When do you like to change the handles on your crawler?
This should be my entry for the “Dull Men’s” page on social media, where they talk of mundane things like how long are your shoelaces or the perfect temperature for drinking tap water…
I decided to button up my latest (and maybe last) project here before I go into retirement; the handles were unsatisfactory to me, as they were unevenly worn and uncomfortable to me, in addition to one having a fracture. No, I am not OCD, but I know how I like things.
Scrounging through my parts piles, I found some used handles for my D4.
This is like the questionnaire asking how do you like your steak prepared or how you like your toast!
I have seen some keep using a machine with the coating worn off, resembling a poker, and some that always put brand new handles on. Me? I like close to new, “broken in” I will say. 
Better yet, I wonder how some handles become the condition they are in.
Excuse the poor pictures. JM

I often wonder when looking at really worn handles how many hours the previous owners must have used a tractor to wear them out. Have seen them worn until the metal is starting to show through the plastic. Also find it interesting on some tractors that spent a lot of time pulling grain drills or combines that some farmers modified or put different grips on the right and the left steering clutch levers so that they would not accidentally pull the wrong one while looking over their shoulder. Mike

The early Caterpillars from the 20’s and 30’s had octagon on the left and round on the right so you wouldn’t grab the wrong one 🤣 

Somehow I suspect that Juicemans retirement will just attract more projects. He knows how much fun they are. Grant.

I think we have a handful of tractors with handles left. But most of them are either bare threads or some amalgamation that someone put on long before us. Our 28 is a great example. The clutch, and gearshift are small pipes that someone wedged on, and the turning levers were cut and had some metal pieces welded on. So in short, I don’t think we’ve ever changed handles. Not yet anyways.

I have thought enough about replacing some handles I have bought new ones. Then broke the threads off trying to remove the old one. Other than fixing the real have to now one...........................................the rest of the new handles are in storage until.............................who knows.

SoCalCatMan, Does your Twenty Eight have the single compartment fuel tank?

I was some what disappointed with the last handles I got from Cat. The bottom of the plastic is now even with the flats of the hex for the wrench. It use to be that the Bakelite was even with the points of the hex which would have made it easy to make the hex handle used on the early tractors.

Yes, I do not know HOW some would wear their handles out. Seen some where it looked like they rested their hands on top, and only wore one side off, as if they pulled with palm of their gloves. Others worn evenly, as if they had a death grip on them for thousands of hours. Others torn clean off the lever, and broken grease gun handles wedged in place as an extension.
I think I will get some of the fancy chromed and glittered ones for one of my toys...
Ray54: The use of heat helps quite a bit, got to make them glow and work back and forth. Stripping or breaking threads is not fun. JM

Hi, Folks.
Juiceman retiring???????????????? From work or from collecting?

I suspect that the 'jury' may need to 'deliberate' on this for a while - - - - - maybe even quite a while.

When Cat went to the 'pull-out-of-the-dash' style of steering controls, I very quickly started turning the tops of the handles in toward each other so that I could rest my left hand on both controls and select whichever one I wanted at will. Very effective and very comfortable. Buttttt, on the same project, I saw one operator who turned both controls on a D8H outward so that they were laying flat and he had to move his hand even further from one to the other.

To each their own.

Just my 0.02

Naylorbros, yes it’s a single tank. No compartment for alternative fuels other than the main tank.