Bought my wife a Caterpillar D4

Greg Bockelman said:
Yup!
Click to expand...
I worked for a guy that owned three farms when in HS. IIRC he had a B model with the hand clutch and the open pulleys for accessories. Great for pulling stumps, would get to the point you thought it was going to stall out and one of the cylinders would give a loid pop, and the stump was out. Great tractors.

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk
 
Facebook reminded me that it was 1 year ago today that I gave my wife the D4. I suppose one year ago yesterday, because it was mysteriously here when she got home from work and I showed it to her then.

One thing I noticed from the video Facebook reminded me of with the dozer driving around is that originally the exhaust was fairly consistently smoking, whereas now it mostly doesn't. So it seems like running the engine has been good for it. It's probably only got about 10 hours on it in the past year, but that's a lot more than it'd gotten in the previous decade. Hopefully this fall it gets some more work digging out the stumps for the runway.
 
I have a bit of an upgrade from the D4 on my trailer this week.
 

Attachments

  • 20190829_194247-01.jpeg
    20190829_194247-01.jpeg
    179.7 KB · Views: 30
It’s an RD6, but thought this was an interesting pony start video.

Makes starting an airplane look simple.

 
ElPaso Pilot said:
It’s an RD6, but thought this was an interesting pony start video.

Makes starting an airplane look simple.

Click to expand...

That is more or less the level of complexity I have for my RD4, although his is a bit more complex because his pony motor has a spark advance that you can set whereas mine is fixed timing.

His RD6 (both main and pony motor) also appear to be in better shape than mine. My pony motor doesn't start that easily at all, although I run the gas out of the carb entirely until the pony motor shuts off on its own, rather than what he did where he let it run a while and then shut off the pony motor. So that might make things easier. Also my pony motor's rings are shot so I'm sure that's part of it.

He's also doing the correct setup of engagement of the clutch and pinion. I can do that, but it's pretty hard to make it work and tends to grind the pinion. So what I do is I'll rotate the pony motor by hand and engage the pinion like that and get it locked. It doesn't seem to cause any problems when I do that although long term it may cause an issue, but I don't quite see why it would.

The other problem I'm having is that the engine seems to be leaking some fuel in even with the throttle at idle cut off, and so what'll typically happen is it'll burp at some point while cranking under load and then it'll release the pinion and stop spinning, so I'll then have to do that again.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
That is more or less the level of complexity I have for my RD4, although his is a bit more complex because his pony motor has a spark advance that you can set whereas mine is fixed timing.

His RD6 (both main and pony motor) also appear to be in better shape than mine. My pony motor doesn't start that easily at all, although I run the gas out of the carb entirely until the pony motor shuts off on its own, rather than what he did where he let it run a while and then shut off the pony motor. So that might make things easier. Also my pony motor's rings are shot so I'm sure that's part of it.

He's also doing the correct setup of engagement of the clutch and pinion. I can do that, but it's pretty hard to make it work and tends to grind the pinion. So what I do is I'll rotate the pony motor by hand and engage the pinion like that and get it locked. It doesn't seem to cause any problems when I do that although long term it may cause an issue, but I don't quite see why it would.

The other problem I'm having is that the engine seems to be leaking some fuel in even with the throttle at idle cut off, and so what'll typically happen is it'll burp at some point while cranking under load and then it'll release the pinion and stop spinning, so I'll then have to do that again.
Click to expand...

So, in a matter of speaking, your Cat is a twin. Very appropriate.

I assume these don't have glow plugs.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Ted
FormerHangie said:
So, in a matter of speaking, your Cat is a twin. Very appropriate.
Click to expand...

Honestly, the pony motor is not a bad idea.

I assume these don't have glow plugs.
Click to expand...

Correct. The dozer has no battery whatsoever, so nothing to power the glow plugs with. The pony motor exhaust is run into the engine intake to warm the cylinders while it's being motored over pre-start, so that creates a similar effect.

The reality is an electric start with glow plugs would be better. But I think it was a combination of technology available and wanting something that could be self-sufficient anywhere in the world.
 
There is something to be said about plenty of available cranking time to build oil pressure with compression released, then continue building heat cranking with compression, and then starting. It would seem ideal for long engine life.
 
-KLB- said:
There is something to be said about plenty of available cranking time to build oil pressure with compression released, then continue building heat cranking with compression, and then starting. It would seem ideal for long engine life.
Click to expand...

I've done that before, too, although even with the compression release releasing compression, it'll sometimes puff enough. The pinion is very sensitive to releasing from what I've found.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top