Bought my wife a Caterpillar D4

Ted

Ted

The pilot formerly known as Twin Engine Ted
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iFlyNothing
My intention for buying a bulldozer came up in another “thinking about” thread. However my wife wanted a bulldozer, and I decided to buy one for our anniversary for her as a surprise. Since she’s on here occasionally, I couldn’t do a normal thinking about thread.

So here it is - a 1952 Caterpillar D4 dozer. We were driving it around today just having a blast. @Laurie drove it easily for half an hour or more. The kids were super excited to drive it too. Bulldozer rides were fun today.

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It runs well overall (after all, it’s a Cat) but has a few noted issues.

- one cylinder fires differently than the others and seems to smoke. It also sounds like it has an exhaust leak, but it doesn’t - the sound comes out of the muffler. I think it might have a bad injector? Maybe the valves just need adjusted?
- the fuel bowl on the gas tank for the pony motor rusted off. I think the fuel tank is salvageable but I’ll need a new fuel bowl
- hydraulic hoses are beyond shot. I’m getting new ones made up
- glasspack muffler is blown out and the exhaust belches pretty much in your face. I’m going to get a longer exhaust pipe and a new muffler to help quiet it down a bit

My plan is to get the pony motor working properly. Right now we have to pull start it with my Ram which works fine but I do want it working correctly. We also will eventually paint it. I think I’ll adjust the valves on it but I probably need to get the pony motor working first so I have a way to spin the engine.

This thing is really cool. I already pushed one stump over with it.

Does anyone know a good parts source for classic Cat stuff?

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Way cool! My Dad and grandpa used to farm with D6s, I think...that was a LOOOONG time ago, so I don’t remember for sure. All I remember for sure is that when you get a Cat stuck, it’s really stuck.

My grandpa had a Massey Ferguson track loader at his retirement place up in Alaska...a lot easier to drive, still able to get stuck, and we did catch it on fire once. You DO want to get those hydraulic hoses and any marginal fuel lines replaced.

Have fun!
 
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Okay, looking at the pictures the only logical conclusion is that the kids pretty well own all the wheels on the DuPuis hacienda, and it looks like they now have first dibs on all the tracks too. :D

And don't you already have enough projects??? :p
 
Sweet! Drove and operated some heavy equipment in the Air Force, always fun. Kids and wife look like they're having a blast! Better watch them or they'll knock down all your trees!
 
D4 for the wife for your anniversary....... you romantic devil you....:lol::lol:

Just a quick thought on exhaust.... you might run it over the cab and point it up with a flapper. That will get the smoke out of your face and might help reduce the noise a little.

And the look on the kids faces are priceless..!!
 
C'mon Ted. Fess up. You bought the dozer so the kids will leave the Cobra for Dad. Right?
 
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Oh yeah...the other thing I remember about Cats is they don't have a road gear! :D

Thanks for posting this, Ted...got me remembering some cool stuff about my grandpa and some of the equipment he built. Haven't thought about that for a long time. :cool:
 
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Oldest Cat our company has is a mid 90's D3. I'm of no use to you on old stuff... Plus, in our case, local dealer gets 99.9% of our parts orders.

BUT, sweet 165. I had a 135 that I loved.
 
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You can use the dozer to flatten the donor of the franken-motor before you haul it to the shredder.
 
Ted, amazing! The smiles on the faces are worth every bit of it! Congratulations on dad of the year!
 
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In the mid 70s I flew a King Air for United Equipment. He talked about building his office to look like a Caterpillar. A few years later he finished it. Turlock, CA off Hwy 99.
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Parts are available from Regalcorp.com equipment. Best prices I could find. Super source for knowledge and advice online is the antique caterpillar owners group ACMOC.org. Get yourself an ops manual and parts manual, both available from a cat dealer. Everything done on those suckers is by part number. Caterpillar also has a used parts network called Smartparts that can save you some bucks.
There's an electric starter motor conversion kit that might save you some grief depending on what's wrong with the pony. Your other problem could be a lot of things, from fuel injection pump cam to injector to valves. A service manual goes a long way.
I have a 977H track loader, and have done a lot of work on it from rebuilding the motor through the inspection ports (D330 turbo) to rebuilding the injector pump to replacing the steering clutches and recoil springs. Sometimes those things aren't so much fun.
 
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Hawker800 said:
In the mid 70s I flew a King Air for United Equipment. He talked about building his office to look like a Caterpillar. A few years later he finished it. Turlock, CA off Hwy 99.
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I have family in Turlock, need to check that out next time I am out there!
 
I think this is the most multi-quotes I've ever used!

Zeldman said:
D4 for the wife for your anniversary....... you romantic devil you....:lol::lol:
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It was her idea! Well, not the anniversary part, but she wanted a bulldozer.

Just a quick thought on exhaust.... you might run it over the cab and point it up with a flapper. That will get the smoke out of your face and might help reduce the noise a little.

