Casey.......yup, the hillside hitch. I don't have that on my set, but I have pulled
units in the past that were so equipped. They really help keep things lined up.On the really steep slopes, even the hillside hitch can't save ya.......gravity
takes over and the dirt just falls in.

"Bleedinred" wrote:

Ah yes, the variable hp settings. Wasn't that originally designed for the 5x's to keep from blowing final bearings? I remember a friend of mine over at Sprague, WA had one and I think he told me his was variable power. A lot of us know if you juice a 98J-D5 it's only a matter of time before something breaks. I know this from experience...tranny AND final for me, another final for the next guy. That old 5 sold for $3,000 last fall at auction and it had had the living daylights run out of it. RIP

Do you know if the Ag6 uses the radiator core banks like the 65's? I will have to do some digging but I have pics of various experimental rubber track rigs--can't remember where they came from--will go looking shortly and put some up here. I think a prototype Challenger is in that shot.

Tad, the 453 I ran was a 301, way underpowered and over-noised! I never really liked that thing compared to the 6602, but that's water under the bridge. I will say it was one of the best bluegrass machines made as far as cleaning, simpy because of the long shake, chaffer extension and no shoe delivery augers to stir things up. My neighbor still runs one for that crop along with a 1470, and when the going gets tough he runs the 453 while the other one rests. That's the only one running in our area, so hang on to yours as it is becoming a collector's piece.

Thanks for the Ag6 pictures and instruction, NIF and 98J. With any luck I'll get to drive one a little some day.

Hey Bleedinred......looking forward to your pics of the experimental rubber
tracked ( belts??) tractors. Until then........

Caterpillar's roots go back to ag tractors.....but after WW II they let their
ag products lag in favor of earth moving equipment. When they decided in the
late 70's or early 80's to be more aggressive in the ag market, their first plans
included an articulated wheel tractor...a picture of the prototype:



Another wheeled test tractor.........



Cooler heads prevailed and the wheel tractor configurations never materialized. ( Tracks Rule.....Wheelies Drool) They started playing around
with rubber belts in what would become the Mobil Trac System. Rubber belts
on a modified D6:



I understand that the sight of this tractor being tested in California almost caused a few car wreaks by gawking farmers passing by. The next step was
the Belted Ag Tractor or BAT Tractor ( Holy Track Frame Batman!! )



The BAT tractor was painted in off brand colors in an attempt to discourage
industrial espionage. Fat chance.

The next step was the X2 prototype.....the last stop before the arrival of
CAT's Challenger line. As you can see, all the elements are in place in what
would become the CH 65......just needed a little tweaking:

Then there are some interesting retro-fits to tractors that originally had steel on the ground......an AG4 set up with belts:



Got these from internet friend Ad Gevers ( The Netherlands) an avid Cat buff and big fan of the AG6. A 7u belted up and ready to go crusin' for burgers:
( Ad Gevers via FarmPhoto)



I notice a few other little wrinkles on this baby that my old 7u doesn't have:



And last....... a D7 outfitted with belts. The picture is really crummy, but
interesting nonetheless. If memory serves me ( and lately it has been slipping
more than I would like ) This shot was from somewhere up in Eastern Washington:

98J thats quite a collection of interesting pics

Most of those early rubber tracked machines look pretty ugly to me...except those last few that had steel originally...wicked looking D7 especially.

Heh, heh--those are the shots I spent an hour looking for the other night. The 7U has all the latest mods... Hadn't seen the D models with belts before.

At least I found a few lost pieces d'art that might be slightly interesting.

Late model 9U belongs to my neighbor and he tells me it's a factory turbo running about 180hp. He owns another 9U, D4E, D4D and a 7U. Took this years ago with my 2mp camera, it shows.

My dad, who farmed the flat lands in SD for 37 years, came out one fall after harvest. I let him take me for a spin in the '02 I ran that summer and he was pretty impressed with the country. That was near Sprague, WA and some pretty steep ground like yours 98J. There were a few "maybes" where it redlighted and went sideways in that light dirt. Glad he wasn't along then.

