Early Diesel Powered Tractors

Hi, Ray54.
If my memory serves me rightly. R. G. LeTourneau mentioned in his autobiography that he and Kaiser dropped a diesel engine into a crawler back in the late 1920s. Again, if memory serves a-right, they were impressed with the extra that it achieved and the lesser amounts of fuel consumed - - - right up until it shook itself to pieces 'cos it wasn't designed for mobile use. I suspect that it may have been one of the Atlas diesels but I'm not sure about that.

The early diesels were mostly designed for stationary applications and didn't really get 'mobilized' until Mercedes Benz and then Cat designed diesel engines with crankcases and cylinders cast in one rigid block to give them the strength needed to cope with both the higher operating pressures and the banging around of mobile applications.

As I understand it, it was a Mercedes Benz diesel that beat the pants off a gas-powered Cat Sixty in a plowing competition in 1030-31 and started Cat into developing their own diesels. Again, as I understand it, they went and bought a Mercedes Benz Diesel and had a mechanic, a man named Art Rosen, strip it down to the last nut and bolt to find out what made it so much better than their gas-powered engines and then design an engine to match or beat it. If you have a look at the early Cat Diesel Sixties, the engines look remarkably like M-B diesel engines up until the late 1950s at least.

Just my 0.02.

Contact Jeff at Vintage Tracks Museum in Bloomfield NY. He may be able to provide some information also. I believe he has some Monarchs in his collection.

John

Here you go Ray. I’m crossing the line with orange, but here it is!

Juiceman. Looks like you found and acquired your HD 6 AG. Tell us the saga and pictures please.

Juiceman so you went right through my town and didn't even stop by what's up with that ? Ha ha 🤔

Juiceman so you went right through my town and didn't even stop by what's up with that ? Ha ha 🤔

Oops! I forgot to pay the toll keeper......
I sure wanted to stop in and visit, but us poor people have to keep the wheels turning! I’m guessing you knew the CL seller? He had a ‘47 KW project and some hot rods that I admired.
Casey: It is an HD-6E; I wish it were an “AG”. Considering its a 1956, it’s in very good condition. Only issue I noticed is it’s addiction to ETHER! I don’t know if I can “wean” it if it or not, but UC is nice, and doesn’t smoke at all. Just needs the correct batteries and a new generator...
Not much of a tale to tell, I noticed it on CL and inquired. Another WANT, not NEED! It was either sell my AC disc and ring roller, or buy an orange tractor to match it LOL. The hardest part of the nocturnal road trip was to be able to sneak thru “enemy” lines without being detected! Upon my arrival, the seller had indicated that he had already dealt with some of my ACMOC pals. He has a bunch of antique wheel tractors for sale if anyone is interested. He is motivated to sell them.
I have to guess that the tractor won’t be able to handle the disc like my D4D SA, so I will keep looking for an HD-6E AG, or an HD-9.

Hauling with that sweet Pete, it is NOT camouflage so yes, a trip in the dark would be necessary.

All of our ACs liked a snort of either in the morning. The Detroit power required the drug and we thought the HD 11 AG would be addiction free. Not the case. Even with a fresh engine rebuild it still needed a snort. It would probably do better on today's low sulfur fuel. My D6C starts a lot easier today than the old one used to.

We have run a couple of HD9s and with the stock 2 valve engine, they performed about the same as a 9U D6, maybe a bit less. Take that Detroit to an "N" series 4 valve engine and now you have some snort. On level to rolling ground we pulled a 21 ft disc in 4th and 5th gear. In the steeper stuff an 18ft was easier on the frictions and traction was an issue. One of our old HD9s is still running and working west of Templeton.