Thanks for posting this! When I worked on a farm in the early Sixties they still used a Cletrac DDH for pulling a mole drainer. Its the only one I have seen in the flesh and I dont know how it came to be here in the UK. Unfortunately it was scrapped soon after, as the engine block had bad water leaks and the tracks were totally shot. Even in that condition it would be well worth saving now!
I used to own a 1947 Cletrac. It was smaller than the one in the video and had a 6 cylinder Continental gas engine along with an 8 foot wide road blade. I think most had the Hercules engine. It ran well sometimes. When the carburetor and I got along.
Anyone remember the ol two cylinder pony motor on a cat? Straight exhaust, blow your ear drums out, Janis Joplin woulda complained, warm it up, heat the glow plugs, ease in the clutch, always started on a cold day.
Haha, nice story, when my dad left his blower out all winter the bowl filled up with water and luckly It didn't crack, and it just wouldn't start after we drained the water, so we gave it a shot of either and it fired right up... then died.. another time, then it kept going to I guess something was plugged, in our case we needed it
pump some grease in that cylinder, tighten up those those tracks, grandpa would be way pissed off if he saw me take shit care of the farm machinery like that.
you can only maintain power, if you close the inner brake completly. otherwise it will work as a classic brake and cause friction/powerloss. The classic steeringtransmission of a tank would be much smarter but needs one hydrostatic drive, so you can skip all the mechanics and use a second drive for the ease of it but that will cause trouble driving a straight line and locking the axle to avoid the diff-effect => maybe the mechanic solution isn't the worst, at least it doesn't start to leak.
grandpa was not my real grandfather, so loved, he treated me better than most parents treat their own children, head of the coop, his handle on the cb was green bean., my real grandfather died one night at the age of 35 changing sickle blades on the combine, blood poisoning, I guess horse shit can poison the blood, best days of my, life, spoiled child, grandpa said that a man who does not feed his workers is called a belly robber. I did Not have to work custom harvesting, long horrible hours, had huge harvest meals at noon, family, spoiled, 50 course meal, sleep for five minutes, die, back to work, only an eight hour day that I remember.
He substituted 12V Batteries. This model (actually *all* 1940ès Autos & Farm Machinery use 6V Batteries. It likely is worn out & not enough vacuum left to pull Air anymore, so they double the voltage to the Starter Motor. This age of I.H Dozers stored the Batteries under the Seat. I worked in a Salvage yard years ago & we used a 1953 IH DROTT. It was Petrol start. & also hard to start cause it was badly worn. We had a spare 1953 Drott to rob parts off.
@MrMarman6 Excuse me ma'am, but that is NOT true older machines like this may need some assistance,and this particular machine is start on gas run on diesel.
it certainly starts an engine but it can and does damage engines.... In my opinion it is much better to find the root cause of the engines reluctance to start, which most likely is either a compression issue or the glow plug system. I have seen engines started using nothing more than a burning newspaper in the air intake manifold and in one instance the person holding the newspaper managed to lose hold of it which resulted in the engine sucking it in and blowing it right out via the exhaust...
rusting away is not the problem they can sit outside for another 20 or 30 years, the real problem is little punks vandalizing them or some idiot abatement beautification program forcing owners to scrap them for the visual good of everyone.