I would like to learn more about the hillside hitch, our 620 press drills tail badly on the steeper hills. Do they extend the regular hitch to get more swing action out of the tounge? on a second thought are the any transport systems laying in the weeds up north . i have a couple of small moves to make. hate to break everything apart. i was thinking along the lines of a trailer similar to a donahue. thank you jeff

Someplace I have a newspaper ad from Holt Caterpillar in Weslaco, Texas advertising a field day with a rubber tracked D6 (D5) SA. This would have been in the mid 1980's, and the point was to allow travel on paved roads.

I do not know about nowadays, but the large vegetable growers in the Lower Rio Grande Valley used a few Caterpillars for tillage. The biggest tractors I saw were Griffin and Brand's 2 D8s that had rippers behind them.

"453hs" wrote:

I would like to learn more about the hillside hitch, our 620 press drills tail badly on the steeper hills. Do they extend the regular hitch to get more swing action out of the tounge? on a second thought are the any transport systems laying in the weeds up north . i have a couple of small moves to make. hate to break everything apart. i was thinking along the lines of a trailer similar to a donahue. thank you jeff

Get out the smoke wrench & the wire feed and get busy. They are pretty
simple really. The tongue pivots at the back & is swung from side to side by
a hydraulic ram. Sometimes two as is the case on this Flexi-Coil air drill:



In this shot, he has just come off of a fairly steep slope and has yet to get the hitch back to the center position. ( he is crossing a draw that has been
drilled during the lay out; a cure for bridging as well as slowing down the
runoff down the draw) As you can see, by moving the hitch the tractor &
cart end up up the hill relative to the drill. The drill becomes squared up with the slope instead of falling down off of it:



I'll go on a little field trip in the next couple of days and get you some pics
of a hill side hitch that was built for more conventional equipment. I know
of one for sure that was built to tow spring tooth sections. Might be able to
get to one that was set up for a set of HZ's like mine.

453
IH and JD both had a set of drills that could be pulled lengthwise using the for-carriage wheels on one side and a set of hydraulic retracted wheels wheels on the back of the drill, it is a pretty slick set up, and still have good access to the boxes. I haul my 150 drills on a special built trailer, but moving them is still a pain, it is just not as easy as a end-wheel drill, but it works. One of the tricks some of the older farmers used around here to move their press-wheel drills was to back up to them with the seed truck, raise the bed, chain the back of the drills to the bed and then let the bed down, thus raising the press wheels off the ground and then down the road they would go with the drills trailing backwards on the for-carriage tires, it worked pretty well, most of the JD drills were either 10 or 12 foot sections so it wasn't a problem going down the road, some of the IH drills were wider, mine are 14 feet, but even on the trailer it goes down the road at 14 feet, usually behind the 1256 Farmall. Cousin Casey and 98j are right on the money about the press wheels turning into diskers when they get over 30 percent, the wider spacings seem to do it worse and soft, dry ground it is worse yet. I think that I might retire my press wheels after the problems I had this year and go to an air seeder I built about fifteen years ago.
Jeff, yes, the walker shafts are the original that came in the machine, but boy I bet they are egg-shaped and worn, I have tightened up the blocks a few times, I built them with shims like the original wood blocks so it could be done, the plastic is self lubricating, as you well know, IH didn't have provisions for greasing like JD did on their blocks but most guys didn't grease the blocks in the JD because it would just push the shims out and the IH walkers turned much faster than the JD's as I recall around 200 rpm's, it would just beat the wood blocks apart and the walkers stood tall and away from the shafts increasing the side leverage, The Delrin was very successful, I am very glad it did it. The 453 also had a very bad problem with the two rear leveling cylinders getting out of sync and totally busting up the frames, a hydraulic gear divider stopped all that before my frame was damaged. I don't even want to talk about the splines on the hydro and separator drive????????????????? Tad

The hitch was built in Shandon. I'll ask Tad if it is still out there.
It wasn't any longer than his original squadron hitch, he just went back toward the drills and put in a pivot pin for some 10" or 12" heavy wall square tube, then built a raceway for it to slide back and forth on about half way to the back of the tractor and as he was inclined to do, installed a single very large double acting ram that was controlled with the second valve on the BeeGee. The hitch points on the front of the drill were un-altered and if a move was required then the hitch could be stood straight up. It would work well for the press drills that have the factory built end pull transport system.

Casey