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I would have thought 2 inch would be plenty, especially if the machine is mostly just for playing around on. Those deep grousers make the machine ride awfully hard especially on rocky going. One of my DDH olivers had the same welded on grouser extensions when i bought it. It rode terrible and chewed the crap out of everywhere i drove it ( not nice on my driveway!) I oxy cut them all back down to around 1.5 inches. The machine rides much better now, and there was no way it was ever going to wear those welded on grousers down before the chains were totally shot anyway! Good to hear your getting the 18 running again, will be great to see a video of it pushing some dirt around!  Keep up the good work, regards Pete.

hey Ian, yes i have been on here for a few years now, just don't post too often. I quite enjoy mucking around with my Cletracs, just wish the money tree would flower a little more often to help with the restoring and collecting! There are quite a few Cletracs down here waiting to be bought and restored. There are 3 FDE cletracs just down the road growing blackberries and an oc15 not too far away either. These machines were very popular down this end of the world in the 50s, and many were used by the Hydro etc for large government construction projects. have just today walked my DDh back from a neighbouring property where i have been pulling logs out for a while. Is good to be able to still do a days work with a 62 year old dozer! I have posted some pics on the Cletrac page on facebook if anybody would like to have a look. Regards, Pete.

HI, I have spoken to BOB about this but thought it would be worthwile sharing this info with you all. I have 3 Cletrac DDH and one Cletrac DD crawlers. I still regularily use one of the DDH dozers for hauling out timber etc. When the origional track gear was totally stuffed i replaced the track chains with Komatsu pc300 excavator chains and grousers. I had to use 30 ton machine tracks to get the correct chain width to suit the Cletrac lower rollers. The rear sprockets were made up using Komatsu rear sprockets, however the Komatsu sprockets were ? 23 tooth and i needed 19 teeth to get the correct diameter to suit a DD cletrac, so i had to cut the Komatsu sprocket into individual teeth and re-weld those teeth back onto my Cletrac sprockets. It was a lot of welding and grinding but the sprockets look and work perfectly and it would be impossible to pick now that they have been custom made. it would also be possible to get any decent steel fabrication shop to oxy cut sprocket segments to suit the sprocket hubs on your machines, however i was able to purchase genuine Komatsu sprockets at a very decent price, so went the way that i did. I used the origional Cletrac lower rollers, fitted Komatsu top rollers ( as mine were shot) and rolled up 100x25 flat bar into hoops and welded these onto the front idlers to make solid front idlers. The conversion has worked perfectly for the last 15 years now, and i would say the tracks will out last the machine now. I was able to purchase the tracks for 2 cases of beer from my local Komatsu dealer, as the SALT seals were worn out, so they changed the whole tracks out from a contracting machine, however for my machine which is much smaller than a 30 ton excavator they work perfectly!

I am sure some will find this hard to believe...  I have several ddh dozers in running order, and 2 of them are still running the origional hercules drxb engine. one of them starts and runs just fine. However the other one was very difficult to start and had very little power. I had replaced the rings and ground the valves and had driven it for approx 2 days over a period of years( a long term restoration). I presumed the rings had not bedded in and causing it to run and sound rather strange compared to my good runner in the other machine. It finally got the better of me recently and i checked the injection pump timing, and to my shock found out that when i set up the pump timing i had set it up 180 deg out!!  This meant that it was injecting at the end of the exhaust stroke and drawing the fuel into the cylinder through the intake stroke. No wonder it sounded strange!! I reset the pump today and it started straight up and runs just fine now. It always pays to remove the rocker cover to make sure when setting up pump timing that it is set to tdc on the correct stroke. and i discovered my mistake once i did this and found the exhaust valve still open.   Strange but true...  Regards from Pete.

yes! somebody has been quite busy with the waterpipe and welder. i have to do this to one of my ddh cletracs soon to refurbish the sprockets. not too hard, just time consuming. Thanks for the pics eric. I wish it was in tasmania, would make a good parts machine. regards pete.

I have a perkins 6-354 in my cletrac ddh. it has been fitted for around 15 years and runs well. About the only drawback it has is that it spins too fast compared to the drxb diesel it replaced. the origional motor only ran at 1200 rpm max wheras the perkins runs at around 2500 rpm max, so i am always careful to only use part throttle to avoid over revving the gearbox etc. that said the motor has plenty of power and easily spins the tracks when pushing. ( this machine is fitted with excavator grousers though and low ground pressure ones at that!!) The installation is pretty straight forward and involved fitting the motor to the origional mounting plate, making an adapter ring to mount on the flywheel to take the origional clutch and fabricating a new front engine support. pretty simple really and it worked out well and runs very reliably. hope this helps, regerds pete.

I have several DDh cletracs that i use for occasional weekend work. One of my Cletracs is fitted with a Perkins 6-354, which has been fitted for approx 15 years now. The problem with fitting a late model engine is that most new engines are high speed diesels wheras the origional DRXB engine is a slow speed engine. The maximum engine speed of the origional engine is 1200 rpm, wheras the perkins and most others is double that for a similar size engine. This means that the replacement engine is labouring heavily at low ground speed, and the poor gearbox is being driven far too fast if you use the engine at its correct running rpm, as well as the machine travelling too fast. when dozing i find it is a real balance on the throttle between too low rpm and not enough torque and lifting the throttle which then spins the tracks quite easily, whilst driving things too fast. I have oftem wondered if it would be worth fitting a smaller diesel engine with its gearbox attatched and locked in say 1st gear to help lower the speed before it goes into the origional cletrac gearbox. One of my other cletracs has the origional DRXB motor in good running condition and it sure beats the pants off the other one with the Perkins motor for torque and general driveability. I would strongly recommend you at least have a good look at the origional engine before you consider replacing it. hope this is of some help. Regards Pete.

