Repairing the Auction Buy, 1942 Caterpillar Road Grader ( Is it worth all this??)

foreigner Hello everyone, welcome back to Diesel Creek, my name is Matt behind me,

this

rusty relic here is my

1942

Caterpillar 212 motor

grader

. If you haven't seen the previous videos about

this

machine, the link is below in the description , but the long and short videos I bought this machine at an

auction

in unknown condition. I paid approximately two thousand five hundred dollars for it. I was hoping to be able to resurrect this machine right there in the

auction

yard and I drove this thing about eight miles home, unfortunately I quickly discovered that the engine was seized harder than a drum and we had to rescue it and bring it back here.

I tore off the head and found cylinder number three, two, one in the middle. The cylinders had a couple of inches of water because the exhaust had been uncovered for God only knows how long in that field, but I was able to soak the engine. I was able to free it and even work in the last video and surprisingly. This works pretty well, so I can't complain about it one bit, but there was a major fly in the ointment at the end of that video, so that's your clutch pedal, that's your brake pedal, there's your lever of changes.

I went to stab. this thing going and obviously you're going to need to depress the clutch before you can get it going and when I did nothing happened, the clutch fork is actually rusted all the way to the shaft, apparently down there on the bell, so one of the What we had to overcome before we could get this engine running was that the flywheel was actually rusted over a couple of teeth on the flywheel ring gear, so it couldn't turn all the way because the junk on the flywheel was trying to mesh with the flywheel. Bendix gear and it just wouldn't allow it to make a full rotation, the reason those teeth were rusty is because down there, inside this bell, there is a mouse domain the likes of which has never been seen, so that mouse urine very corrosive and anything else.

They crawl in there over time, it really rusts everything that's in there, not to mention all the material they built their nest with is in there too, so when we first got this up and running, it was shooting things out of there. but there's still a lot there, but I'm speculating that's why the clutch is stuck, so when you press the pedal, this lever which way it goes, I think it pulls this lever, it's supposed to take this belt crank here and ready. that way with it, um, but that fork inside there that pushes the throwout bearing has to be seized solid because you can't get that thing to move one iota, so as discussed in the last video, the way Easiest I can see to get it. getting in there and cleaning this thing out and getting it running again is just going ahead and biting the bullet and taking the whole power unit out of the back of this thing, so Caterpillar actually designed this pretty easy to do since there are two bolts halfway into the engine. at that point you've got the bell housing bolts right there, other than that, it's just going to slide out of there, a couple of connections, a couple of fuel lines, that nature, but uh, like there's no, no. there are rear supports back here, everything is floating, so I hope and this is something I probably shouldn't say, but I hope it's a pretty easy job.

You see the clock on the wall and the date, let's see what it is when it arrives. This thing comes out of here so on this side we have a fuel line to disconnect and we have a throttle linkage to disconnect of course the bolts on the bellhousing and the other engine mount on this side we just have what is an oil. pressure sensor I think so, we have a line for oil pressure, a temperature sensor line and that may be it and of course the bolts, yes I think that's it, there is this. I shouldn't, I really shouldn't say this, but it seems.

Easy, look at this guys. I could have saved myself a ton of time here, so this thing had a bit of travel before, but it was like I was hitting a wall. I started moving the pedal here and I think I tried this a in the last video and I had been lubing some of the links and look at this, it's pushing all the way in now, it wasn't even close to half of this before, but I started moving it right here now before we start. taking the bolts out and lo and behold the clutch goes all the way to the floor now and it actually feels like you're doing something instead of just pushing against the brick wall so I'm excited that that means the clutch is potentially released.

There's only one way to test it, we'll turn this thing on and we'll find out that this particular Pony engine, being an older model, doesn't even have an electric start for the Pony engine, it's a pull start, you actually have to wind this rope. around the steering wheel. and the hands turn on the pony motor, so I got a little tired of that in the last video and I came up with this, the pony motor for my pony motor, it's basically just my circular saw with a v-belt and I was able to make a loop . Place it over the steering wheel and start the pony's engine quite easily.

