As I told you in a previous post, I have been working on the restoration of a 1929 Caterpillar model ten
tractor. The last photo I sent you is shown at the left. At that point I had the the running gear working, and some of the parts painted, but had removed the sheet metal to convince it that it should be flat and have fewer bumps in it.
This particular tractor had been painted grey with red trim when it left the factory. But many old caterpillar products over time had been painted the familiar Caterpillar yellow. In fact that had happened to this one, and much of the yellow and old grey had chipped off, as can be seen from the photo. I removed the worst damage, sanded it, put a rust neutralizer on the spots that still showed rust, and returned it to grey. I also reworked or replaced several parts that were either missing or unsavable, and had the seats re-upholstered in official Caterpillar vinyl.
The model ten was the smallest tracked tractor that Caterpillar ever produced (the ten stands for ten horsepower), and is particularly fun to drive, since tracked tractors pretty much turn on their own length, and the ten is not that long. If you are interested in details, it is approximately 100 inches long, 51 inches to the top of the seat back, and 52 inches wide, overall (37 inches between the centers of the treads). It weighs approximately two tons. As a contrast, the D-11, one of Caterpillars largest modern tractors, which is mainly used as a bull dozer in the mining industry and other applications requiring moving large quantities of dirt, is powered by a 770 horsepower engine and weighs approximately 100 tons with blade. But one of them would not fit in my yard, and my Cat 10 will, although I will probably not get permission to keep it there because Marian believes (wrongly) that there is already too much machinery in her (as she sees it) garden.
In any case, the finished product is shown here (tin can temporary in case it ever rains in California) . Needless to say, I am most pleased with it. It is particularly important to me because its previous owner was a wonderful man named Chuck Whitcher, who was a close friend and mentor in the old machinery line, and who recently died. He had never gotten around to restoring this tractor, and I am proud to have done it for him.
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