Paint colori

hello acat65 ,the book says highway yellow with black decals and high ligths ,bruce oz

There were 54 Gas 50's made in 1931
The color change to yellow was made in Dec 7, 1931

Bruce is right my book also says yellow.

Very interesting question. As Eric said, 54 model Fifty tractors made in 1931. My records say first one built 11/24/31, so that is before the Dec 7 cut off. However, the engineering records for the black "Caterpillar" decal, 1B2526, list the effectivity for the Fifty as 5A1. That seems to match what I have found on some other models. The decision to change colors was made several months before Dec 7, which is indicated by the prints for all the decals that had to go from red/silver to black. Dec 7 may be the date the color change was announced, but it was far from an instantaneous change on all products from gray to yellow. Some new models that came out just before the change probably were yellow before Dec 7. Long story short, your Fifty should be yellow.

Another little tidbit on the Fifty: through most of it's development (1929-31), it was called the "Thirty-Five". It looks like in Aug, 1931 they started working on the tractor that was actually produced as the 5C-Thirty-Five, and realized they needed a "bigger" name, so they changed the 5A to "Fifty".

Dave

Dave,
Thanks for sharing that info, man I wish I could get to dig through records like that!
If I did not need a paying job, I would work for Caterpillar for free as long as they let me play in the archives.

I was wondering when the first one rolled off the line, that explains why only 54 were made in 1931
Like most manufacturing, engineering makes sure it will work before any announcement is made to the public.

In the mid 1980s we visited Joe Heidrick and he had a newly painted cat 50 diesel and is was gray which is why I thought the early gas fifty might be gray Gene