I have a question from an old friend, he heard that Australia built about 5 ,4T D7, he thinks Kelly & Lewis did!?, during the second war. Near the end!, Do anybody know if there were any differences between the US built & Australian ones?, he thought they were ID taged different and that the generators were mounted different!??. Any knowelege about these few tractors?. Pete.

Hi Pete,
yes ONE "D7" was built here during the 2nd WW by Charles Ruwolt in Richmond Melbourne. It is now located at the Royal Aust Engineers Museum at Liverpool in Sydney.
I saw this machine during my National Service and Plant Operators Training at the School of Millitary Engineering sited at the same location.
It appeared to me as a Cat Dealer trained apprentice earthmoving equip fitter to be a Cat but wasn't as the castings were fairly crude in that no attempt was made to conserve metal. The faces of the castings were slightly sloped with no bosses to accommadate bolt holes and the like, ie, to make patterns easy to make and form the cores etc.
Many years later I was approached by Cat of Australia to help identify the origins of the machine after they had an enquiry from the Army about it, over the years I had become the guru for old Cats to all and sundry including CofAust. Eventually I was lucky to find an emplyee at the Dealer whose Father had done a lot of war related work for the Armed Forces and he recalled seeing this unit being built at Ruwolts at that time. The chase was on and I discovered that when Vickers-Ruwolt, as they had become in later years, closed down they had lodged their Company Records at the Melbourne Uni's Archive Department. The typed piece on the "D7" was from a section of an unpublished book on Ruwolts' history. The article is a photocopy of an article from a Royal Australian Engineers publication I was sent during the fuel system O/H.
I eventually had a hand in its restoration by volunteering the dealer ( me in my own time, with the dealer supplying parts) to overhaul the entire fuel injection system, the apparent weak part of the "prototype" of an order for 500 units, as the war ended the prototype was not finished but luckily someone decided to finish it. During restoration it was found that very few parts were hardened but the machine did some 1143 hours of operation at the Army Plant Operator Training School.
I found the Injector nozzle components were not hardened and therefore could not hold a spray pattern after 2 tester pumps. It had a set of Cat forged body injection pumps on it, no boubt fitted to keep it going at a later date.
After the units resoration for the celebration of the Centenary of the RAE it was transported and displayed all around OZ as part of a mobile museum put together for that event.
Still later it was found that a truck turned up at the docks just as our US buddies were unloading some D7's and we got one loaded onto our truck and scooted off with it to get the Dealer to dismantle for the making of drawings etc.
I finally found an old Dealer employee who remembered fitters going to Ruwolts to assemble parts into the unit as they became available, also parts such as the fuel system coming to the Dealer for assembly. Items such as the trans case and the rear end were all fabricated not cast.
There has been a lot of discussion on this machine on the ACME BB in the past.
Hope this helps.
Sorry I shall be amoungst the missing for the next 2 weeks or so, I will answer any further queries upon my return to computer land.
PS there was alot of conjecture about the S/No plate with the Number CR1 stamped on it. Was it Caterpillar Replica or Charles Ruwolt, we believe it is Charles Ruwolt.
Cheers,
Eddie B.

wow eh!!! what a history of a machine. i have a d7 4t but the history on it is boring compared to this one.

thansk
KoO
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