That said, in the last video, a lot of people thought you know, hey, that thing hasn't been started for many years and now that you have it running, I bet. That pony engine would start pretty easily with the rope, so today my shoulder and I are going to discover something strange, so after the diesel engine comes to life we ​​cut the fuel to the pony and let it run out of gas. That way it's easier. Next time I'll start. I'm going to let this engine warm up for a minute and then we'll try to see if we can stab this thing into gear and get it out of here in the meantime.

I guess I can. try inflating that front tire. I don't know if it's going to hold air. It's quite difficult. I'm surprised he's even holding air. You can't see it right now. There is a bad spot at the bottom. The tires split in half. tread center, okay, I'm going to go up to the cockpit here, as you can see, it's pretty nasty in here. I don't know why the two

grader

s I bought had carpets for some reason, quite a few roaches here. Okay, I've been, I'm here in the uh, evil, trying to find the gear pattern here, okay, that's the first gear, so once again and going up the first gear, now I'm going to press the pedal of the clutch and one of two things will happen.

If it happens it will work or it won't, and if it doesn't work at this point it is because the friction disc is actually stuck to the flywheel, so we could remedy it if that is the case, but it should be working, there is a chance that it is just working. to make it work because I released it and when you move it it actually pushes surprisingly easy, yeah I don't know if you guys can hear that squeaking thing things get stored and they're happy no it's still not happy so this is what we need to do in this point, and This is going to be a pain, we're going to have to try to get this beast going and then once we get it out, we're going to have to try to hook it to a good strong tree or something and basically, I'm just going to pull a chain and that can release the clutch as soon as you realize it.

I'm pointing straight at the wall right now. I need to straighten the wheels, that's incredibly difficult to do. There is no power steering on one unit. like that so I can fight like crazy or I could use my head and try to lower the blade, thus lifting the front end of the machine, making it easier to drive because we have to line up with the driveway here and I. I'm going to move my Jeep before trying this too, but I haven't tried running any of the functions on this machine since I've had it up and running.

Let's try some of these and see if they work. to make it work, it's not hydraulic, everything here is gear driven, so yeah, okay, let's see if any of these blade controls actually work here, oh yeah, look how pretty, they both seem to be working fine, oh, It takes some strength to lift this thing, oh. man it worked, spin our tires at least as straight as we can, here we go while we're at it, might as well see if everything else works, what else do we have here? We have, uh, what's that doing? Oh, that's the scarifier. and down, nice, that works, what's this guy, oh oh, we got moldboard change?

Well, actually, that's a circular shift, so it moves the entire set of blades to the left or right. It's nice that one works and then the last one should be a circular rotation, yeah oh man that's such a good feeling. to see these old things come back to life, look at that, okay, I guess the last thing we need to do here is turn this off and then try to restart it running, this is going to get sketchy, there we go, got it. Gear now, so what's going to happen is I'm going to turn on the pony motor and the moment I start engaging it, the pony motor will start driving itself and there's not much we can do about it, so I'm just trying to keep it away. of anything important, we have a nice straight

road

in front of us with nothing in the way, so I feel a little safe, here it is time to say some prayers by the walls of the tent and let her break contact, oh, come on you're killing me foreign Smalls, well that was scary and I don't recommend it, it was definitely a don't try this at home moment, but I'm expecting the pony's engine to run out of gas at any moment and I'm fine, so the engine pony's running out of gas, we're using diesel, we're using diesel fuel here and basically what I want to do is get a nice stream of steam somewhere and then just drop this blade on the Luck, wow, I'm holding down the clutch and I hope that releases it.

You may need two hands to do this twist. I know the Galleon doesn't like it and that's with wheels that tilt, not these ones. even lean in, okay, I apologize, I can't record this better. I can't jump out of here and go find my good camera. I'm filming with my phone. Basically what I'm going to do now is Hold the clutch all the way down. I'm going to rev this thing up and drop the blade to the ground and hope that stops us from moving at the same time I release the clutch that didn't work as it turns out.

