98j try to fit a trip to California the last weekend in June into your schedule(know how that is when farming you have to do what needs doing)to show Tom Madden has a sticky for on this board.A neighbor has been working on his old cat34 combine I think it is.Has gone all out has all new canvas for the header.Looking at the sticky sounds like there will be others as well.As always great pictures ,thanks for sharing.
As for the third wheel I was under the impression they were standard on all pull machines by all makers,as none of wheel tractors of era where able to handle the tongue weigh of pulling one of these as a level land machine.Around here they all went to local welding shop if they didn't want to build the draw bar themselves. I under stand front wheels were in demand for building carts to pull malt-able drills and springtooths or harrows.
Raymond

98J and NIF
Great pictures 98J, you must have a lot of storage or run a seperate hard drive for all the photo's. Thanks for sharing, a lot of history in those photos. My dad had two JD 36's first one was on steel and the latter one was on rubber, one our neigbors accross the river still has it. They have a new canvas for the header up in the barn.
NIF sorry to hear about the tranny in the D6C giving you trouble, are you going to repair that yourself or have Western States do it?? Where is the nearest dealer to you? Lewiston would be my guess as the one you would use for parts and service. How many hours do have on it?
98J how close are you to getting in the field??
Great tread guys!!

Bruce - thanks I knew he knew some about cats from talking to him before.

Woody- yes Lewiston is where we go for parts, normally we would do the work ourselves- rebuilt the tranny on the D4D back in the 90s- but sort of pressed for time with other projects so we will put the cat in our shop pull it out and take it in to western states and have them go through it for an overhaul.

The D6B will run in its place the rest of spring work on the wil-rich cultivator. It will handle it alright since the cultivator has points on running fairly shallow, instead of running sweeps deeply. Spend alot more time in lower gears though.

"Ray54" wrote:

98j try to fit a trip to California the last weekend in June into your schedule(know how that is when farming you have to do what needs doing)to show Tom Madden has a sticky for on this board.A neighbor has been working on his old cat34 combine I think it is.Has gone all out has all new canvas for the header.Looking at the sticky sounds like there will be others as well.As always great pictures ,thanks for sharing.
As for the third wheel I was under the impression they were standard on all pull machines by all makers,as none of wheel tractors of era where able to handle the tongue weigh of pulling one of these as a level land machine.Around here they all went to local welding shop if they didn't want to build the draw bar themselves. I under stand front wheels were in demand for building carts to pull malt-able drills and springtooths or harrows.
Raymond

You are exactly right Ray; I didn't explain that very well. The tongue wheels
were a hold over from the horse drawn days,and yes they were standard for
the reasons you outlined above. The sectional view of the 36 shows this;



The best conversions were fabed up, as you mentioned, by a welding shop, then attached to the combine main frame. Here is a shot of the one that
they had built for our 33-H. You can can see the circle where the front
wheel was mounted. Someone did a nice job putting this one together, then
they used U-bolts to attach it to the main frame. The spring was designed to
isolate much of the vibration from the combine & keep it from reaching the
Cat.

"Casey wrote:

Hi 98J

Ole' Marv had some real biggins to be dragging an IH 51 around the peaks with a D4 of any size, old or new. There was a bunch of IH 51"s sold in this area,(Paso Robles) along with the JD 36B. The biggest difference that most saw between the two, besides the manufacturer, was a IH 51 was handled nicely with an RD6 or larger while the JD 36B required a 3T D7 of a D6C at a minimum. Naturally some had less steep land and could do with less but on par the D6 was a minimum for the IH 51.

There were several Harris and Case pull machines in the area and I seem to remember that they wanted a 4R or 9U D6 for the Harris while there was a neighbor who used an RD6 on the Case machine to good success.

Really appreciate the photos that you are posting. Do you have any of a Harris 88 or 98 at work??

Thanks again for your effort.

Casey

Well Casey, you are right about the tractor size. Unfortunately, a lot of guys
up here didn't get the tractor size memo. Our 33-H was matched
pretty good with our 7u. I pulled it for 5 years. When I got ready to pull a
IH 160 with the same Cat, I had to do a little homework. Our neighbors
had 9u,s on theirs. I didn't have that option, so I checked with some guys
who had pulled one with a 7u........my cousin for one who pulled a 51 for
years with a 7u ( a 160 is basically a 51 with straw walkers; about the
same weight) I ran it for him for a few days, but didn't get to go on anything
steep with it:



Another friend I checked with told me " no sweat. You will get along fine"
Then in the next breath he told me that he left the blade on his 7u "just
in case"

I ended up pulling it with out many problems. It hung back there way more than the old 33, and I did have one hill where she slid off a little. Turned out
to be a real fun harvest. Had just put AC on the 7u that spring, so I got to
harvest in a nice cool cab. My Granddad thought that was all a bunch of
foolishness.



