to build the heat through compression, until the diesel engine can start and run!! Why not just use a starter motor and glow plugs?? Unless this was built long before that kind of stuff was used
This was designed to be a small, lightweight, affordable piece of equipment. In its time, a battery and motor that could crank those enormous pistons over would have added significantly to the cost and weight of the tractor. I’m pretty sure that electric start was an option for the pony motor, but it wasn’t very popular, because it was just one more thing that could break, as far as the target customer was concerned.
@@JohnnyWishbone85 Most of the later ones had electric start for the pony motor , as far as lightweight even the huge D8's used this system, so much for your bs
Why not put fuel to it as soon as it starts turning and let it warm itself up? It should be able to run fine, especially with the high ambient you're in when recording this(Shortsleeve shirts = definitely not cold).
Couldn't a electric starter work for this application along with a block heater instead of having to go through all this just to start a small diesel engine ?
International dozer had spark plugs on each cylinder start on petrol with compression release then put high compression turn petrol off to run on diesel petrol warmed engine up Smaller electric starter motor needed for petrol
Joe Dillon , It's a pony motor that you have to start , a donkey engine is an engine designed to start automatically to keep pressure up as in a fire protection sprinkler system . If pressure dropped below a set point the fire alarms would always be going off causing havoc.
lol I had no idea they pumped the same water, that must make cold starts a lot better, just let the pony sing for like ten minutes then try an start the main.. pre warmed lol
