Nostalgia

[willedoo]

15 minutes ago, old man emu said:

After that, it's all paint stripper and wire brush.

I learnt a lesson the hard way. The original canopy didn't have the mesh scrub panels; I made them up and fitted them. You can get away with it in a dry inland environment, but in a coastal environment there's only one way to fabricate and paint. That's to sandblast the grey mill scale off the new metal, then apply primer and topcoats as soon as possible, preferably on a low humidity day. With these panels, I painted primer directly on top of the mill scale and the rust seems to start between the metal and scale. Then it pops bits of paint off and the whole rusting process snowballs.

 

One thing I've noticed in a salt air environment is that really old cast steel doesn't rust. It will be brown but never develops blisters of heavy rust. Why, I don't know. High carbon content perhaps.

Edited July 20, 2020 by willedoo

[facthunter]

Maybe low sulphur cast iron.or if you are lucky some nickel in it to make it cast better. Your biggest risk is the transmission where some races are above the oil level and may be very corroded and bust the cages and spill the balls amongst the gears. Also getting the clutch to free up. Nev

Edited July 20, 2020 by facthunter

[willedoo]

6 hours ago, facthunter said:

Also getting the clutch to free up.

Nev, it doesn't have a clutch. It has a power shift torque converter coming off the engine giving it forward and reverse, and the output from that goes to a manual high/low range box via a short drive shaft. From there the drive goes via steering clutches to planetry final drives. So in effect, you can select low range on the manual box and have low range forward and reverse on the power shift, or the same in high range. A bit different from a normal power shift which would have three reverse and three forward gears. The condensation over the years might be a problem. And there's a possibility the steering clutches might be sticky or just plain stuck.

Edited July 20, 2020 by willedoo

[Marty_d]

On 16/07/2020 at 3:46 PM, Yenn said:

Lanox would probably leave a residue of lanolin.

Use it as hair spray, have you ever seen a bald sheep?

Trouble is, you have to watch out for Kiwis afterwards.

[old man emu]

If you could get the engine running, maybe if you left it running the oil in the torque converter would heat up enough to flow. It could also evaporate any moisture.

[onetrack]

Willedoo, you should be ashamed of yourself, leaving an expensive piece of machinery like that, out in the weather for years, unloved and uncared-for!! 

 

The steering clutches will probably be stuck, they have a tendency to do that when left unused for a long time. Apart from that, I'd have to say you've done everything else right!

 

Some ATF is good stuff to mix in with the diesel, it frees up all the things that get stuck with lack of use. Put about a litre in the diesel tank, and put a bit in the fuel filter, too, to help with initial gumming-up.

 

The TD-8B is quite rare and it definitely was built in Britain. It can be distinguished quickly by the "oddball" single blade ram setup - something that the British copied off Euclid/Terex dozers.

 

The American-built TD-8 was a different machine altogether, the two blade rams were inside the track, and laid out in a horizontal manner.

 

A mate is a "guru" on Internationals, I'll pick his brain on the TD-8B. I'm a Cat man myself, the IH salesman always went away disappointed when he visited me! The Inters were never reliable enough to be a contractors machine.

 

The "Redpower" (www.redpowermagazine.com) site is the main IH-lovers site - but being American-based, they won't know much about the TD-8B. You may find a couple of Aussies, Poms or Kiwis who will be knowledgeable.

 

There's a couple of brochures on the TD-8B in the UK link below. You may have to join the group to download them.

 

Your tractor is powered by the D239 (cu inch) diesel, this is a German-built IH engine of the "Neuss" family. They're quite a good engine, but expensive to rebuild.

I rebuilt a 6 cyl D358 Neuss engine about 20-odd years ago and sold it, but they were becoming obsolete by then. These engines were used in the Australian-designed-and-built ACCO trucks of the 70's and early 80's.

 

https://ihha.co.uk/model/td-8b-series-2-dozer/
 

There's one currently for sale on Gumtree - but they're in Dreamland if they think it's worth $21,000!  One can buy a good Cat for that kind of money!

