Potential Vintage Cat D7 Dozer Rescue - Have I Lost My Freaking Mind???
 

So, I'm thinking about buying a non-running D7D 17A project; should be about 1959 vintage. It's complete, said to have been running (but not running well) about 10 years ago. Owner thinks it's was having fuel issues.

It has a hydraulic blade, electric start, Hyster D7D winch. Engine is a 4 cylinder turbo, but based on the block casting, it appears to be a later D7E engine.

This would be my first piece of heavy equipment. I've been wrenching on muscle cars and trucks on and off for decades. Also have some diesel experience - Ford 7.3 IDI and PS and a pair of Detroit diesels in a boat decades ago. Now that I'm retired from the Army, I have more time to take on something challenging like this. FYI - I certainly realize that it would make more sense to buy something in better condition, but I'm not necessarily after the smartest course of action.

Anyway, back to the D7. I haven't seen it in person yet; it's 1.5 hours away from me. Going tomorrow to check it out in person. Before I buy it, I'd like to get it running, if at all possible.

Owner said he has an old set of batteries from a D4; believe the D7 should be 24V.

And this is where I could use some help. I'm familiar with the process of starting a car or truck that hasn't been running in years, but a 64 year old D7 is another situation altogether. Anyone want to take a stab at the process you'd use and the tools you'd bring?

I do have a pushbutton starter switch that will hook to the starter solenoid with alligator clips. I should be able to figure out which terminal is the S terminal on the solenoid. I'll bring ether, but I'm not a big fan of the stuff. What about getting fuel to the injectors? If I bring a 5 gallon can of diesel, can I use an electric fuel pump to get the fresh diesel to the injectors somehow? I suspect the rack is likely stuck, so I'll check this first.

More pics...

I'd like to do that. I watch Diesel Creek and how he starts old equipment.

Yeah, that's my problem - I watch too much Diesel Creek.

Just a couple questions:

1 - Are you married?

2 - How would you get it home?

K

lol

If the answer to #1 is no…..then #2 becomes irrelevant.

As Bob says, Matt, on "Diesel Creek", on You Tube, does this routinely, watch some of his videos to get an idea of what he uses for tools, and what he brings with him to do a start up on hibernating equipment.

His mission on his site is to try to save old equipment from going to the scrapyards. I just watched him start up a 6-71 Detriot stationary fire sprinkler pump engine that was in an old steel mill for 50 years last night on his station. The engine had last been serviced in 2016, so it had been idle for 7 years. Most of the stuff he gets running has been setting for decades though.

Also another one that bought an early 60s D8 with a pony motor start on another you Tube channel is "Ambition Strikes", The guy bought a piece of property on a mountain in Northern Idaho, and he needed a big dozer to recut the road from the highway, to the home site. He had more than his share of breakdowns right after he took possession of the D8. He did most of the repair himself, and finished the road cut with his newly aquired, 60 YO dozer.

The good thing about diesel equipment is that even decades old fuel will still run an engine, unlike gasoline that after a year or two won't even light with a torch if dumped on the ground.

From my own eperience with diesels, you need the best batteries you can get, because sustained cranking to bleed injection lines on a on a diesel is really hard on batteries, and starters. When I serviced diesel equipment on jobsites, and changed fuel filters, I always only cranked them for 10-15 seconds at a time, then let them cool down, to keep from burning up starters when purging the fuel systems. Many manufacturers have a feature on the lift pumps (fuel pump) that can be operated manually to purge air, but some do not have that feature, and have to be cranked with the starter to purge the system. Some have electric pumps, but you're not going to have an electric pump on a Cat engine of that age.

On using ether, it's really hard on any engine to run on ether, and if the intake manifold had grid heaters in it, you can blow the intake to shrapnel in a second. Be carefull when using ether, I only use it spareingly, and as a last resort when starting diesels, as well as gas engines. The ether shortcut, can really ruin parts quickly, and your in for some big expense, by trying to save a few minutes of troubleshooting time.

IDI engines tend to drop prechambers out of the heads when using ether, and once the prechamber comes loose it gets compressed between the piston, and cylinder head, rendering the engine junk.

Detroit 2 cycles seem to need ether to start in coldest weather, some even had factory installed ether cold start systems on them, operated from the drivers seat.

