historical information photo news on the largest crawler loaders ever built

O

Old Operator

Well-known member
Back in the 60s the BTD6 shovel was £4K while the 933G was £6K (50% dearer!) That said the 933 was a much better machine with its oil clutch & non oscillating tracks, I think? It did not need the 'fudging device' that the Drott Hydra Spring was. The 951 came in in '61 at the old 955 size, & from '64
all the clutches & brakes ran in oil for long life.
The IH manual B100 / B125 used to suffer from oil getting through from the crown wheel onto the dry clutches & brakes, some owners drilled the drain bungs & put a bit of loose wire in, provided the machine was never to go into deep water.
As to the 100B /125B the main problem here was drivers shifting direction without decelerating & checking travel. The equivalent 941did not need to decelerate & had no facility to do so (you set the throttle to a position & just kept shifting as in a manual, but were advised to check travel with the bucket or centre pedal before changing direction). Some 941s were hand lever slew with foot brakes, some were foot steer with the centre main brake, (both Powershift), there were even a few manual 941s - layout as a 951a. Confusion set in if a driver went from powershift 941 to 125B & treated the latter the same. It was said by an old Saville fitter that anything on the B100 could be fixed in the field, whereas some problems on the 100B could only be fixed at the workshop.
I do remember a TM1100 being bought new in '76 for £8500 while a 100B was £12000 (both had cab & 4in1) IH phased out the manual range late '75? I do remember Ads by Komatsu saying the D30s was 're establishing direct drive in plant hire' praising its sheer reliability & fuel efficiency. no doubt looking for those who preferred simplicity in a machine

Also remember a '73 fully manual Case 450 with a layout pretty much as the B100, but can only find now info on direct drive 450 with the H-N-L powershift per track & overall F-N-R but lacking the torque converter (& lower 1st gear ratio's) if it had an 'inching pedal' I do not know.
Case crawlers were built in the old John Fowler factory in Leeds for a while. This is as I remember things - could be wrong as long time ago.
 
Bri963

Bri963

Well-known member
Old Operator said:
Back in the 60s the BTD6 shovel was £4K while the 933G was £6K (50% dearer!) That said the 933 was a much better machine with its oil clutch & non oscillating tracks, I think? It did not need the 'fudging device' that the Drott Hydra Spring was. The 951 came in in '61 at the old 955 size, & from '64
all the clutches & brakes ran in oil for long life.
The IH manual B100 / B125 used to suffer from oil getting through from the crown wheel onto the dry clutches & brakes, some owners drilled the drain bungs & put a bit of loose wire in, provided the machine was never to go into deep water.
As to the 100B /125B the main problem here was drivers shifting direction without decelerating & checking travel. The equivalent 941did not need to decelerate & had no facility to do so (you set the throttle to a position & just kept shifting as in a manual, but were advised to check travel with the bucket or centre pedal before changing direction). Some 941s were hand lever slew with foot brakes, some were foot steer with the centre main brake, (both Powershift), there were even a few manual 941s - layout as a 951a. Confusion set in if a driver went from powershift 941 to 125B & treated the latter the same. It was said by an old Saville fitter that anything on the B100 could be fixed in the field, whereas some problems on the 100B could only be fixed at the workshop.
I do remember a TM1100 being bought new in '76 for £8500 while a 100B was £12000 (both had cab & 4in1) IH phased out the manual range late '75? I do remember Ads by Komatsu saying the D30s was 're establishing direct drive in plant hire' praising its sheer reliability & fuel efficiency. no doubt looking for those who preferred simplicity in a machine

Also remember a '73 fully manual Case 450 with a layout pretty much as the B100, but can only find now info on direct drive 450 with the H-N-L powershift per track & overall F-N-R but lacking the torque converter (& lower 1st gear ratio's) if it had an 'inching pedal' I do not know.
Case crawlers were built in the old John Fowler factory in Leeds for a while. This is as I remember things - could be wrong as long time ago.
Click to expand...
As I remember they all had the Terramatic twin transmission. You steered either by putting one track in neutral, or one high, the other low, or by using the steering brakes for spot turns. They had a foot accelerator and a hand throttle. Whether that changed on the later machines I don’t know. Eimco used a similar transmission, just much heftier.

