Messages

hi hsaele12,

It is warming up, please get busy, you are almost there. I would like to see it run too. I always wanted to try farming steep sidehill with a BGH. I think it might be better than a Cat.

I find most old points. are.much better quality material than any available new. If they are 2 piece you can take them out and reface them with a dremmel if necessary.Many old point sets have very thick contact material where new ones are plated.

My second tractor when I was a kid was an HG. It came with a MS carburator. I could not get it to run with that carb. I bought a Tillotson Carburator for it and all was good. The MS carb had fixed jets, The Tillotson was adjusable jets. I wish I had never sold that tractor.

Get 'er running.

This is a great story. I would love to see pictures. I am a Cat guy. I am south of you in the foothills. I have picked up a few Cats. My first tractor was an AG Cletrac. It was not a H model but I farmed sidehills with it. I would to try a BDH for farming sidehills, I bet it would go where no Cat could.
Does this tractor have a blade?

So far as the engine swap,  I haven't yet edited some pictures--I've got the mounts partly made,  the engine sitting in the chassis.   I spent considerable time trying to straighten the frame.   I'll get some pics up soon

Glad to hear you are still working on it. Keep up the good work. Keep us up to date.

Tom

I am definately into the Cats now. That D2 is junk now. I bought a 7U D4 back in the mid '80's and farmed with it for years, it is about worn out now. I went to Arthur Bright's auction back in the '80's and bought a 5J D2 that was kind of a rust bucket but proved out to be a low hour tractor. I use it for haying. I spend half my time at another ranch in the CA foothills and have a HT4 Cat loader and a 8C Cat 20 there.

I was fortunate to meet Arthur Bright a few years ago. He is a big time tractor collector here in CA. He still maintains a museum at his nursery near Merced. He has a lot of Cats but was also interested in Cletracs. He said they used them for farming on his ranch. He has quite a few Cletracs in the Museum.

I would like to try a BDH for farming steep sidehills. I never found an advantage to the Cletrac steering with the AG, but it was standard gauge and a little small for what I was trying to do with it. The ranch across the road from me down on the coast has some really steep hills that show evidence of being farmed years ago. I heard they had a Cletrac over there but never knew for sure. People always made fun of Cletracs in that part of the country.

Tom

When I was in high school I fell in love with tractors. Our ranch was leased out to a man who was farming with a Cat 5U D2. He used to park it in the barn and I would visit it. I would sit on it and work the controls and generally check it out all over. It was only about 5 years old then and had all the original pait and decals. There were shiny spots worn through the paint in the foot pans pre cleaner and side fuel tank wher the operator had been leaning on it.  Our ranch is a really steep hill and I wanted to farm it. My grandfather had farmed with horses. I fell in love with it.

When I was 16, in about 1959, I went to an auction. There was a Cletrac AG there all painted up. It was not the correct color, it was more like new Cat yellow. It had some dealer stickers on it too. The only Cletracs I had seen had steering wheels, I did not want that but this one had levers. I wasnt too keen on that foot clutch but I was able to buy it for $350.

We hauled it home and it was my tractor for a while. I built a haywire dozer for it and did some road building. I wish I had left off there.

I really had tractor fever now. In a short time I bought a wide gauge Cat 20 that had a froze up engine for $100. I picked up an Oliver HG for $350. I devoted much of my attention to the Cat 20 because it was wide gauge and I could farm the hill with it. My plan was to restore the HG and sell it to finance my endevours.

When I got out of high school I farmed about a 12 acre field with that Cat 20. This was the tractor that taught me what shot tracks were like. On one side the bushings were worn through to the pins and the sprocket teeth worn to a point. It never came off the tracks but the tracks were so tight it took a lot of power to get around let alone pull, and that thing could suck gas.

I overhauled the HG and painted it all up and put decals on it. I had to paint the HG freehand because Oliver no longer sold that decal. I put it up for sale for $1500 and then $1200 and had no takers. I went to an auction and bought a PTO attachment for it

My first year of farming I had pulled an old horse mower with the HG to cut hay, by the second year I had the PTO on the HG and picked up a Jphn Deere #5 mower. I took the jeep hydraulics I had put on the AG and put on the HG. I was still raking with a sulky rake at that time. I built a little slide around buck rake for the HG and used to buck shocks of hay to the press.

I tore the 20 apart to put rings in it and left the head off and it got water in it. My grandfather aranged for me to sell it to his brother for parts for $75.  My grandfather hated that tractor, he thought I would kill myself with it trying to farm the steeps. His brother had an old tail seat 20 and I thought he could make a decent tractor out of it. I learned later the old scalywag sold it, He was a wheeler dealer.

By then I really had the farming bug. I decided to go ahead and farm with the AG, the HG being too small for primary tillage. I cut out a few spots on the hill that were not too steep for the standard gauge AG. I rented some other ground that was not too steep for it. I was pulling a 6'9" disc that I learned later was a little too big for it. I had trouble with the keys stripping in the sprockets. The tracks were in pretty good shape, I bullt up the grousers. I had to put some rollers under it. I found a place that had parted out an AD-2 and got rollers there. I sure wish that tracter had been a Hilside model. I have a lot of respect for the Cletrac design. The trackframes are big heavy forgings and give a lot of low weight right where it is needed.

Eventually the engine started leaking a lot of oil out the rear main and broke the impeller in the water pump. I decided to buy the Buda engine that came out of the AD. It had a broken crank but came with a good one. I had the crank ground and put new bearings in it. I think that crank was not exactly the right one because it always leaked oil. The copper tubing that went to the pump had a habit of vibrating loose I used to carry a flaring tool on the tractor. My AG never had a starter so I couldnt put the starter from the AD2 on it. I had a belt pulley on the AG that I got at the auction where I got the pto for the HG. I used to park them back to back and start the AD with the HG. In later years I got the AD stuck where I couldn't do this and rented a torch to cut the case to accomodate the starter.

The HG had come with a decent homemade blade that had never been put on. I set it up on there, that was a handy little tractor. I modified my buck rake so it went on the blade and I could lift it.

The year my son was born (he is passed 40 now) I got a chance to buy an old beat up Cat D2 5U for $1000. My wife at the time said why don't you sell the tractors you have and buy it. The D2 was my first love so I did. I sold that HG for $650, I still kick myself for doing that. I sold the AD for a couple of hundred, it was pretty shot by then, I wish I had taken better care of it, it was not a bad tractor when I got it. It would have been a decent dozer with the right blade on it. I wish I had persued that course instead of getting involved in all that farming, It was a dead end street.

Tom