In the "Diesel Creek"videos, he is pretty conservative when trying to start old equipment when it comes to using ether. He'd rather it starts without it, but sometimes you need that little bit of pesuassion when starting something that has been dormant for decades.

I hope some of this info is helpful......:thumbup:

Yes.

On a low-boy.

I have plenty of room in the front yard.

Good points on the ether and batteries, but what if the cylinders have water? Trying to figure out how to turn the engine over without bending a rod.

Thanks

Lots harder to get water into a diesel than a gas engine, but the injectors can be removed, similar to sparkplugs, but more involved to remove usually.

One other thing is water in the fuel, if it gets past the water seperators, it will wreak hell with the injection pump, and injectors. Be certain the water seperators are purged of water, and maybe have a auxilary fuel source (boat tank, etc.) until you confirm the onboard system is free of water. No telling what is in old tanks in construction equipment after decades of sitting outside.

Mice and squirrels can demolish an electrical system, so be vigilant to look for their damage to wiring. What rodents don't destroy, nature, and weather will. Then you have guys that own tools, that should never be allowed to touch anything mechanical, half assed repairs over decades of use can really pile up on something of that age.

I'll have a 5 gallon can of fresh diesel and an electric fuel pump, but not exactly sure how I will plumb that into the system.

Thanks

I watched him start an old Euclid dump truck chassis with a hydraulic boom. This was close to me in Brownsville Pa. Where they have a lot of old running construction equipment. There are get togethers about twice a year. Been meaning to go just havent. What you need for front yard decoration is a Manitowoc 4100 crane! You could reach of your neighbors easily.!

I watched him start an old Euclid dump truck chassis with a hydraulic boom. This was close to me in Brownsville Pa. Where they have a lot of old running construction equipment. There are get togethers about twice a year. Been meaning to go just havent. What you need for front yard decoration is a Manitowoc 4100 crane! You could reach all of your neighbors easily.!

I'd definitely drain the water separator first. Whenever I had starting issues with the 5.7L diesel in my 1981 Bonneville, WD40 was my go to starting fluid. You can spray it directly into the intake and the engine will idle on it just fine until your injector lines are purged.

Thanks to some insider (one of my GMI roommates was on the Oldsmobile V-6 diesel development team), I got 269,000 miles out of that car before a Texas hailstorm literally destroyed ever horizontal surface on the body. There was nothing quite like getting over 800 miles on a tank of fuel on the highway.

Here's a recent startup of d dormant D7:

https://www.google.com/search?q=1959...4WkJawTks,st:0

Another channel you may like is Squatch253. He's done meticulous, nut and bolt restorations on a couple smaller Caterpillars, a couple D2's and an RD6. Also, a factory prototype Minneapolis-Moline crawler and a couple Farmall tractors. https://www.youtube.com/@squatch253

You’ve lost your freaking mind. :)

Agree with b-man....

The lift pump is what supplies the injection pump with fuel, you need to plumb into the fuel system before the water seperators, and fuel filters, so you have filtered water free fuel coming to the injection pump. The injection pump multiplies the fuel pressure from low pressure, to high pressure necessay to spray fuel out of the injectors. Diesel fuel filters are usually about 10 microns, so gasoline filters won't adequately filter particulate that can harm an injection pump. Once you understand the process of how fuel is delivered it makes sense on why things need to be done in a certain way. Having to have an injection pump rebuilt is very costly, so I wouldn't recommend by passing the fuel filters, not worth the risk IMO.

Shortcutting is a way of increasing risk, without much margin of gain. WD 40 sprayed into an intake with electric heat grids will end the same way as ether will, likely an explosion. The intake manifolds in diesels have zero fuel in them, so inducing fuel where there may be heaters, won't end well. The old CAT engines with pony start motors, ran the exhaust from the pony motor through the center of the intake to preheat the intake air. In lieu of a pony motor for intake heat, many manufacturers used electric grid heaters to heat the intake air up. As ambient air temps fall below 40 degrees the difficulty of starting a cold diesel engine is drastically reduced, hence the need for glow plugs, or grid heaters in the engines.