And the look on the kids faces are priceless..!!
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I'm planning essentially that. I'm debating whether or not I want to mess around with a muffler or just making a taller straight pipe. The engine seems to be remarkably quiet other than the exhaust. And since there's one cylinder that's not running entirely right, I think just getting that will fix part of the volume. At max RPM most of the noise comes from general vibrations in the dozer itself.

GRG55 said:
C'mon Ted. Fess up. You bought the dozer so the kids will leave the Cobra for Dad. Right?
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I'm more hoping they don't eventually drive the dozer into the Cobra. ;)

G-Man said:
I was going to say that's the ugliest Cobra I ever saw, but then the patina started to grow on me.
Still, did you even look at the manual as you were building that?
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I'm an engineer, I never read manuals!

MauleSkinner said:
Oh yeah...the other thing I remember about Cats is they don't have a road gear! :D
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I haven't spent much time messing around with it, but it does have 5 forward gears. For what we're doing right now (knocking trees over and getting to where the trees are to knock over), gears 1-3 are what we've been using. All 3 gears do work.

Honestly, for being a 1950s piece of heavy equipment, I'm surprised with how easy it is to operate.

Half Fast said:
VERY COOL!

So what did the charming lady give you for an anniversary gift? A backhoe, I hope?
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Technically our anniversary isn't for another week, so I'm not sure. I doubt she's bought me any heavy equipment seeing as that would require use of the trailer and the Ram, and she typically hasn't had access to both of those.

SaltH2OHokie said:
BUT, sweet 165. I had a 135 that I loved.
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Thanks! We really love that tractor. It was the first one that we bought after moving here, an oldie but goodie that serves as our primary "working tractor" for mowing the lawns. Other than replacing tires on it and changing oil, I haven't had to do much to it. Brakes barely work though so at some point I'll need to get that fixed. For its normal job (mowing) it's not a big deal. In the picture you see it just got a fresh, very expensive, high quality paint job. Here's a picture of it being done:

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The kids said one day "Daddy, we want to paint." I'd bought a $30 gallon of red Rustoleum Farm & Implement paint from Tractor Supply so I gave them some brushes and let them go to town. Needs another coat when they're so inclined on the red parts, and then I'll put new decals on. The non-red areas also need to get painted.

At some point they'll need to help me repaint the Allis Chalmers D17 (our other working tractor with a front end loader).

weilke said:
You can use the dozer to flatten the donor of the franken-motor before you haul it to the shredder.
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I'd had the exact same thought.

Half Fast said:
That thing should make one helluva airplane tug.
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Another thought I'd had, although somehow I have a feeling the airport authority wouldn't go for that...
 
In the last month have purchased a Bobcat skid steer, a grapple attachment for it and last week a dump trailer. Should have waited until next month for the anniversary.
 
lbfd101 said:
In the last month have purchased a Bobcat skid steer, a grapple attachment for it and last week a dump trailer. Should have waited until next month for the anniversary.
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This thread is giving me some ideas for upcoming anniversaries.
 
If I got that for my wife, she'd be surprised. I'm sure she'd mention it for years, too.
 
Be careful if you come home one day and she invites you to check out the hole she dug...
 
Hawker800 said:
In the mid 70s I flew a King Air for United Equipment. He talked about building his office to look like a Caterpillar. A few years later he finished it. Turlock, CA off Hwy 99.
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This piqued my interest enough to go hunting on Google Maps...

https://www.google.com/maps/search/...120.8563724,148a,35y,180h,39.5t/data=!3m1!1e3

https://www.google.com/maps/@37.476...4!1sypqPduo1GQQ4itByUICrbw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Only 1.0 miles walk from Turlock Airpark.

https://www.funplacestofly.com/Airport-Info-Turlock-Airpark-California
 
The Turlock Airpark use to be longer but the re-routing of Hwy 99 cut off a good portion. Turlock is a really nice town, like to move back.
 
NealRomeoGolf said:
Your local dealer should be able to get you anything. If they say they can’t, PM me.
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Yeah, $45 for brass fuel valve that can be had at the local hardware store for $7.99. Cat dealer is supplier of last resort.
 
I owned acreage, mostly flat, that I wanted to make into a landing strip. It had a few ditches that needed moving, some fences that needed to be torn down, a few trees that had to go, and a few woodchuck holes that needed filling.

I first bought a farm tractor with a back blade/disc/plow/box blade...super easy to use.

I bought a bobcat type front loader (Mustang)...super easy to use.

Then I bought a backhoe...super easy to use.

So then, thinking that I was some kind of earth-moving expert, I bought a dozer (D4 also)...holy crud was that thing hard to figure out! After unintentionally turning my property into something that resembled a motocross track, I had to call a buddy that did earth moving and confess my screw up(s). He came over, returned my property back to "smooth", and gave me some pointers, including the advice: Don't expect to get good at using a dozer for six months or so...

Good luck!
 
Ted DuPuis said:
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Cute picture Ted of your daughter. I have a similar one of my then little girl helping me wash a VW Bug Convertable I had for awhile. They grow up fast, enjoy them while you can.
 
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