edb, thanks for the explaination. Being a warm weather California guy, you will have to excuse my stupidity. I still like the looks of that D4/7U. Is it still in operation?

Hi Dozerman51,
snow is foreign to me also, I have seen snow fall twice in my 62 years here.
The Vostok D4 is now in a museum, see attached articles.
At the Dealer I got to work on rebuiling these machines and was also involved in the preperation of current Cat product for Antarctic use. Along the way we at the Dealer became so called experts if only for our experience at adapting machines to operate in these hostile environments. We answered queries from Cat USA, & Japan, and other Nations working in Antarctica in preperation of units for there and the Northern Hemisphere--China etc.
With constant feed back from the field via the boys at ANARE and other Nations we prepared units for we got a good package going through team work, especially on the Challanger units.
When I started as an Apprentice in 1962 the Vostok D4 was in for its first O/H and the lack of wear and general excellent condition of all components astouned the assembled Cat Engineers including our own people--amazing what a clean operating environment (no dirt) can do to aid little wear after many hours of operation, the D4 even ran with no air cleaner without effect, the boys said at times they were mesmerised on long legs by the snow flakes being ingested into the turbo inlet (altitude normalizer actually)
Hope this is of interest and not boring you all, if so sorry.
Cheers,
Eddie B.

Eddie B.

On the contrary...your stories are far from boring! It is always great to hear first hand information regarding such unique machinery.

That's a fine looking D4 but one would only consider buying it for a collection or show piece, as I can't imagine trying to locate another set of tracks if needed!

Sure is in nice shape! I wonder how wide that critter is? Would transport be a problem or should I say costly?

"edb" wrote:

Hi Dozerman51,
snow is foreign to me also, I have seen snow fall twice in my 62 years here.
The Vostok D4 is now in a museum, see attached articles.
At the Dealer I got to work on rebuiling these machines and was also involved in the preperation of current Cat product for Antarctic use. Along the way we at the Dealer became so called experts if only for our experience at adapting machines to operate in these hostile environments. We answered queries from Cat USA, & Japan, and other Nations working in Antarctica in preperation of units for there and the Northern Hemisphere--China etc.
With constant feed back from the field via the boys at ANARE and other Nations we prepared units for we got a good package going through team work, especially on the Challanger units.
When I started as an Apprentice in 1962 the Vostok D4 was in for its first O/H and the lack of wear and general excellent condition of all components astouned the assembled Cat Engineers including our own people--amazing what a clean operating environment (no dirt) can do to aid little wear after many hours of operation, the D4 even ran with no air cleaner without effect, the boys said at times they were mesmerised on long legs by the snow flakes being ingested into the turbo inlet (altitude normalizer actually)
Hope this is of interest and not boring you all, if so sorry.
Cheers,
Eddie B.

Eddie,
My bro lives in Moe, and he gets snow once in a while, but right now the heavy rain seems to be the problem. My niece said that Tarralagon was flooded.
Ed

Hi Ed,
yes we've gone from drought to biggest floods in years. Gippsland has had a tough time of it what with bush fires denuding large areas and the floods washing the top soil, fencing, stock, buildings,equipment, etc. away. The cockies(farmers) are having a hard season out on their farms these last few years. Cost of food is always on the rise because of it all. Any way I hope your relatives were spared the ravages of the flood etc.
Cheers,
Eddie B.

Old Mag. , They are surly a very unique conversion, but it looks like quite a load on the dead axil. RT

If you look closely at the pictures there appears to be some type of wishbone?? support between the sprockets that would make the cantilevered end about the same as a regular wide gage.

Still, your right, the drive loading could get pretty severe.