OK I Will Go First

Wouldyou,
Yeh mate i will be, bit of a talkin point ay!,
Your series 3 looks neat, great find.
Cheers,
Slim

Hello Slim, Thinking why it was on blocks, the fellow I got it from bought it for the tyres, so that was its value 40 plus years ago! David.

Made this loader on 745 Massey about 1957, bucket was tumbling tommy scoop, winch on PTO, brake a leather belt around belt pulley back to a hand brake lever, a triple pulley block top front to a double one at the bucket. It sure beat shovelling. Truck 6x6 GMC. David.

this was almost a load. but since one of the back breaks wasnt connected i decided against it. plus it looked like the super 70 was about to go through the floor

G'day Boys, tractors are a bit outa my line but anyway, when I worked at Product engineering at Ford's in Geelong I saw a movie of a half track Fordson Major working in the Otway forrest south west of Geelong. It was a 16mm movie from memory, where it went I don't know. Just seeing the Fordson on the back of Melonreo's load reminded me of it. Cya, Cheers Tim

> Ive lost my Nufield pics, we used her for years on Louisa Creek beach at Hay Point, great tractor and always pulled the boats back home

Rusty Engines, Hello Ian, Your post has some rare tractors. Would the Sunshine tractor be the only one around, do you know how many were made? re the Cat 60 from memory the shoes on the only one that I have seen were one piece link and shoe similar to the Two Ton. Regards David.

David - When you ordered a new Cat Sixty in 1931, it came with bare track chains, and you added the shoes you required, for the job you had in mind, for the tractor.

The shoe models available, were ..

1. Standard forged shoe with grouser ..
2. Skeleton cast shoe ..
3. Flat cast shoe ..
4. Rubber-faced shoe ..
5. Special shoe for wide gauge tractors. This was basically an angle-iron shape shoe, with long chamfers on the top edge (the grouser) ..

In addition, one could also buy ..

1. Cast bolt-on, ice and dirt grousers, for the standard grouser shoe ..
2. Bolt-on street plates, for the standard grouser shoe ..
3. Cast ice grousers, for the flat or skeleton shoe ..
4. Cast dirt grousers for the flat shoe ..
5. Special widths of shoe.

For the Sixty, these "special widths", could be 8", 10" or 20" width.

I have the all the pictures and details of all these shoes if you'd like them scanned and posted!

When the Best Sixty was introduced in 1919, it had pressed steel shoes with two raised ridges, and these were held on with two bolts.
Later, after Holt & Best were merged to form Caterpillar, in 1925, the track design changed to the cast style, similar to the 2-Ton.
Later on, around 1930, I seem to recall, the track was again redesigned, to the more commonly recognised design of the pressed links and forged-style shoes, that stayed much the same until the 1960's.

There are very few of the original-style cast tracks left in working order. Most restored Sixtys, Thirtys, etc, from the 20's and 30's are fitted with later tracks.
On either ACME or ACMOC forum, a few years back, there was a story written up by one of the Americans, whereby they went and dug up a buried Sixty, to retrieve the tracks!

Cheers - Ron.

Ron, So I remembered correctly or else it was a photo. Regards David.

David - Here's a pic (below) that will interest you. This picture, extracted from a pictorial spread of the new, booming Bruce Rock district, in the "Western Mail" .. dated 12th Nov, 1915 .. shows one of the first known pictures, of the first "Caterpillar" Holt 75 tractor, brought into W.A.

This tractor was privately imported by William Noah Hedges, a very wealthy gentleman, who was not only a local M.P. .. he was also a construction contractor, who built roads, bridges and railways in W.A.

Mr Hedges took up approximately 20,000 acres of land between Bruce Rock and South Narembeen, around about 1912, and turned the area into a model farm. The estate was named "Koolberrin".
Hedges was reported as spending around