Some crawler tractor oddballs - Greenmount Press

1 Arly crawler tractors , along with allother types of vehicles, had theirshare of the unconventional, thebizarre, the freakish the oddball! Someof these idiosyncratic machines performedas capably as their more orthodox counter-parts, and indeed sometimes better. Otherswere simply engineering ineptitudes,remembered only for their E27N ROADLESSR oadless Traction Ltd. of Middlesex(UK) commenced producing add-oncrawler tracks for agricultural tractors , backin the early 1920s. Bristol, Ransome andRushton tractors each were equipped withfull length Roadless tracks.

2 In the 1940svarious British and European tractor man-ufacturers offered the option of Roadlesshalf tracks fitted in lieu of rear every Aussie tourist to Wales soondiscovers, it always rains in the WelshUplands (well, nearly always). In responseto a particular problem experienced by thelocal hill farmers in such districts asLlanfihangel-yng-Ngwynfa and Pentre-llyn-cymmer (try pronouncing these!) the FordMotor Co. of Dagenham, Essex, equippeda number of Fordson E27N Major tractorswith Roadless half wet clay soil commonly encoun-tered in these areas, made it difficult forwheeled tractors to obtain traction.

3 Few ofthe farmers were in a position to afford therelatively high costs of a conventionalcrawler such as a Fowler VF or aCaterpillar D4. The Fordson Roadless pro-vided the answer. It was priced right, avail-able and could pull a plough across thesteep sticky soil without loss of handful of these Fordson half tracksfound their way to Australia, where theyexcelled in opening up scrub country thatwas notorious for puncturing rear exhibited at classic tractor rallies,it is interesting to note the double takes from passers by as they discover a FordsonRoadless, and then home-in for a closeinspection.

4 THE BEARCATN othing could be more freakish than acrawler tractor having an Oregon timberchassis. Yet that is precisely what heldtogether the Bearcat tractor , manufacturedby the Bearcat Company of South Bend,Indiana in the 1920s and distributed byYuba Products Company of San Francisco,California. (There was no connectionbetween this firm and the Yuba Ball Treadtractor). The strange looking Bearcat was pow-ered by a model T Ford engine (what else?)and utilised assorted Ford transmissioncomponents. One could be forgiven for68 THE AUSTRALIAN COTTONGROWEROCTOBER NOVEMBER, 2003 CLASSIC tractor TALESSome crawler tractor oddballsBy Ian M.

5 Johnston, The tractor HistorianEA 1949 Fordson/Roadless half track restored by the author. The four cylinder side valvepetrol/kero engine of 4,380 cc delivered belt hp and on half tracks produced a6,000 lb drawbar pull at mph. The unit was equipped with a three forward andone reverse gearbox. The operating controls were identical to that of the wheeledversion.(Photo )This 1923 Bearcat, owned by Lou Hanslow of Tasmania, spent its entire working life inQueensland. The wooden chassis is clearly evident. (Photo )betheinassuming this strange concoction of wood-en planks and Model T hardware added upto a homemade bitzer.

6 But not from the prestigiousSmithsonian Institute and the Chicagobased Model T Ford Club confirm that thisoddball was commercially produced. In fact,it seems around 600 were Bearcat featured in the accompany-ing photo is owned by Tasmanian tractorcollector Lou Hanslow, who has traced itshistory in Australia to Queensland, where itwas used very effectively for hauling logsout of steep forest 130 Resembling a Wehrmacht reject, theDemag bulldozer of the 1950s proved thata capable track machine did not necessari-ly have to look beautiful although to behonest.

7 A brief acquaintance with one ofthe Massey Harris or John Deere stylistswould not have gone 12 tonne Demag was manufac-tured by Deutsche Maschinenbau AG at itsDuisberg factory in West Germany. Inaddition to its grim pillbox aesthetics, it wasalso unconventional in its design in the driving seat was like ridingupstairs at the front of a double decker what an excellent idea! From this loftyperch the operator enjoyed an uninterruptedview of the world around him, including pre-cisely what was occurring within the bowl ofhis dozer-shovel.

8 No guess work here! The engine and gearbox, plus all theother transmission bits, were behind there was no necessity to peer along abonnet or be subjected to engine heatblasting back into the buyer of the Demag 130 was offereda choice of power units. The most popularwas the six cylinder 150 hp Berlin builtKamper litre diesel. The alternativeengine was the four cylinder 140 hpModag two stroke diesel of a litre capacity. The gearbox providedfour forward and a single reverse was then transmitted by a bevelledgear to the front located drive hydraulically controlled wet disc steer-ing clutches were operated by a track design was similar to the openlink style favoured by Soviet and Chinesemanufacturers.

9 Although antiquated inappearance, the long tracks of the Demagproved durable and had excellent selfcleaning capabilities. CITREON KEGRESSEA round 1916 the CEO of the Russianroyal family (the Tza, Nicholas II) had avexing problem. Not the one about his sub-jects dying in huge numbers from starva-tion. No, the other inconvenience. HisRolls Royce kept getting bogged in thesnow!Adolphe Kegresse, a French engineerwas summoned to the Imperial garage tosolve this tiresome problem. Simple! Heswopped the rear wheels of the Roller forhis specially designed half Kegresse half tracks consisted of adriver, an idler and in between sometrack rollers.

10 But the clever part was thematerial used for the actual tracks. A rub-berised fabric was stretched between thedriver and idler, resulting in the rubberisedtracks being driven by friction engage-ment. Not that the technicalities of the fixfor the Rolls Royce were of much interestto the Tzar. By this time, his loyal adoringsubjects had dragged him from his limou-sine for the unhappy purpose of carryingout his returned to France where hejoined car magnate Andre Citreon. By1920, special Citreon vehicles were beingequipped with Kegresse half built Alpine cars had skis in placeof front wheels and half tracks at the first motor vehicle to cross the Saharawas a Citreon Kegresse in 1922 23.