I didn’t realise the BTD loaders had oscillating tracks. The 100 had fixed frames, same as the Cats. Interesting the hystats have returned to oscillating frames with an equaliser bar rather than a spring.
 
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T

topkit

Well-known member
How about one of these thats a reasonable bit of weight to put on the back !
Pictures courtesy of CMN website.

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V8Druid

V8Druid

do it as well as you can,but learn to do it better
1980 was the last time I was in the seat of an IH100 .... clearing 6 ft of snow for everyone to get into work in Brynmawr, where I worked for a year in a large engineering company ... had to fight my way into the yard and get her going on a few occasions that winter
 
V8Druid

V8Druid

do it as well as you can,but learn to do it better
V8Druid said:
1980 was the last time I was in the seat of an IH100 .... clearing 6 ft of snow for everyone to get into work in Brynmawr, where I worked for a year in a large engineering company ... had to fight my way into the yard and get her going on a few occasions that winter
Click to expand...
oh and NO cab .... so had to find and clear said IH first ... :ROFLMAO: .. helped when I was usually the last one on it and had an idea of where I'd left it ... in their 3 acre yard :rolleyes::giggle:
 
O

Old Operator

Well-known member
No I swear the Case 450A I saw in '75 had a conventional gearbox, twin steering clutch levers, twin brake pedals (one on each side like a B100). It was registered for the road -M reg so '73 new. It belonged to PJ 'Pete' Vickers of Cressage. I never drove it, only saw it. I have never seen another like this. I was familiar with the usual Case set up, the tower between the legs with the little levers as you say. I drove both a 450A & an earlier Case said to be a 750. these both had the foot accelerators for right foot. The 750 had twin brakes on the left, these were only brakes - so you had to put one side in neutral before braking. The 450A torque model could be foot steered on the pedals only. Both were torque converter, having a converter oil temp gauge. Both also had a manual Hi - Lo range lever - shifted only when trans neutral & machine static!, & they boasted a parking hand brake lever! The 850, & 1150 were exactly as the 450A but bigger.

There had been an earlier Case 1000 in the 60s - this had the usual twin Terramatic but with a F-N-R power shift per track & also a powershift range lever.
The thing was a disaster as the power clutches were not beefy enough, it used to blow up regularly - leading Case to buy many back to protect their reputation - costing them a fortune. There was a 'Matchbox' model of this duffer, either on its own or on a D series Ford artic.

Case did not return to this dream until late '76 with the 1150B - it was tested by Lawrie Tootel in CN magazine, he saw contra rotation of the tracks as unneeded. Case made a big fuss in ads about never sacrificing reliability - no doubt haunted by ghosts of the 1000
I think Case built their last crawler loader about '93 - the very last few were hystat as the dozers became.

As to the oscillating tracks I seem to remember the early 955 was solid with loader frame welded to each track frame, Some at least of the Komatsu's were like this, I think the MF 200 possibly also. I thought the BTD6 & B100 had non floating final drives - i.e. each track frame pivoted on the rear sprocket shaft - meaning it was a big job to change the sprocket. The 100B had track frames mounting forward of the track sprocket - I cannot remember if they pivoted. Back in the day it was said that dozers were best with a torsion bar while the equivalent loader had a hardbar. I seem to remember that Dozer torque converters had a higher stall ratio than their sister loader. (The stall ratio is more properly the max torque multiplication at output shaft stall)
The downside of more torque multiplication is that the converter slips more when under light load, i.e. the machine travelling or reversing. It was thought that dozers spent a much greater proportion of the cycle engaging the ground compared to the loader shunting back & forth.
At one extreme of design is the 'fluid flywheel' doing no torque multiplication at all & at the other end is the IH 100B concept of only having two speeds of say 3.7 & 4.5 mph - hence the converter does much spiral flow or torque multiplication when lugged down by the ground to the equivalent speed of the B100 1st gear (1.5mph). The Case 450 had 1st Lo of 2 mph by comparison. Hence they were asking less of the converter - allowing it to be more efficient (less slippage) in the coupling (running light mode) This may be why Dresser went to a 3f 3r powershift on the 100E, The Japs had few natural resources, fuel was always dear to them, they felt that no tractor 100HP or less needed a torque converter, it being wasteful, hence the Hydro Shift - Direct Drive powershift. Mitsubishi built 931s / 941s for the Asian market were direct drive, the problematic 931 torque transmission model was only for the west & not regarded by them as ideal but what the customer wanted he got!
Sorry I do not own the Liebherr & am not connected to Stokey, I just saw the tractor when passing, have never seen a Dressta in UK. Of the 5 USA giants,
IH & Allis Chalmers / Fiatallis are long gone, Deere only sell yellow line into the Americas, Case no longer sell Dozers here as far as I can tell. So that leaves only Cat, along with the two Europeans & Komatsu
 
