we were watchin old picture slides on the wall together as family, and one of those old pics was of my sister and i on my dads 977k in eastlake ohio! it was huge! she thinks it was around 1965, shes older than me! its a big loader! no rops what so ever! just brut force!!!!!!!dad loved operating!i think maybe the L series came after that! im just the kid, bear with the kid! dad did tons of demo work with the cat loaders, then he did years of work doinbreakwall work, in the water of lake erie! ive got pics of equipment nearly under water! anyone seen this work?
I ran several 977's counter. Used the k and L models for sure. We demo-ed with the L model in the 80's. Used both to drag piling across jobsites for years. Only difference I could see was the top rollers were frame mounted on one type and crawler mounted on the other.
also, the steering pedals were suspended on a k and hung on an l. or vice-versa. i would love to spend more time on a 77.
I spent some time on a 977L. I miss it sometimes.
learned what little i know on 977. mostly in rocks or rocky ground. that sucker would load some big rocks. some of them were so heavy i would balance it on the front idlers and ease them very carefully in the truck.
Earplugs on those machines is almost a certain PPE!
cat977k dad would take me to work on sats. or days in the summer,when school was out.in its day, the cat 977, was concidered a grading machine as much as a loading machine in this part of northeast america!
No doubt about that. In my early operating, they would send one of they're several 977's out to a job as your dozer. I remember using one to rough grade a site in prep for a parking lot. We would grub trees, knock down walls, load truck after truck of clay and rocks and stumps off the site then get the whole site ready for the final tweekng from the 450 case or a HD16. The 77 would cut it close though. Great vision and control of the hand throttle and good brakes were all main components for sure!
We had a H model, with a straight pipe !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Here is a pic of our 977L that we use in our shale pit to rip and load shale.
Not long ago, I looked at a 977 (977K I think) that was for sale. The owner had a fascinating story to tell about the machine. When it was newer, it worked building landing strips at remote locations in the Canadian Arctic. The problem was that they had to get the Cat there before the landing strips were built. So they dropped the 977 from a plane. They flew it to the remote sites in one of those transport planes (Herc?) that has a drop down loading ramp in the back. They put only a small amount of fuel in the Cat - only enough to last a few minutes - and then started the machine in the airplane. The pilot came in very low and very slow to the location of the future landing strip, almost skimming the ground. Someone then put the Cat in gear (without an operator on board of course) and just let it walk out the back of the plane. After hitting the ground, it would skid a little and then walk off across the tundra. But it soon ran out of fuel. Someone to operate it then flew in by helicopter or by small plane on floats or skis.
977 in a plane, i'd have thought that would have been too heavy. I'd have figgured they would have used 450 deere's or cat 933 & 941 at the max. But hey it might have been true, sounds good anyhow.
my dad was in the excavating business as well in eastlake ohio. at one point he had a 977k and a 977l. i saqw you post here got me to wondering if i know who you are. we did alot of work in the area, even had a big excvavator stuck in lake erie. while trying to dredge the lake.