Help with some questions?

the first TD25 came around 1959-61? by memory
in its day the TD24 was the biggest dozer until the allis hd21 took the honour (by about half a ton lol )
i could imagine a little ford V8 pulling its own weight + a D8 size dozer ...

The TD-25 was released in late 1959. Oldfulla, you may be right, it's likely some of the last TD-24's had rear-mount rippers fitted. RM rippers started appearing about 1957.

I don't think you'd need sand in the final drives to stop an Inter crawler, they broke down pretty well by themselves .. :'(
Even top Inter men admitted their crawlers were a poor match for Cat crawlers. A quote from Joe Nehl, product engineer for Hough .. "the TD-25 was an ill-prepared warrior against Cats D9 .. "

Inter crawlers suffered from poor quality control .. and worse .. a sales and marketing dept, that demanded more HP, after the IH engineers set reliable HP levels.
As a result, most IH crawlers were boosted way beyond satisfactory reliability levels, to try and prise sales away from Allis-Chalmers and Cat.
A-C would quote HP on the basis of it being measured on a bare, stripped engine, with no accessories .. not even a fan. They were con-artists on the HP output, and Cat and IH were angry about it.

Cat brought out detailed comparison sheets, whereby they put their equivalent tractor up against the opposition and showed up their real performance and design faults.
These sheets are real eye openers .. but the biggest eye-opener, was the thing you couldn't put on sales brochures .. the long-term reliability factor.

I was an earthmoving contractor and mining contractor for over 30 years, and ran up to 55 machines in the fleet, at the end of my earthmoving career. I've bought and used a lot of machinery brands .. Cat, Mack, Komatsu, Michigan, Aveling-Barford, Allis Chalmers, Liebherr, JCB, but you could never convince me to buy an International crawler tractor. Nearly every opposition contractor, that I knew, who used IH crawlers, went broke, owning and contracting with them.
They were O.K. on light-duty work, and ag work .. but if you wanted a serious earthmoving job done, you got a Cat.

The D9D, when released in very late 1954, set IH on their ear, with its massive size, massive HP, and massive build.
The D9D had a four-gear planetary final drive, that was unsurpassed in strength .. and which same basic final drive, lasted until the end of the D9 production at the 410HP, D9H.
Cat even produced entirely new types of steel that had vastly increased hardness, toughness and strength, just for the D9D.
The all-new turbocharging of the D9D motor left IH floundering, as they struggled to match Cat.

A-C had a better tractor in the HD-21, as compared to the TD-24 .. but it was still behind the D9D. When the D9E appeared in 1959, with the first Cat Powershift planetary transmission, along with vastly increased HP (335HP as against the 286HP of the early D9D) .. then both IH and A-C had no answer for Cat. The D9E struck the TD-25 a telling blow, and the D9G finished the TD-25 off. The TD-25 was always an "also-ran" in the big crawler stakes.

Cat produced over 4,300, D9D's (1955-1959) .. over 1,300 D9E's (1959-1961) .. almost 15,000, D9G's (1961-1974) .. and nearly 11,000, D9H's (1974-1981).

IH produced around 7,500, early TD-24's (1947-1955) .. around 2,600, Series 241, TD-24's (1955-1959) .. just over 1,300, Series 250, TD-25's (1959-1962) .. almost right on 3,000, TD25B's (1962-1973).. approximately 5,000 TD-25C's (1973-1978) .. and just a whisker over 3,000 TD-25E's (1973-1981).

As you can see, once the D9G was released, sales of the TD-25 fell through the floor, and the D9G outsold the TD-25B by nearly 5 to 1, between the early 1960's and the early 1970's.
IH were so desperate to convince people that sales were going well, that they even jumped huge blocks of serial numbers, to make it appear they were selling more than they were.
Cat almost always started S/No's at No 1, and ran consecutive S/No's without breaks.
A-C were another manufacturer who pulled the same stunt as IH, jumping huge blocks of S/No's, trying to make it appear that the numbers being produced were a lot more than the actual figures.
The S/N books give their game away ..

Oldfulla - The F-700 story is just typical of what struggling contractors did, and I could fill a book with similar stories. How's about a 1

OlFulla
GuddayM8

RE: that conflicts with your indicating that the TD25 didn

the td "B" versions were the ones that broke the most rear ends .. thats what made for example a TD20A better than the pommy powered "B"version (B stood for british made or did B stand for broken?)

(B stood for british made or did B stand for broken?)

I thought Broken and British were synonyms

Hello, Having experience with B45 hay balers the plain B was sufficient. David

Kenny - The International stuff that was British-built had a "B" in front of the model nomenclature, not behind it.

Thus, a BTD-20 was a British-built TD-20 .. but a TD-25B was an American built tractor, with the "B" symbolising the series or model.

The British IH factory did indeed have a serious problem with steel quality, with many component failures as a result.
In the case of the BTD-20, a Rolls-Royce engine fitted, instead of an IH engine, made them an even bigger dog, than they already were .. :'(

the roller motor used to break the rear end obviously because of the extra power,at least it wasnt petrol start diesel run in the TD "B" series 20 i still have a soft spot for the old inters having owned a TD18a ..and knowing the whereabouts of another nice one

did anyone else notice how high the cattle crates are on the McIvor Group photo to the McIver Bros..

and can any one tell me if the black McIver Bros sar is angry ant?

The cattle crates will be 4.6 mtrs OAH.
Cattle trucks in Queensland,NT,SA and WA have had the extra height dispensation for years.Car carriers,also,are "permited" to 4.6m.
Vehicles operating within a 10km radius of Coober Pedy,SA are allowed 4.6 mtrs as
"general access".

Notice how the front 8 foot or so of the McIver crate has a slope on it to compensate for the slope of the trailer underneath it.If you have a look at some of the cattle truck pics of this vintage you will notice that the crates themselves are flat along the top but are wedge shaped over their entire length.

R/