Four years ago I got offered three Cat 30 tractors that needed a lot of work, they were worn out and were missing lots of parts, but I could see the potential in them and I really enjoy the challenge of saving these old girls, plus not being very bright, probably explains why I take on these projects others are happy to send off to China as scrap. I already had two Cat 30 tractors I'd bought back around 2012, waiting for rebuilding, and I had been slowly getting the parts needed to save them.
Two parts all the tractors needed were the brass decompression and priming cocks, and so needing 20 decompression cocks, and 10 priming cocks, I set about researching how to go about making them. I knew the decompression cocks were available from the ACMOC Store in the USA, but the dollar exchange rates are bad between the USA and Australia where I live, making them very expensive, around $1,000 per tractor just for the decompression cocks, about what you can buy a complete running Cat 30 for in the USA, and I still wouldn't have the priming cocks.
So I bought some brass rod the right diameter and found a local CNC lathe guy to spin the bodies up for me, he was flat out with other jobs, so it was 18 months before he could get them done, but I was happy with the result, I got around 25 bodies of each type spun, with enough brass rod left over to do another 25 if I needed. Next I had my 76 year old buddy Bill make the patterns for the handles and he got them cast at a local foundry, then he set about making the holders for machining them, that took another 18 months because Bill is flat out 7 days a week on all his other projects.
Not being very bright, I hadn't really thought about how these rough castings were going to be held in the lathe or milling machine, luckily Bill sorted those challenges out, and on Saturday I got to hold the first ones he has finished, I think they look great, and will be good enough for my old Cat wrecks. Bill will modify the handle patterns slightly to add more metal to the slot where the control handle sits, he said it had been a very interesting project to be involved with, I'm just so glad that after 4 years I finally can tick a box on another part project, and move onto the next one.
Mike
