Hello,
I am trying to help my dad find out information about the piece of machinery pictured below. I have never used one of these sites before so I hope I do this right. Thanks for any help you can give.
Sincerely,
gigulz2382

picture is at:

www.farmauctionguide.com/cgi-bin/viewimg..._f_davis_crawler.jpg

I don't know how to attach a picture to this... sorry

windolph?

If you look at that otter tractor, it looks like it is steered by applying brakes to a car rear end. I wonder if youy could make a tractor using a car rear end, transmission and then find some tracks like the paving machines use.

My Dad made a crawler using a Model A engine and a Clark forklift rear end that used the brakes to steer. The center bottom roller was set down slightly from the drive sprocket and from the front idler so that it made slightly easier to turn. He made the tracks from scratch, building jigs to drill all of the holes. The drive sprockets were car rims with flat iron welded coming out from the center of the rim to engage the bushings in the tracks. He determined the pitch from the size of the rim, and then built the jigs to make the tracks. He used an old refrigerator to make the hood. The only tools he had were a power hack saw (made himself), a torch, and a welder. All holes were drilled by hand. We still have it; it has been repowered, and needs it again. We have been asked to part with it, but we boys will not let it go, it is a link to our family. We have 16mm movies that show Dad pulling an old horse drawn cutter with the entire family in it with "his" home made crawler. Dad was and still is an amazing inventor. He was the first farmer in New York to harvest his sour cherry crop with a mechanical harvester, and he made it himself. (have videos of that too)

Back in the 30s & 40s home made tractors made out of old car chassis were very common around here. The real odd one that a guy had by me was a home made one but it was fitted up with a kit that a Co. sold and it had a gear on the end of each axle and then a big gear on the inside of the wheel rim in the rear but both gears were exposed to the open and I,m sure it caused fast wear to them being open to all the dirt and mud.I can,t remember who sold that kit and the tall rear wheels were steel with big cleats on them.

Reminds me of a "contraption" I saw many years ago. A fellow took some old car parts/tractor tires and made himself a swamp buggy.

He used a car rearend and 2 brake master cylinders with levers to apply brakes either side for steering. He made a solid front axle from the car front spindles. Made a frame to seperate the 2 axles. He then cut the 'bead' off some some old farm tractor tires, stretched the tire treads over the tires on the axles and then pumped up the tires to tigthen the 'tracks'. Worked well enough that a buddy of mine was thinking about making himself one but never did.

Personally I like daydreaming about making things like that but alas, I am just to lazy to do it.....LOL

Looks like a Widolfh Model C that somebody added a ugly hood and tank up over the engine looks like the correct dash under all that junk and should have Wis TF engine

Sears and Montgomery Wards marketed the tractor conversion kits.
First for the Model T and later for the Model A. There were conversion kits for other makes of cars but Ford seemed to be the most popular.

The tractor tire machine with wheel cylinder braking was built by a guy in New York state around 1986/88 as I photographed it at a Tractor Show out there. I too thought about building one.

In the 60's dozens of guys built tracked tractors and modified car/truck tractors which were often featured in Popular Mechanics on the "Invented It Himself" page. The description of the car rims and the handmade tracks was featured in Popular Mechanics too. Might that have been your Dad? I thought it was a brilliant idea! Alot of the others were tires with smaller bogy wheels in between with tire chains stretched around them.

Durring the depression and even just after WWII my grandfather said he would buy good running model A fords for less than $50, pull the cab off and mount a second truck transmission and truck axel right where the back seat was. I guess we had a few set up with a side mount sickle mower and also used them for pulling hay rakes in the alfalfa hay, but no crawlers.

CR, that,s what I mentioned in my post that they were very common when I was growing up in the 30s & 40s and yes many used two trannys in them and if I remember right some would set the one tranny backwards from the other one for gearing somehow. One guy I knowed used his a lot fo pulling his mowing machine and other things like that while using his regular tractor for other jobs.

Sorry I insulted you somehow SJ, yes I read your orginal post, that's why I replied back about our own experiences with homemade tractors from car parts. However we are getting off topic here.

If you want to find out more about garden sized crawler tractors there is a Yahoo group about it groups.yahoo.com/group/tracklayinggardentractors/
lots of info and peoples homemade garden crawlers, even a section on making new tracks for agricat's. Only problem the board is slow and hard to use.