 

https://www.gumtree.com.au/s-ad/darra/farming-vehicles/international-td8-dozer/1250657111

 

A bloke has put up a video on Youtoob of his TD-8B he had for sale in Pommyland. He's doing a lot of running back and forth and not moving much dirt!!

 

 

Edited July 20, 2020 by onetrack

[willedoo]

18 hours ago, onetrack said:

Willedoo, you should be ashamed of yourself, leaving an expensive piece of machinery like that, out in the weather for years, unloved and uncared-for!! 

 

Thanks for all that info ontrack, and yes, I am ashamed of myself. Being high on a hill, I cop unrestricted salt air from the coast with no obstacles in between to block it. That video is interesting; it's a different looking machine without the scrub canopy. Definitely a Pommie machine, the engine compartment side guards bolt on. You would need to be quick on the spanner with a fire in there. That's why I took mine off all those years ago.

 

I'm also a bit of a Cat fan. Even though later in life I had a fair bit to do with Komatsus, I still have a soft spot for the Cats. I always thought if Cat had fitted out the D7G with a modern drive and steering system and the addition of a modern cab, they'd be on a winner. They'd still be selling like hot cakes. There's nothing worse than being in the middle of a desert with a machine down for days or weeks due to a computer glitch. You're supposed to drive the things, not have them drive you.

[onetrack]

Well, I've finally managed to bag myself a Cat. A nicely sized little Cat crawler loader, it has been abandoned, unwanted, and unloved for years.

 

It hasn't moved from this spot for 8 years, and no-one even took the trouble to just throw a couple of sheets of iron or even just a tarp over it. As a result, everything is rusted and frozen.

 

None of the controls will move, the engine is rusted up, the seat has just rotted completely away, the tracks are in pretty poor condition - but I reckon I can bring her back, to a state where no-one would recognise it.

 

It had a ROPS and enclosed cabin sometime, but that was all apparently thrown away before they acquired the machine. It was driven into the spot where it was parked.

 

It amazes me how people just let expensive machines rot away and don't try to protect their investment.

 

The bloke that owned it, killed himself, drink-driving, and his widow was left with 3 little kids, and couldn't do anything with all the equipment that he left behind.

 

So it all went to ruin, while she tried to sort out the estate, and raise 3 kids by herself. She's a lovely lass, and great to deal with. 

 

Her brother has a heap of Cats, dozers and excavators, and two sandpits and a limestone quarry.

 

But he apparently wasn't even interested in looking after his sisters and BIL's machine - even though he operates out of a shed next to it.

 

I'll be organising a tilt tray to pick it up next week, most likely. Then will come the fun of trying to fix vast amounts of corrosion.

 

I've borrowed a borescope camera off a mate, to see if I can have a peer inside the donk, to try and ascertain the level of corrosion and damage.

 

This little girl uses the 4 cyl 3204 engine (one half of the small Cat 3208 V8), and they are a "cheapie" engine with no removeable cylinder liners, unlike all the other Cats.

 

So I don't want to risk damaging the "parent" bores, by trying to turn it over without any attempt to treat the corrosion.

 

If the bores get damaged, the block has to come out, to be bored and thin-wall sleeves installed. And the engine and tranny have to be removed as one, to get the block out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 27, 2020 by onetrack

[Bruce Tuncks]

If you get that going onetrack, it will be worth a lot to a contractor. Best wishes.

[facthunter]

You must be addicted to giving yourself challenges..  I know because I used to be but took something for it.. All that stuff is too heavy. You will ruin your back. Nev

[willedoo]

That looks like a project, onetrack. More than a liquid overhaul required, no doubt. It will be interesting to see if the rollers and idlers still spin.

 

It always amazes me to see the good condition of the old WW2 Soviet tanks they keep recovering from swamps. I guess the bog is dense and very little oxygen down there, as well as lack of acidity. This clip is of a T-34 being recovered. I once saw another clip where they recovered a wartime T-34 and as they were winching it out of the bog, all the track gear was running free. It looked almost like new after they hosed it down.