Because of the piles of dirt behind the tires, all four tires were spinning with the clutch pressed to the maximum. I'm surprised there's a bit of land in front of us. Now this is super hard, but I'm still a little surprised. that even stopped us, Jesus Christ, look at the mess this thing made by only being here a couple of weeks. It'll take me 10 years on a Zamboni stick to clean that thing, thanks foreigner, well I guess this was just a good solid reminder that there are no shortcuts in life, which I thought was going to save me work by making the clutch fork to move, actually, it just took more work with all the fiddling around and, you know, trying to get the thing going and then stopping it and then trying to get it going.

It restarted and it's just been a terrible ordeal. I started recording at two o'clock, they said like 2:30 maybe and it's 6:17 and we've accomplished absolutely nothing, so you know, okay, what do you think, Roscoe? I think it's time to go. Get some kibble and we'll get this engine out first thing in the morning tomorrow okay, okay, now okay, now, at the moment you've all been waiting for, we're about to test the tensile strength of everything I forgot to unplug , let's see. If we can't do this without breaking something, okay, let's play a little game. I like to call what the hell is holding this thing and the goal is to remove the engine without breaking something.

It's times like this that I really start to wonder what you're doing here. I have minimal separation up here on this side and tight everywhere else. I have quite a bit of weight supported by the forklift and I don't even have a vertical. separation here where I thought I would, so yeah, it's a mystery game, okay? I'm having a little success here. I started with this screwdriver, opened up that space big enough so I could stick one of these chisels in here. I don't remember the name of the fan who sent me one of these, a couple of chisels, but they are very useful, let's go the other way and see if I can start one there.

Oh yeah, it looks like we have some pegs that are uh. probably keeping this thing pretty securely attached here once we remove those pegs. I bet it comes out pretty easy to get out and then there's the hole where the motor used to be and what's left of the mouse domain down there in the hood, I think. most of it was blown out while we were running the engine there a while ago, not much left now, but uh, definite damage done by the mouse house here on the engine, you can see hidden here around the ring gear, there's still some remains of Mouse House.

I'm going to try to get all of that out of there before I put it back together, but I'm still trying to figure out what exactly happened here, so multiple failures have occurred here, I'm not sure why or how these arms are supposed to . to move freely are now under spring tension,but basically your throwout bearing pushes against these arms and releases the clutch that's behind this spring loaded pressure plate. I don't know how it happened, this arm is obviously bent on that, hopefully. We can straighten that out without too much trouble, but the throwout bearing barely caught this one and actually, you know, it was worn to the edge there if you can see these other two feet have excessive wear on this one here.

It looks like it got really hot. It looks like the bearing was probably mounted for quite a while, but yeah, so what we're going to have to do is take this apart and free all these components up and moving like they're supposed to again because you'll never be able to push them by hand, but I can already tell it just for you, just grab something, sometimes you know that thing is stuck solid, so yeah, I'm going to have to work on that a little bit, so this is what we have to do here, this is your entry main to the transmission and as you can see it rotates independently of this shaft, this is your active PTO shaft, this one works. the gearbox for all functions on the whole machine, so you can see it spins the drive shaft that runs to the gearbox in the cab and runs all the functions, this one just drops the power to the transmission, so this is the one that's on.

The clutch is always directly coupled to the engine. You see that game there. I'm not a big fan of that, it looks like we'll probably have a bearing on the way out. I don't think we should have any games there at all. The drive here is the throwout bearing, um, there's these arms down here, you should push this thing forward every time you press the clutch, but as you'll see in a second, I don't think it moves, so the clutch is toward above. position right now, which means this thing should retract all the way back. I think it's stuck on the shaft here and it sticks out and catches those arms on the pressure plate when it shouldn't, so I'm going to press the clutch now and see, I don't think it's going anywhere, so one of the things I guess What I should have done better was I had this cover off and I could see down here, but I didn't really know what I was looking at and I couldn't see very well either.

