Hello!

First of all, greetings from sunny and hot Portugal.

My grandfather has a very ancient Caterpillar D2 he bought about 20yrs ago (used, of course).

The tractor is still used to plow somewhat regularly (once or twice a year), but it had a breakdown last week, the engine stopped and it started spitting water through the exhaust.
We then decided to open the engine and give the tractor a proper maintenance and restoration.

I have a couple of questions, however.

We removed the head and I believe the issue is on the injector sleeves, that go through the water chamber on the head, and they seem to be a bit rusty and starting to rotten.
My question is, how hard it is to remove the sleeves? Could it be another issue? The head gasket seems fine.

Also, before my grandpa bought it, the tractor had some of the worst painting job I ever saw, they painted over everything, including the s/n plate on the rear, that I was only able to find after searching on Google and finding a thread on this forum explaining where it was and scraping the paint off it, but it said there's another plate on the engine, but I'm unable to find it, I was trying to check if the engine matched the chassis.

Oh, by the way, could you guys let me know about the year it was manufactured? The chassis S/N is 5U16679, pic attached:



Here is the state it is right now (with the engine open)



Seat fuel tank, 24V eletric starter, front grill / bumper,

I believe a late model tractor will have the pre-combustion chambers that take a multi spline tool to remove and install, not the hex style as found on earlier tractors, and that with direct electric start, it will take the pre-coms that have a glow plug... no longer available. But a D4 chamber can be re-threaded to fit. A search of this forum will provide the necessary details.

"Neil" wrote:

Hi Jorge,
it's not too hard to remove them, with the right tools. Your chambers "probably" have a six-sided interior that takes a tool 1F0479 which is a hex 1 5/16 across the flats (33.5mm as far as I can tell) which you could make with a nut and bolt welded together with that dimension.

Put a 3/4 drive socket on it and a 5 foot long bar on to turn them out (usual right-handed thread). Caterpillar has the new chambers available, part # 8B4440 for $173 ea - I just bought one last week. You'll also need copper seal 4B5647 and o-ring 1A2298 (my parts man replaced that with 7B6868 which does fit easier so I'll need to confirm that it does hold water).
It's possible that the chamber's threads will gall as you remove them. If they're not too damaged, you can fix them with a 12 threads per inch file but if more than 20% of the threads are gone, you should replace the chamber. That's what I did. Make sure you coat the threads with anti-seize when you reinstall them so they come out easy next time. I also coated the o-ring with 3M #4 silicon lube - you can use dish soap too.

Thanks for the quick reply Neil!

I have removed the injectors and the glow plugs from the chambers but have not noticed the hex interior, they just seem to have 2 holes (a big one in the center for the injector and a small one for the glow plug).
From what I understood, the entire chamber is then screwed to the head?
Tomorrow I'll try to find the hex inside, but if I don't find it can I try to unscrew it with a big pipe wrench (since they protrude about 2cm out of the head) or could it damage the chamber?

My belief is that the part of the head that screws into the chamber is rusty / rotten and is leaking water in, so I might have to take the head to be repaired if it checks out. Thankfully there's a guy specialized in testing / repairing engine heads just down the street from the CAT dealership.

This is what I'm talking about, this is looking from the head water outlet (to the radiator):

Not sure a pipe wrench would be a productive plan - I have the tool for my D2 5U non glow plug you can borrow if it interchanges. Bob

"restore49" wrote:

Not sure a pipe wrench would be a productive plan - I have the tool for my D2 5U non glow plug you can borrow if it interchanges. Bob

if you plan coming to Portugal soon, I'll borrow it eheh

I just suggested the pipe wrench because I can't find a way to unscrew it. The inside is not hexagonal, but the outside protrudes quite a bit.

By the way, it's counter clockwise, like the injectors, right?

"Neil" wrote:

Apologies Jorge, your tractor will have the splined interior as bcwayne correctly stated. You can see a picture of it on eBay at www.ebay.com/itm/5F8353-Pre-combustion-C...d:g:HgIAAOSwal5YNFjt You're very unlikely to be able to remove it with a pipe wrench.

The entire chamber screws in with threads at the bottom end adjacent to the cylinder side of the head. The top side, where you removed the injector from, just protrudes through the hole with an o-ring to seal it. Once you have them out, you'll see the seat inside that the chamber screws up against, sealed with a copper washer. That seat needs to be in good shape, so if it's pitted, you might need to have it machined down and use a couple of copper washers so the chamber is correctly located in relation to the head.

oh, yeah, that makes sense. I've seen those threadings on the inside. Would the CAT dealership have those tools?

I'm pretty sure I could unscrew it with a pipe wrench, since it protrudes about 2cm (1in), I just don't want to damage the chamber.

I'll go to CAT dealership tomorrow and I'll ask for that tool. Hopefully it's not too expensive.

About the year, could you guys give me an idea how old is this tractor?