cat radiator guards

I don't know, but it looks pretty cool, so I just painted mine black! Of course, once my brush gaurd is back on you won't see it anyway...

G

[quote="Gregness"]I don't know, but it looks pretty cool, so I just painted mine black! Of course, once my brush gaurd is back on you won't see it anyway...

G[/quote]

i agree that it does look good. debating on whether to paint mine black. just figured if i did and it wasnt original that someone will point that out at a show and tell me thats not original and ask me why i did that.lol. i have had people in the past come up to me at shows and point out on my olivers that grade 8 bolts were not original to that crawler or that tsc oil filter is not original and so on. its kinda comical. so i figured as obvious as a rad guard is i better try and get it right.lol

From looking through the photo archive books I have on the early gas Cats and up through the later diesel machines, it's apparent that the radiator guards came both ways - some look to be the same color as the rest of the machine but a lot of the others are clearly a different color. At the end of the day, the owner of the machine has the ultimate say over what the finished look should be. Personally, I don't let the comments that say otherwise bother me.

Getting off topic a bit but still somewhat related - I've attended several Minneapolis-Moline get-togethers where numerous former MM employees also show up, and on more than one occasion I've heard from these guys that there were times on the production line where when the "paint men" were about to end a shift, it was the policy to try to use as much of the day's left-over paint batch as they could instead of throwing it away or opening up another batch of whatever color they needed. Meaning, that since the only areas commonly red on a MM tractor were the wheels and grille, it sometimes ended up that the red paint was already gone by the time the last few tractors of the day were ready for paint, so some actually came off the line painted entirely "Prarie Gold" with no red on them at all. It was figured to be better than mixing up a whole new batch of red just to use a little bit of it and risking it not being good by the time the next shift started. Of course, policies like this are bound to be different between each tractor company, but sometimes it can explain some of the variations that show up.

Like I said, do it up like you think is best and don't worry about what anybody else thinks is right or wrong cause no matter what you do there will be someone who disagrees.

[quote="Toby Nelson"]From looking through the photo archive books I have on the early gas Cats and up through the later diesel machines, it's apparent that the radiator guards came both ways - some look to be the same color as the rest of the machine but a lot of the others are clearly a different color. At the end of the day, the owner of the machine has the ultimate say over what the finished look should be. Personally, I don't let the comments that say otherwise bother me.

Getting off topic a bit but still somewhat related - I've attended several Minneapolis-Moline get-togethers where numerous former MM employees also show up, and on more than one occasion I've heard from these guys that there were times on the production line where when the "paint men" were about to end a shift, it was the policy to try to use as much of the day's left-over paint batch as they could instead of throwing it away or opening up another batch of whatever color they needed. Meaning, that since the only areas commonly red on a MM tractor were the wheels and grille, it sometimes ended up that the red paint was already gone by the time the last few tractors of the day were ready for paint, so some actually came off the line painted entirely "Prarie Gold" with no red on them at all. It was figured to be better than mixing up a whole new batch of red just to use a little bit of it and risking it not being good by the time the next shift started. Of course, policies like this are bound to be different between each tractor company, but sometimes it can explain some of the variations that show up.

Like I said, do it up like you think is best and don't worry about what anybody else thinks is right or wrong cause no matter what you do there will be someone who disagrees.[/quote]

toby, thanks for the comments. that is a very interesting piece of information. it certainly does explain alot.as with cat and mm, oliver crawlers seems to be the same concerning paint issues. it seems when disassyembly begins, a person can find all sorts of differences in colors. what you stated makes perfect sense.my radiator guard might just get some black after all. God bless, eric