The DRXB motor in the DD model Cletrac can be a hard starter when left for a while. I would say that if everything else seems fine and the cranking speed is ok then you probably have a very common problem of low compression due to dry or stuck rings. Easiest method of helping this is to use an oil can with a long flexible hose on the end and to remove the inlet manifold and push the tube into each cylinder in turn and pump half dozen or so squirts of motor oil into each cylinder. this will lubricate the dry rings and greatly aid the compression for starting. The origional owners manual states a procedure similar to this for starting after extended periods. If possible also try starting on a warmer day or warming up the coolant by some method. A warm motor is vastly easier to start than a cold one. I am in Tasmania ( Hobart) and have 4 DDH cletracs for occasional use. Any more questions feel free to ask or call me on 0362390497 evenings. Hope this helps, regards Pete.

Was working on the pto shaft on my ddh cletrac today. It has two fiddly 1/4 unf bolts/nuts securing the pto shaft to the winch input spline. Got the first in ok being VERY careful not to drop anything into the differential compartment. Unfortunately the second nut somehow jumped out of the socket at a critical time and fell somewhere into the differential compartment. Had a look with a torch...no good. drained the oil from the differential housing and sieved it to find the nut....no good. poked around a bit with torch, hands and screwdriver....still no luck. blew the compartment clean with compressed air....nothing. bearing in mind this is only a small nut and could hide anywhere!! So i gave up and re-filled the gearbox and will drive it back and forth a bit hoping it will find its way into the drain plug( the lowest bit in the housing). i will then re-drain the compartment and have another look. The thought of that nut getting jammed in the diff or gears is not good... I am sure i am not the first to do this though. Sometimes no matter how careful you are things can go wrong, and i spent the best part of today in a fruitless search for one tiny nut.Bugger.

wow, that was lucky! hope it comes with all the accessories and mounting plate etc. parts are getting harder to find these days. if he has other bits of ad cletracs you should grab them before they get cut up for scrap. with the price of scrap steel around $$125 a ton in australia lots of old machinery is going to the scrappers these days. good luck, regards Pete

I would personally look for a 4cyl diesel out of an international tractor from the 1960 or 70 period. they are very common in Australia and were fitted to numerous wheel and crawler tractors of the time. They are a slower revving motor which the AD needs and have the correct type of governor fitted for crawler work. a 4 cyl perkins from a fergy tractor would also be suitable i would think. Be careful when getting engines from trucks as they dont have the correct type of governor fitted and will bog down when loaded up requiring constant changes of the hand throttle to keep the same ground speed. I have a 6-354 perkins in one of my ddh cletracs and it too has the governor from a truck and makes for lots of throttle changes when dozing to prevent either bogging down or over-rev when the load comes off.

the origional motor should be a Hercules DOOC 4 cylinder diesel. The origional motors only ran at about 1500 rpm max so if re-powering with another motor you should be mindful of this as the machine will run too fast with little torque. the gearbox also would not be happy spinning at higher speeds. Advertising is your best bet at the moment. A friend of mine has 3 AD cletracs but he is a buyer and not a seller of parts. bit simiar to me really as i want enough spares to see me through, so still buy parts as i find them from time to time. Do you have access to parts or an entire BD cletrac?? i think the AD and BD are mostly identical although Blake or others on this board must know more than me as i havent compared the 2 models close enough in my travels. regards pete.

I think the ad and bd gearbox housings are the same and that the bd motor may fit, however the chassis will have to be lengthened somewhat to fit the motor.the origional motor should be a dooc diesel engine of 4 cyl. they are getting thin on the ground now, however i still reckon you should get one by advertising in the trading post or THE OLD MACHINERY MAGAZINE. i think www.tomm.com.au or something similar. a friend of mine has 3 ad model cletracs in tassie and i have 4 dd and ddh cletracs in tassie also.as for the pto do you have the internal input gear to drive the output shaft that is inside the gearbox or nothing at all?? hope this helps, regards Pete.

well that is a first for me, never realised you could change pinions without the bull gear. will have to have a look at my cletracs as i reckon the dd cletrac probably has the 12 tooth pinion wheras the ddh ones use the 11 tooth. do any other cletracs do this to change the final drive gearing??. Had a fun afternoon today. started 3 of my cletracs and spent some time driving around the trails. Nothing like the sound of an old diesel with a 4" open exhaust!!. Got 100 + truckloads of gravel to spread soon, that should be fun.Regards Pete.

i have often wondered how the DD and DDH cletracs can have an optional 11 tooth pinion in the final drive yet i can only find one referance to the large final drive gear in the parts book. It doesn't make sense to me that you can change one gear without the other, bearing in mind that the center distances of the two gears are set in the final drive housing, so you cannot move them slightly closer for the smaller 11 tooth pinion. Anybody able to shed some light on this, regards Pete.