My father, best friend and distant business partner passed away about 18 mos ago and several years of health issues left lots of stuff to get sorted out for this contracting business back on track. I was walking the lay down yard looking at the summers needs back in March and noticed both of the big dozers had no bucket over the stacks. Both have rain caps but I decided to take a look anyway and guess what…. The 6C was fine but the 8H has a big hole in the cap. I didn’t have time to deal with it right away and thought why I ought to check with the hands and see who had them running and when, before I freak out. I was 99% sure it had sat all winter at a minimum. Very disappointed. Went and got a bucket first thing.
Had a chance to make some calls and best anyone could come up with was possibly 4 years since that 8H was fired up. The last guy to admit that it was worked, claimed it had a bucket on it and he had it up and running to back fill an excavation. Looked up the invoices and sure enough he was off by 5 years. Everyone of my dads operators are either passed away or getting old and losing track of time. So best I can tell since I don’t know who parked that dozer is nearly 10 years since it was worked.
Took some time to blow off some steam and decided to study the books and think about making a plan. Basically started raining in sting here and has not been a day without rain until this past week. After several phone calls to the old mechanic that had just been all thru this motor about 200 hrs ago I decided the next day it was time to bar this motor over and with the grace of god if she’s not locked up or full of water time to fire her up and get her dried out. Oil level was just below the “running” word on the dipstick like normal level for a cold check. The radiator was only about 1 gal below normal so I pulled the floor boards and got the timing cover pulled off. Took the timing tab out of the way. Put a little white paint mark on the flywheel and started barring till I got a full two turns around. Never felt a bit of anything bad. I could feel the cylinders come up a little tiny bit of bounce on the pry bar but nothing unusual.
Being more used to the older 46A we had with pony motor - where you could engage the decompressor and crank all day?! I was really scared to crank this electric start motor knowing what would happen if there was water in a cylinder or laying inside a port ready to drop in there. I barred it two more revolutions and still nothing there so I went ahead and cranked it. Tried pumping the priming pump and it felt like it was not working. The main fuel valve under the tank was shut off so after a bit of lube and some pumping a bit to get prime she took off slow and low. Let her warm up for a bit and walked her over to the shop so we can give her some attention.
Well done Young Man !!
Thank you. It sure means a lot to know this motor is not locked up or full of water. Really took a while of crawling around on that thing and taking panels off and looking up from the belly pan to remember stuff from 35 years ago. Weird how I had memories of being a child and turning that motor for my dad and another guy to put the pistons and con rods in there and set the valves etc.
Good to hear your success. Barring over 2 revs and good to go. Goes to show an old Cat can sit for years with no harm. If it had electronics rodents would have eaten the wires long ago.
Yeah I kinda got lucky I think. I put some further thinking into the process and probably should have went at least 4 revs. Because if there was some water buildup on top of a tight valve and then I got it open and it poured into the cylinder without rolling fully thru again?? then I hit the starter?? it would have been game over.
I trust the cooling system was full of nice quality glycol with inhibitor - because if the cooling system had been left to degrade, and corrosion was setting in, any precombustion chamber could have developed a pinhole via slow corrosion - and no bucket over the exhaust would help, then!
Yes luckily the cooling system was treated and took less than a gallon to be flush with the baffle under the cap. I still need to pull a good sample and test it tho. That was one of my big concerns was corroded pre combs or a liner pin hole from setting so much.