I can't tell if this is felt or just the Mouse House. Okay, it's a piece of felt because there's a cup of oil on the cover right here and when you fill that cup of oil, it fills this little tray here that has that felt to absorb the oil and you let it soak into this bearing assembly. disposable and in theory that will help keep it lubricated and slide easily over the shaft. As you can see, there is no slide, another interesting thing I'm noticing here and it's to be expected for a machine of this age.

Remember this is from

1942

. It's been around the Sun too many times to have something like this done to it. The engine was off. At least once before and they had a crack here around the shift fork arm and they welded it up. They also did a pretty good job. You can also see it on the outside and I've never noticed it before, although it's okay, hopefully we can straighten it out. This without breaking it a little more, it looks pretty good. I'm afraid to go beyond that. Look we have Mouse House even inside the clutch pressure plate.

The good news here is that the clutch looks great. at least what I can see so far, when this is dialed in, you put it in a machine and take it down or replace it and it has no ridges to speak of, it's really nice and smooth, doesn't rust to the touch. Well yes clutch this is the friction in your clutch this is the main wear component so it's a fibrous lining on either side of a steel disc and all those cross hatches are there to cool and evacuate dust , so it's still It has a nice deep crosshatch all the way through, so it looks really good.

This inner surface here on the steering wheel is also another area that may see some deterioration, but we're looking pretty good here. Oh, they have the pressure plate thrown into the vise. here and I just wanted to confirm that these were loose, it took a lot of tapping and a lot of penetrating oil, but we actually have, whatever these things are called, fingers that would be fingers on a normal pressure plate. I don't know what you would call this, but these arms are loose, so I just compressed the disc with these clamps so I can take the tension off these arms and I can verify that they are loose.

We have good news. Someone, yes, we have. everything working here I didn't bother recording it because it was a lot of me fiddling around and getting angry and trying not to break things, so camera pressure is something I like to leave out of the equation when I'm trying to be delicate, so I have the parts book and looked at the diagram. I'll insert the image here, so studying that print I really couldn't even determine for a while which part needed to be moved for a while, I thought. This disc is what makes contact with the arms on the pressure plate.

I know this is your throwout bearing and that it should spin, but looking at everything here I couldn't tell if this was just this disc pushing forward and this casting staying stationary or if this entire piece was supposed to go in and out, so I tried to pry the disc trying to move it back and forth and I was able to get some movement but I didn't feel like you know it was right and then I tried to work Casting back and forth but looking at it it has bolts going through it , so I thought surely it can't move at all.

I've never seen one that has a set like this that moves, but I'm sure after studying the print a bit. further and I consulted some friends uh it moves yeah we have an organ so there's actually a clutch brake on the back right through that port you can see it from above so when you press the clutch , push this thing forward. at the same time, it's squeezing the clutch brake on the back of this flange here, so I released it anyway and moved it. It glides on nice and easy now. The throwout bearing took a bit of time.

I filled this reservoir, which soaks the waste bearing. I filled it with penetrated oil a couple of times and really let it soak in there and then I got a couple of giant channel locks and I was barely able to hold this piece of this ring here the throwout bearing. and I was able to get it to start moving once it started moving. I was able to free it by hand just by moving it back and forth, so I don't think it's too rusty there, it makes a little noise now. I know if you can hear that and you know that if we were going to put this machine into production and if it was going to work, we would definitely change that, but honestly, for how hard it was to get the engine out of here, I'm not even that worried about it.

People use clutches too much anyway. In reality, you should only use the clutch shift in Gears. If you're going to press the clutch longer than necessary to shift gears, you should put it in neutral so I'm not riding on this bearing, so for as much contact as this bearing makes, I think it's going to be fine. I was also looking at the park breakdown and studying all the slope we have here and I got to thinking. that's just because this bearing is not on the flywheel of the engine, so this bearing right here is what keeps this shaft from getting sloppy.

There's only one other bearing in the front, so of course it's going to be sloppy, but I bet you that once we reinstall the engine and these bearings in the pilot do their job on the steering wheel, I guarantee we can grab that shaft and won't move, this bearing still seems to be in good condition so no point worrying about it. So everything was back to working as it should, good and released. I feel good about this. We're ready to stab this motor again here, so the only thing left to do is install this pressure plate before we can bolt everything together. back together, okay, I don't know how, but it looks like I lost a couple of bolts.