Bri963

Bri963

Well-known member
The question about the liebherr was directed at Muckyman.

OO, Interesting about the 1150, I heard some of the Cases could contrarotate the tracks, but I only operated the 450’s, which couldn’t. Be nice to know a bit more about the Case with the manual box, wonder if it was a prototype?

I operated a 450 and a B100 back to back on the same job, and it was a good comparison. The 450 was much faster cycling on the ground but the B100 was quicker on the hydraulics by a good margin. I’d have said it was a bit more powerful on breakout despite being a bit lighter.

one mount I’d like to have tried was the Cat 939.. Hardly any of them came over here, though.
 
M

muckyman

Member
Liebherr 621B i have never heard of a case having a different layout our 1150 is a 1966 with contra rotation as mentioned its not something you need ,we only ran IH drotts until getting a komatsu D30s then it was forget anything else 30s 31s 41s 57s still bought other makes out of crawler addiction which has no cure,all second hand never had a new one,
 
Bri963

Bri963

Well-known member
muckyman said:
Liebherr 621B i have never heard of a case having a different layout our 1150 is a 1966 with contra rotation as mentioned its not something you need ,we only ran IH drotts until getting a komatsu D30s then it was forget anything else 30s 31s 41s 57s still bought other makes out of crawler addiction which has no cure,all second hand never had a new one,
Click to expand...
What sort of work?
 
O

Old Operator

Well-known member
Back in the day in my area I would say in the 1.25 cu yd size & under, the market was like this, first IH, Next came Case, probably next Bristol/Track Marshall, then the odd MF 200 & 300. I only ever remember two Fiat / Allis Chalmers machines. There was an old parked Deere shovel on the A41 near Prees but it never moved position over many years, no others. As the '70s ended Komatsu became more common. There were many small 'Mom & Pops' plant companies employing say up to 6 men. These ran shovels in this size class, & the above makes, never the Cat 931 / 941. The Cat was bought by bigger businesses & they ran big Cat kit & this trickled down into the 941 size. A lot might have been if there was local dealer back up - IH was in Telford, Rajmech
(Case) was Oswestry. Deere had once been sold by Bristol Aimes of Stourbridge, but this was earlier.
As to driver comfort / ease of use I would put the Case 1st, the 100B/125B/TD8B a very close second. I do not doubt that the manual Cats were very robust, but I found them hard work over an 8 or 10 hr shift & much more tiring than above makes. The D30s was a bit easier having a foot clutch, leaving the left hand to steer & shift gear. I always liked to have an accelerator / decelerator on a powershift machine, particularly when backfilling old mine shafts up to 700ft deep! If I had been an owner of a bought used machine I would say manual, as the average Joe had a better chance of diagnosing / fixing these.
The TM 1100 had a very low 1st gear, floating final drive, & the steering clutches could be got out from above it was said.
I remember a couple of IH 175's & one 150. I seem to remember the late Trax said the 165 was not a great success as it had the crown wheel / steering clutches / final drive of the 125B & this was overstressed on a bigger machine. IH was by then in trouble & did not have the money to build from scratch something more suitable. It also had no decelerator as I remember, just two brake pedals, hand power assisted steer clutches & a 2F 2R powershift - unlike the 125B. Interesting that the B100 (50Hp) seemed to have more bite than the 450 (57Hp), I seem to remember the BTD6 weighed 6.1 imp ton & the B100
was about 7? Backhoes on a Drott were not ideal but a ripper was useful. Even if you did not rip it meant you had a front & rear jack if the track came off or you got stuck, allowing logs etc to be put under the slipping track. One machine I would have liked to try is the small Macmoter Spa hystat.
The 3t Chinese machine is often sold under the name Nortrac - not thought to be that good but it has a decompressor to activate before cranking. Many operators ignore this & burn out the starter motor - a case of RTFM.
 
