Bought a Cat Ten

I bought this little Cat Ten last week, it's a 1929 serial #PT3037. It was originally owned by the city of Superior, WI and spent the last few years of its working life as a sidewalk snowplow Cat. It's got a Wausau Hand-Operated Cable Lift mechanism to raise and lower the plow blade, but it gets a bit interesting after that. The blade looks a bit put-together and has been repaired in a few spots but is still in the same configuration as it was last used in. Where it attaches to the track frames however, appears to be all Caterpillar components with Cat part numbers, each track frame bracket is connected by a heavy downward arched bar that curves down below the transmission and through each bracket. There are two pivoting angle brackets on the ends of the heavy bar and the whole setup appears to be the main attaching point of a Caterpillar Motor Patrol grader frame. If this Ten was once a part of a Cat Motor Patrol or not I have no idea, it's entirely possible that they could have used these pieces that were once on another machine to couple it together to mount a snowplow blade. For now those details are lost to history, but hey, I like it how it is.

This machine was restored about 15 years ago by a good friend of mine and fellow collector. It has about the best undercarriage I've ever seen on a Ten, has a generator to power the light, has the rear hand crank setup, and the manifolds are original and still in good shape. The sides of the hood had long ago been cut away where the factory side panels attached, the panels could not be hinged open because the blade lift mechanism interfered with their travel, so different side panels were made to fit that slid straight up instead. Those pieces weren't fixed up to go back on the tractor during its restoration, but they all came with it. I may replace the hood and get new louvered panels for it (I already know what I can do to still make them be able to open and close) which would have a much more original look, but I'm getting ahead of myself since that project would still be a ways off in the future. The plow blade and frame will require a lot of repairs to be done to them as well, but it does work - the previous owner actually plowed snow with it once to see how it would do.

Anyway, here are a few pics I took of it right after I got it home.

[img]http://i802.photobucket.com/albums/yy310/TRNelson/photo%20155_zpspv5qgcsl.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i802.photobucket.com/albums/yy310/TRNelson/photo%20149_zpsabdhcqqh.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i802.photobucket.com/albums/yy310/TRNelson/photo%20150_zpswl24rtaa.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i802.photobucket.com/albums/yy310/TRNelson/photo%20151_zps6iz4cnu1.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i802.photobucket.com/albums/yy310/TRNelson/photo%20152_zpsaaktw1tz.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i802.photobucket.com/albums/yy310/TRNelson/photo%20153_zpsqffpqpig.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i802.photobucket.com/albums/yy310/TRNelson/photo%20154_zpsesqg8drk.jpg[/img]

Congrats, that's a nice tractor have fun with it. Got any sidewalks to plow?
Thanks for sharing.
Bruce P

Wow that is a neat piece o history. The plow is probly as came from factory with some repairs. I will have to go through my Cat ads as I know I have one showing a Ten plowing sidewalks up north somewhere, but it may be some time as they ate all packed away on boxes to protect them from a 3 year old and a 7 year old.
Rodten

Fantastic piece. Congrats on the acquisition.

Found its way into good hands .Nice machine Toby .

Very nice very different.
Would have thought those grousers would tear up the sidewalk a bit.
Love to have the outfit not so keen on the snow part to try it out.
Great purchase.cheers WF

That's a great find. A nice machine set up for a unique application.

'quatch,

As others have said, you have acquired a great machine. Would that we all could be that fortunate!

Now as I look at it in Roger's picture from directly ahead, I see "Cyclops with an Allis Chalmers blade" If it were mine it would become "Cyclops". Each of my machines has a name. (😊

Jan

The way the plow nose sticks out it almost looks like it may be a V-plow that had one side cut off and modified. Or maybe it is patterned after a V-plow.

Jan, I to like the cyclops look. It is in good hands with Sasquatch.

very cool, and great find.
i have some pictures of cats clearing sidewalks, i will dig around and find them for you.

Thank you everybody for the compliments,

[quote="Rodten"]Wow that is a neat piece o history. The plow is probly as came from factory with some repairs. I will have to go through my Cat ads as I know I have one showing a Ten plowing sidewalks up north somewhere, but it may be some time as they ate all packed away on boxes to protect them from a 3 year old and a 7 year old.
Rodten[/quote]

Rodten, thank you very much for that offer, I would be interested to see anything you may have.

[quote="janmeermans"]'quatch,

As others have said, you have acquired a great machine. Would that we all could be that fortunate!

Now as I look at it in Roger's picture from directly ahead, I see "Cyclops with an Allis Chalmers blade" If it were mine it would become "Cyclops". Each of my machines has a name. (😊

Jan[/quote]

Jan, as coincidence would have it I have a name for each one of my machines too - I think I picked that habit up after reading King of Obsolete's stories about all his machines. With this one I was actually thinking of calling it "Tucker" because it's a snow Cat. In my mind it just seems to fit it, but I'm still gauging its personality, lol. Most everybody knows my '51 5U D2 "The Iron Mistress" already, the rest of the Cats are as follows:

'31 No.9 Auto Patrol "Old School" - because it's the first purpose-built road grader model Cat designed, it just fits.

'36 RD-6 standard gauge "The Sprague" - because I got it from former ACMOC member spragueM, and the dictionary definition for that word translated to "volatile" or "lively", so I have a cool seat box decal I'm sketching for it of a cartoon-ish 3 cylinder Cat arched up in the middle pulling hard and a determined look on its face (which happens to be in the radiator grille), I think spragueM would've got a kick out of that.

'37 RD-6 wide gauge "Damn the Torpedos" - (from the famous naval battle order "Damn the torpedos, full speed ahead") because whenever I pull something with it it doesn't seem to care what's in it's way, it just goes and goes. Plus I like Tom Petty (1979 album title).

'39 5J D2 "Charlie" - used to belong to my grandfather, who's name that was.

'56 M-M prototype crawler "Enigma" - half Cat, half Minneaplois-Moline, a real oddball.


[quote="old-iron-habit"]The way the plow nose sticks out it almost looks like it may be a V-plow that had one side cut off and modified. Or maybe it is patterned after a V-plow.

Jan, I to like the cyclops look. It is in good hands with Sasquatch.[/quote]

o-i-h, the closest picture I have here is from the Caterpillar Ten photo archive book, showing a LaPlante-Choate built sidewalk blade that has a similiar curved-up shoe on the leading corner of the blade, just not as big as this one.

[img]http://i802.photobucket.com/albums/yy310/TRNelson/001_zpsapz3br6x.jpg[/img]

[quote="chriscokid"]very cool, and great find.
i have some pictures of cats clearing sidewalks, i will dig around and find them for you.[/quote]

Erik, I would love to see anything you may have of small Cats on sidewalks, I might end up making an entirely new blade/frame/pusharm assembly for this one, similiar to what it's already got but much cleaner and a bit smaller. Someday, hopefully.