The D4's had enough power, the problem was they were a little light, and
on a nasty climb the nose would come up and then you had to scramble to
get the job done.

Also, on a nasty uphill turn, they wouldn't turn the combine like a bigger Cat would. One neighbor who normally used their D6B on their 160 had to finish up one season with their 7u instead. On one nasty turn they had to use an alternate method. Instead of cranking her around to the right, they would pop the Cat into reverse, back the combine around ( & down the hill) get lined up with the cut, then have a straight away pull at the hill. They said
that move would give the combine guy the Willies, but they got the job done.

Yeah, given a choice the bigger Cats were much better suited for this duty,
but a lot of guys right around here had to make do with what they had.
Marv's place took the cake around here, hands down. But he got the job done
with his D4 for years.

They are pretty much all parked now, except for a few that come out for
some 'ol time harvesting in a few places, like this restored 33 up in Washington:



Back in their prime, there were fleets of them up here......harvesting
with steel tracks. ( somewhere in the Palouse)

NIF.........sorry to hear about your tranny fizzle. You better be sitting down
when you get the tab.......pulling it yourself & putting it back will really help,
but man they are REALLY proud of those gears. Had to do the tranny on my 9U
back in the late 80's.......almost didn't get her on the lowboy for the trip in to
Halton for the surgery......thought I was gonna have to sell a kidney to help
pay the bill. Mine fizzed in the countershaft Brgs........just old age. If I remember right, we put 1st & 5th back in ( hardly any wear since they don't
get much use) 2, 3 & 4 new of coarse, and all new brgs.

The good news is you should be set transmission wise 'till the tracks fall off.
Send the wife to town.........have her buy you a new card for the 'ol Brownie.....then post up a few snaps of the surgery as you get her fixed.

Yep dont plant on touching the transmission again after this.

When the tranny went out on the D4D it was a real sick feeling...found out the cause was human error. Drained the wet deck one winter, involves pulling 3 or 4 plugs, tranny oil was fine so left that plug in. Filled the wet deck back up, and used it all spring for working ground and seeding, tranny was noisy all along but there was oil in it so it kept running. Got to be the last day of seeding and it seized up with less than 15 acres to go. Turned out had pulled the plug to the bevel gears which also drained some of the oil out of the tranny, but not all of it. Bearing had finally seized on it and had to tow it home with the D6 holding both the stearing clutches back the whole way.


Here is a pic I took from the cover of the March edition of the growers guide. Caption said spring seeding starts early near Dusty Washington due to dry weather.

Heck at least the wheat is green there. Expecting 3-5 inches of snow here tomorrow into Sat. so ours will be white

98J....In the first photo I noticed the right headlight is turned back to shine on the header:D, Cool idea!

Your black and white photo is a great shot. Really impressive. Do you know any more about it? From the looks of the clean grain elevators I would guess that it is a fleet of IH 51's.

We also had the extremes on the tractor vs combine in our area. The TD9 was better than the D4 for traction but had other problems. One of the neighbors had a fleet of JD 36's and used a D6 9U for everything. 70% of the land was suitable but that last 30% was a struggle. One of the neighbors that farmed the goat hills just east of San Miguel felt he needed more, so he used a 13A D8 on an IH 51. I remember driving by his place as a kid and seeing the D8 and the 51 down over the disc berm and struggling.

NIF.... That looks like 36 feet of JD 8300 series drills behind the D6B. We pulled 30 feet of 8350 drills with a 74A D6C and on those afore mentioned goat hills I followed the same path that was blazed 30 years earlier by the D8. Needless to say it became unworthy of planting.

Casey

Hi Guys,

Just a quick picture of harvesting in Yolo County, near Woodland California, in the mid 60's. We used to start harvesting barley in June and finish in October/November rice. Those harvesters never used to stop. We used John Deere 95's and 105's. As you can see, no cabs! I mentioned to Fred my boss, and said "Fred, how about me having a cab?" Fred replied "Well, Pete, if I was operating one I'd have a cab..." Enough said!




Working sugar beet ground in Yolo County, prior to Sprecles sugaer beet factory closing in the mid 60's. Note the soil - as level as a billiard table and 40 foot deep! The say any crop will grow in Yolo - any farmers dream!

Here are pictures of a wood Harris pulled by a Cat 60, in the Red Hills, Shandon, CA. It says "38" on the back of one picture, if that is the date?? I would have guessed it was a bit later than that. The fellow on your left, Ernie Hahl, is the one who got me started in the combine business, that is Ian McMillan on the right, The 60 was later replaced by a war surplus TD18. They used to drive the 18 and combine from The Red Hills to Corcoran in the Central Valley to custom cut in the Tulare Lake bottom, close to 60 miles, the way the crow flies. This combine was in an aerial photo of the most combines working in a field at one time, taken for LIFE magazine, I have that photo also but it has been badly cropped. The bottom picture is looking West towards Paso Robles. All way before my time.