Hello Long time lurker but new to the forum.
Thought I would post a photo or two of my D4.I have owned this machine since 1991 and it has served me well during that time ,It was never pretty but I thought this may have been the end for the old beast.On Nov 15 /2006 It was buried in a bit of a rock mud slide that came down above my house if the shop had not been there the house probably would have sustained considerable damage, but it just piled up behind the shop and poured in the sides which were open, it almost completely covered the cat as you can see .After digging out as much as I could with my 580 we dug the rest out by hand ,The engine was so full of water that you could not see any oil on the dip stick.I pulled off all the cover`s that I could and found a bit of sludge in the pan ,I used about 20 gallons of diesel and my garden sprayer and flushed it out as best as I could added new oil and filter and without moving it from it`s position I started it,ran it for awhile and then changed the filter again .I used the 580 to drag it out of the bay and dug and flushed the tracks out with water.(They were so bound up that they would not move at all )There was a bit of water in the Transmission and the final drives so I drained the water out (I`ll change them later)After putting most of the cat back together I started it today and graded the driveway, then changed the oil and filter.Hopefully after all this the old D4 holds together many for more years.
Dave
PS this is a great site and I have learned a lot over the years thankyou and
I hope this post is not to long

Just afew more pictures of my Cat

Good Grief!! What a mess!! That is just sickening.
The bad thing about muck and sand like that is it takes only a little bit of grit to ruin an engine. Hopefully you got it all out. Best of luck keeping the old girl running.
Thanks for the pics!!

From your text, its sounds like one of machines you needed for cleanup was the one buried. That is my Luck. Thanks for sharing

Wow, never seen one burried quite like that. Good job getting it going again. Hope it will serve you for years to come. What about what appears to be a steering wheel of a Ford? How did that do in the slide? Don

The steering wheel you see is actually a 1970 craftsmen garden tractor I don`t know what condition it is in ,I may have to break down and buy a new one ,Oh wait the lawn has three feet of gravel on it so I may not need one for a while.Getting back to the cat when I cleaned it up I started at the pup motor ,Dirt had gotten in the exhaust system and I ended up pulling the heads off and cleaning it up from there .There was no evidence of any debris in the intake of the Diesel but I did pull it off to physically look in the ports ,The thing that worried me the most was the oil pickup at the front of the pan as it sits in a dimple . I flushed it out numerous times and then vacumed it out with a smaller rubber hose attached to the shop vac.
So short of pulling the engine apart I could not do any more.
My old 18 ft Starcraft was buried at the back and had about two yards of gravel in the back ,I have a three year old 115 Hp Merc on the back of it that was untouched even though it was out of sight in the gravel.
Thanks for your interest
Dave

Dave
wow, nice job on cleaning things up. That old cat is a surviver
Looks maybe you may need to build some kind of retaining wall behind the shed?
Clint

mother nature is a powerfull lady. glad you took the time to clean things up instead ofalling the scrap man.

thansk