I'm missing a bolt and someone already put like a shoulder bolt in here, that wasn't what we were supposed to have anyway, so to the bolt bin we go, oh man, having the bolt bins here has been the biggest time saver for me. Best thing about the store's new bolt bins, everyone laughs weirdly and then we put this back together. Many thanks to my dad for stopping us. and helping me guide this engine there, it was definitely a two-man operation, but we were able to get there pretty well. I haven't turned it on yet. I did nothing.

All I know is that the clutch was working when I assembled it. So I'm crossing my fingers that we can start this thing and I'll just be able to press the clutch and it will start up nice and easy, so I'm almost ready to start it. I think I have all the fluids filled now. I have all the bolts tightened and all the lines connected. I made a mess trying to put the coolant sensor back in there, as you can see it's all just water. but, yeah, it wasn't a big disaster getting out, but getting back in was a disaster, but let's see if I can give this thing a tug and see if it turns on and does what we want. what to do oh listen to that baby purr I guess it's time guys I'm jumping this thing and I'll see if the clutch is going to work foreigner foreigner thank you foreigner thank you I'll tell you what's something to be proud of right there for a machine that was locked up dead in a field not too many weeks ago, it's running pretty well and I think it's as low as dormant, so I wouldn't be surprised if it stops, but I mean, listen to it.

I checked the exhaust manifold with the heat gun and checked the temperatures on all four cylinders. We have pretty consistent temperatures on all four cylinders, which means we are firing well on all four. I mean, she wouldn't just sit here idle. this without problems, if it weren't hard to be upset about it, this is an example of why I like these old things much more than anything new. I don't think you'll get that from the same situation with a newer machine, so I guess we're done with the grader at this point. I just have to put the tin work back on it, but that's nothing we can do to fix the brakes, but that sounds like a silly task, uh, I think most.

Some of these machines just don't have working brakes, they have a pretty decent working parking brake, so use it as a handbrake if you need it, you wouldn't normally go fast with it if it was something you were going to drive. on the

road

and doing two jobs maybe I would worry about it, but for working here on the farm or whatever I end up doing with this thing, I don't think I'd worry too much about the brakes, so it's something interesting that I'm trying to look into here whether this machine may have been built for the army.

This machine was built in 1942, as I mentioned, it was World War II, if you don't know, under all the yellow paint is this green paint. Now that alone doesn't make me say, "Oh, it could have been a military machine, but my friend's family has another 212 like this. In reality, they're only 10 serial numbers away, so 10 machines They can't remember if this is 10 newer or older machines, but anyway, very very close serial numbers and theirs was a military machine, it was for the armies, oh I'm going to forget it right now, but the Army Air Force at that time it was not, since the Stan Air Force was not alone yet at that time, but it has a cockpit-mounted plate, so your machine has a cockpit-mounted plate here that in It actually says US, Army Air Force or something.

Mine has holes in there where there could have been a plate, but no. They don't look like they are the same size as the plate that is on your machine, so if anyone has any records or access to that kind of information where you can find out if this machine was an ex-military machine or maybe even just built for the military and the military never took delivery and it was sold to someone else, it would be very interesting to know, so if Does anyone have any information on this, please leave a comment below or email me, listen to that purr.

I love it. God only knows how long I talked to the grandson of the gentleman who owned this thing and he told me that he had probably been there for 20 years untouched, so I'm really excited because I love getting this back. in action, if you also like stuff like this, make sure to give the video a thumbs up, it really helps the channel. It doesn't cost you a cent if you aren't already, make sure you subscribe so you can watch it. future updates on this and all these other thousands of projects I have going on around here and lastly, if you want to help support the channel in a little more direct way, check out dieselcreek.com, get a hat. t-shirt sticker pack, whatever you want there in the store, we have it all, that's dieselcreek.com.

The link is down in the description, but I'm going to park this old kitty and see you in the next video, thanks. forsee it later