Cat's nut and bolt turners must have become quite rich.

Heh, yes that is all true : ) The designers should have been made to do the maintenance on the first 50 tractors... I'm in IT and we get bitten by sales guys that don't know much (or care) about what it takes to implement systems. The company goes back and forth on making them "eat their own dog food".

I’d still have watched the video.. always interesting.

Then buy something new! You'll have boat loads of fun!

I spent all day yesterday replacing the starter pinion and clutch. The wind was a nice breeze, then the wind would blow really hard, then it would die down to a breeze, the sun would come out, then the clouds would come back, then the wind blows hard again...then the sun went down.

I still have to hook the pony exhaust back to the heat exchange tube and put the hood back on the tractor.

I heard Coyotes howling somewhere down the hill so i figured I had most everything together enough to leave to finish another day.

Spot on BAC. Repairing the pinion on my D4 was the same mess. It took me 4 days (although not long ones) to do mine. The manual says to loosen the pony, pry it up a couple inches and bwana you can pull out the pinion. They don't tell you about the 24 steps to take to jack up the pony nor all the grief clearing the governor and on and on. I wonder what it would cost for Cat to do one? The Cat mobile fix-it truck around here is about $150 per hour My bet they couldn't do it in less than 20 hours at $150 per hour is $3,000. Common sense tells me the bill would be more than that. The second time I did it was much less than the first because I knew what had to come off in what order.

Thanks to your post the rookies wont think it is a quick job as implied by the manual.

Spot on BAC. Repairing the pinion on my D4 was the same mess. It took me 4 days (although not long ones) to do mine. The manual says to loosen the pony, pry it up a couple inches and bwana you can pull out the pinion. They don't tell you about the 24 steps to take to jack up the pony nor all the grief clearing the governor and on and on. I wonder what it would cost for Cat to do one? The Cat mobile fix-it truck around here is about $150 per hour My bet they couldn't do it in less than 20 hours at $150 per hour is $3,000. Common sense tells me the bill would be more than that. The second time I did it was much less than the first because I knew what had to come off in what order.

Thanks to your post the rookies wont think it is a quick job as implied by the manual.

[quote="D4Jim"]Spot on BAC. Repairing the pinion on my D4 was the same mess. It took me 4 days (although not long ones) to do mine. The manual says to loosen the pony, pry it up a couple inches and bwana you can pull out the pinion. They don't tell you about the 24 steps to take to jack up the pony nor all the grief clearing the governor and on and on. I wonder what it would cost for Cat to do one? The Cat mobile fix-it truck around here is about $150 per hour My bet they couldn't do it in less than 20 hours at $150 per hour is $3,000. Common sense tells me the bill would be more than that. The second time I did it was much less than the first because I knew what had to come off in what order.

Thanks to your post the rookies wont think it is a quick job as implied by the manual.[/quote]

It would have been nice to get paid $150 an hour while doing that job, hehe.

I could probably shave off an hour or two if I did it again. Some of that time spent was trying to figure out how to go about solving some issues like how to jack up the pony and how to empty the radiator when the valve seems to be chewed up and possibly stuck. Interestingly enough, there was a 1/4" opening next to the radiator drain valve which had a small valve on it that I think was plugged up. I just ended up removing that 1/4" valve and the fluid came out.

You are kind of working with the age of the tractor too. The bolts don't turn like they probably used to. A combination of a wrench and pry bar helped break some bolts loose. I was thinking of looking for some longer wrenches...

[quote="BigAgCat"]It would have been nice to get paid $150 an hour while doing that job, hehe.

I could probably shave off an hour or two if I did it again. Some of that time spent was trying to figure out how to go about solving some issues like how to jack up the pony and how to empty the radiator when the valve seems to be chewed up and possibly stuck. Interestingly enough, there was a 1/4" opening next to the radiator drain valve which had a small valve on it that I think was plugged up. I just ended up removing that 1/4" valve and the fluid came out.

You are kind of working with the age of the tractor too. The bolts don't turn like they probably used to. A combination of a wrench and pry bar helped break some bolts loose. I was thinking of looking for some longer wrenches...[/quote]


Before we went into lockdown we got a long dead pony running, removed it from the main engine, and installed it completely having it running in about 3 hours in a RD4. OK, Ill confess, It was at a Chapter 3 workday. Them ugly bolts don't go so bad when there is about 4 experienced people working on them from various angles all at he same time.

They also come off easy when you had it off last week! : )