Cletrac's, Roll's Royce or not?

cletracboy · December 08, 2002, 01:38:16 PM

I have been wondering weather or not Cletracs were well regarded reliable machines in their day or not. I am only young and don't remember them, and there are very few in the Uk any way. I was hoping some of you would discuss (without bias) weather or not they were reliable. From working on mine the engineering looks very good with some interesting details you don't find on the Cat's etc... over here Caterpilars are regarded as being bomb proof though!

Blake Malkamaki · December 09, 2002, 02:33:25 AM

Yes Cletracs were way ahead of Cats in technology almost continuously. In the later years they started falling back because Oliver would not put any money back into the plant and would not let the Cleveland engineers do what they wanted.

Everybody has their preferences, but for the most part the Cletracs were faster, much more nimble machines than Cats. Year for year they would run circles around them and anyone else. Forget Case and John Deere as they weren't even in the league until the late 60s with any crawler of account.

Blake Malkamaki · December 09, 2002, 06:07:28 AM

But no, they weren't a Rolls Royce. Take that how you want;)

John · December 10, 2002, 05:57:17 AM

Besides the beauty in engineering present in Cletracs,one must appreciate the differential steering design as opposed to steering brakes and clutches...it took thirty years after the demise of cletrac for the other mfgs to copy that method of steering...talk about being ahead of their time..........

cletracboy · December 11, 2002, 05:31:54 PM

From reading about Cletracs and other crawler of their time it seems obvious they had some really good features such as the controlled differential steering, that and the 6 cylinder engine were the main reasons I bought my BD when I haden't even heard of Cletracs before, I went to the dealers a few hundred miles from my place to see an International BTD6 which had a dozer blade on, but spent more time looking at the BD and bought it a week later. one thing no one seems to want to divulge is how reliable they were. also does anyone know how popular they were in terms of their share of the market? such as over here Agco, Case & New Holland, John Deere-(JD having made huge gains in the last few years) have most of the market between them with most of the rest having only a couple of percent of the market. Sam

Blake Malkamaki · December 12, 2002, 05:58:19 AM

I know in 1941 Cletrac was bigger than Caterpillar.

Now I will make a guesitmate of the market held by the crawler companies. I would say Cat and Cletrac had equal parts of the majority of the market. International and Allis-Chalmers shared the next level down. John Deere, Case, and the rest of the crawler late-comers were a very small percentage of the market - mostly used for farm chores, they were no match for the others in any industrial/construction work.

cletracboy... comparing the BD and the TD-6 you looked at, the BD should work circles around the TD-6. The TD-6 is a smaller machine, but it's a bumbling piece of machinery with poor balance and slow. Look at the crazy technology IH use in starting their diesels - yes it worked, but so much trouble to go through and so many extra parts just to start on gasoline and switch to diesel. And they had all kinds of trouble with heads cracking. The gas version of that engine was a great engine - I have one in my Farmall Super M.

cletracboy · December 12, 2002, 06:36:31 PM

I'm certainly glad I bought the BD not the BTD6. The BTD being for british tracked diesel , they were almost identical to the TD6 but were built in Doncaster (England) and used an electric start diesel, with the later models fitted with heater plugs.

Blake Malkamaki · December 13, 2002, 05:22:25 AM

I don't know much about a BTD-6, but a TD-6 has a 4 cylinder diesel that starts on gas and switches over to diesel. It has a magneto and carburator and 3 valves in each cylinder, one being used to expose a larger combustion chamber for lower compression for starting. This valve is closed when run in diesel mode. I presume the BTD means Brittish TD, meaning the British version of the TD, not "tracked diesel". But it may be a completely different machine. The TD-6 used the same engine as the MD Farmall, while the T-6 used the same gas engine as an M Farmall.

cletracboy · December 13, 2002, 07:01:16 PM

Its quite a suprise to me that at one time Cletrac was bigger than Cat and I didn't even realise they were so close in sales there are way more Cats over here than cletracs even if you forget the later cats after cletrac shut down. The internationals are also very numerous over here. we have a lot of TD6 as well as the BTD6 the TD6 came over during the war on lease lend, I have also seen quite a lot of the larger Internationals that use the petrol starting TD14 etc.. the BTD6 were almost identical to a TD6 bar the engine which is far more conventional as they tended to be later from after the war years. There were other British versions such as the BTD8 and 9 and I think a few larger, but most of the really big one's were still imported from the US. Have you ever seen one of those Alice Chalmer crawlers which run on diesel but use a spark ignition, a very strange idea indeed, I believe it alowed them to use lower compression than a conventional diesel but it used as much fuel as a petrol, can't remember what model they were.