 

 

Edited July 28, 2020 by willedoo

[onetrack]

Willedoo - The European swamps are surrounded by Poplar trees - and the Poplar bark is full of strong tannins - particularly iron tannate. This is the dark-blue stain you get from some trees (even some Eucalypts, such as the Box tree).

 

Iron tannates are noted for their rust-prevention and rust-reversing abilities. There's a local product called Exit-Rust (I've got a few bottles of it), which is solely iron tannate as the primary rust-converting chemical.

 

http://www.choicechem.com.au/cleaning-chemical-products/automotive-products/exit-rust/

[onetrack]

Nev, I've been rebuilding crawlers since I was 16, and I'm 71 now. Yes, I do like challenges, but I also hate to see good machines go to waste, or scrap.

 

This one isn't heavy, it only weighs 7 tonnes all-up, and I can handle the bulk of the parts by hand. When parts get too heavy, I've got forklifts for that.

[old man emu]

Some nostalgia questions:

 

Remember when you Mum or grandmother used to put camphor blocks or moth balls in their clothes drawers to keep the moths away? Have you seen naphthalene moth balls in Woolies lately?

 

Remember when your Mum told you to separate the whites from the coloureds when doing the washing? 

[willedoo]

4 hours ago, old man emu said:

Remember when you Mum or grandmother used to put camphor blocks or moth balls in their clothes drawers to keep the moths away? Have you seen naphthalene moth balls in Woolies lately?

I still do it. The plastic camphor things with a hook on the end are still easy to buy, but it's getting hard to find the small cardboard packets of naphthalene flakes. They work good; I stick a packet in the bottom of a cupboard and open the lid and it lasts years. The camphor things on the other hand run out of puff in a short time. The problem with silverfish is that they love the really good quality woolen stuff. They don't seem to be interested in eating synthetic Chinese made clothes.

Edited July 30, 2020 by willedoo

[willedoo]

4 hours ago, old man emu said:

Remember when your Mum told you to separate the whites from the coloureds when doing the washing? 

I don't remember that part but I do remember little cloth bags with some blue stuff in them. And the old wringer washing machine. It was fairly solid gauge metal from memory. Still have ten fingers so it must have worked ok.

[pmccarthy]

The electric wringer had a safety release and as a kid you could let your fingers go in and see it pop the top. Thank god it did.

[Yenn]

Those little blue bags were starch. Used to stiffen clothes. Also part of our diet, and I must be short of it. not getting stiff enough.

[Jerry_Atrick]

Yenn.. careful mate... don't want to get too stiff... not a good sign....

[pmccarthy]

I reckon the little bags were Bluo, not starch, used as whitener. But what would I know, I was the one dirtying the clothes.

[old man emu]

[pmccarthy]

So a whitener, not starch, which was a different product.

[onetrack]

I think the naphthalene flakes are long gone. The stuff is pretty potent, it's dangerous to humans as well as insects. 

 

https://apvma.gov.au/node/11781

 

Then again, we used to be able to buy arsenic, strychnine, hydrofluoric acid, and dozens of other horrendous poisons, chemicals and toxins - all readily available over the counter.

 

My Dad used to buy and use hydrofluoric acid for glass etching. It's terrible stuff, you don't ever want to spill any of it on you, you can't just wash it off, you need immediate medical attention, and a calcium gluconate injection to counter the effects of it on the body.

Edited July 31, 2020 by onetrack

[onetrack]

The good news on my little Cat traxcavator is that I spent several hours yesterday working on it, and removing panels and spraying Inox everywhere - and I managed to free up most of the controls. I broke one Heim joint that I will need to replace.

 

I inserted the borescope camera into the rocker cover and intake, and found the engine internals are in excellent condition! Bonus!

 

I'll be back to it again shortly with some new parts, some batteries, some fuel and oil, and I reckon I'll be able to fire her up.

Edited July 31, 2020 by onetrack

[old man emu]

44 minutes ago, onetrack said:

good news on my little Cat

Onetrack will have to change his screen name.

Here are some suggestions:

 

EVIL VILLAINS WHO OWNED CATS;