Bri963

Bri963

Well-known member
Loader-wise, Very few Bristols this side off the country, and I never saw a Track Marshal version, even though they were built about 80 miles away. Never saw an Allis or John Deere either. Quite a few IH’s, (btw the B100 was just over six tonnes - the 100B was seven) Cats and Cases, but the Cases disappeared off site before the IH’s. Komatsu and Liebherr shared about equally with the odd JCB slung in. That was around this area, anyway.

Until the 80’s There was an agricultural/muckshift contractor near Spalding who was reputed to have the biggest fleet of BTD20’s outside the Royal Engineers, and another five miles away who ran about 20 Case 450’s and nearly 40 Ford 5000’s shifting and spreading cowshit and Lime, and general agricultural muck shifting.
 
O

Old Operator

Well-known member
B100 Military version handbook states 7170 Kg complete with 4 in 1 & Boughton rear single drum winch. The winch is said to weigh 593 Kg with
300 ft of wire rope. So without the winch the tractor weighed 6577 Kg but it would have then have had the original counterweight, I would guess this as nowhere near the winch weight. Not sure what the ripper & tines would have added, again minus the counterweight.
I can remember B100s, Case 450s MF & TM 1100s being towed on 'Rubery Owen' or 'Weeks' Drott trailers behind a two axle tipper. Never a 100B though.
Never seen a Liebherr loader in real life, saw 1 JCB 110B (Shire Plant B'ham) plus one in bits for spares. Only Stokey have the Liebherr dozers - they seem to buy a bit of everything. I remember the IH TD20E being advertised late 70s. Was aimed at US military who use the D3 & D7 size, they never bought it. Only seen one on 'Gold Rush' Duchman Tony Beets has it with blade & winch
 
Bri963

Bri963

Well-known member
The weight on the B100 was a good lump, but I doubt it was more than 200 kg. I think you’ll find the military version had extra guarding and a few other additions as well. The BTD 20 was a Donc machine and had very little in common with the American TD 20. The BTD had a Rolls engine, the TD had a IH lump.

Rubery Owen built a lot of the 4 in 1 buckets for IH, also for some of the UK built Cats, and I believe also for Case. The RB buckets weren’t as robust as the Cat made versions, and were more prone to twisting.

I did spend a few months on a JCB, think it was a 112. Awful thing. Also had a couple of days on a Liebherr 632 with a Merc engine. It was a good match for a 953B.
 
barracane

barracane

Well-known member

Caterpillar 983​

La più grande pala cingolata prodotta da Caterpillar.
Peso: circa 35 t
Potenza: 275 CV
Benna: 3,4 mc

​

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V8Druid

V8Druid

do it as well as you can,but learn to do it better
topkit said:
On Gumtree at the moment Item number 1396234821
Bristol crawler with MF 200 BACKHOE.
Click to expand...
www.gumtree.com

Bristol Taurus tracked digger | in Coventry, West Midlands | Gumtree

Second one made Bristol Taurus crawler Massey back actor 3 buckets All running Comes with new tracks not fitted Family owned from new A second set of rear sprockets re toothed for use with the new tracks Around 7 tonne
www.gumtree.com www.gumtree.com

1662745633990.png

Description​

Second one made Bristol Taurus crawler
Massey back actor 3 buckets
All running

Comes with new tracks not fitted
Family owned from new

A second set of rear sprockets re toothed for use with the new tracks

Around 7 tonne
£6k
 
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