In winter I have heated up the intakes with a torch to aid in warm air getting into the engine allowing it to start easier, if an engine was particularily hard to start. Of course block heaters also allow the iron to remain warm so that there is easier ignition of a cold engine too. Warming the coolant with a block heater will aid in cold start success also.

Diesels also need to spin over fast to maximize heat in the cylinders to ignite fuel, weak batteries, or a dragging starter won't allow enough starter RPM to ignite fuel in a cold engine. When the starter is slowing down, the likelyhood of a cold start is reduced expotentially. As Tim the Toolman Taylor says, "MORE POWER".........:D

If I'm spinning a diesel for a cold start, I like to either have a jumper from a running truck, or a large battery charger in the neighborhood of at least 200 amps while spinning it over. I learned a long time ago that less than 200 RPM with the starter won't start most diesels, especially if cold.

And I thought I needed a support group.

Good Luck! We have a 70's vintage CAT tracked loader on our place that has been a continual pain in the a--. Be prepared for sticker stock if you buy CAT branded batteries (or any CAT branded product really). Also the batteries are HEAVY, ours weigh 80 lbs each and you have to lift them over the tracks to get them in the compartment.

Ours has a manual primer pump that pulls diesel to the front where the pump does not have to work as hard at start up. I'm not familiar with the D7, but if it has glow plugs be sure and let them do their thing for at least a minute or two before even attempting to crank.

If this machine does not have hydraulic transmission or lift cylinders, consider yourself lucky. Hydraulic seals are our biggest problem.

Here is a link to a forum full of good info about old heavy equipment:
https://www.heavyequipmentforums.com/

This is a link to an online supply house that has the best pricing I have found for our machine:
https://offroadeq.com/

Mike Pearson

I admire your optimism. I might have started with a late 60's early 70' model, but hey sounds like a fun challenge. You can do it. Good luck.

The pictures remind me of paraphrased text for a ROUGH project I saw a while back:

"...if your wife doesn't file for divorce when you bring this thing home, it will at least get the conversation started!"

Like Alice Kramden said to Ralph................."I think you're nuts!"

And your point is? :D

I'll see what I can plumb up tomorrow once I get there, but I understand your point on getting fresh filtered fuel to the injectors.

I agree with you 100% on spinning it over fast to get it to start. The owner has some 4D batteries but they're not charged. I'm bringing a generator and a few chargers; hope we can charge them on site and then wire up for 24v. I'm also bringing a few fresh batteries from my F350 just in case.

Almost forgot - the D7 should have a compression release; if so, and if it's operational, that should help.

I don't think this has glow plugs.

I'm actually on the heavy equipment forums already, but I'll check out the offroadeq.com one.

I'll check for a primer pump; that would be nice.

Thanks!

Scott

Man! U are a mwn after no own heart!
A friens of mine has an old CAT dozer and the best part is it has a PONY motor to start it!!!!
So a starter is much eaiser but NOT as cool!!
Its hard to hurt or kill a CAT that old!
You should be pusing dirt soon! Better get a fuel truck coming buy the house on a regular bases!

This one would have come with a pony motor, but appears the engine is from a later model - D7E or so. The D7E was available with pony start or electric start and glow plugs.

Anyway, I agree - pony motors are indeed cool.

my diesel mechanic that works on my equipment told me about a story like this the other day.

said an old guy called him and asked him if he could scrap an old cat dozer that hadnt run in at least 25 years. he went to look at it and asked what happened to it when he quit running it and he said nothing i just quit using it. he said before you scrap it let me play with it first, so he installed some new batteries, new fuel, new filters and it fired right up and didnt even have any hydraulic leaks.

hard to kill the older cat equipment.

Not really that far fetched. My Uncle Bud pulled a D8 out the pond where it was hidden after it had been stolen. Bud pulled the heads and oil pan, drained all the water out of the fuel and hydraulic systems, drained and refilled the transmission and final drives then used this bulldozer until he passed away in 2017. One word of caution: tracks and road wheels for CAT bulldozers are NOT cheap.

When we were kids 10 or so Latrobe Construction was doing major earthmoving on the north side of town near the hospital. Cat equipment. Anyway one morning delivering papers we got the pony motor started on a dozer! Yes ! Then my good friend Kevin, his brother Denny one morning got the pony motor started on a cat scraper. He got the diesel started and proceeded to drive it hitting a new under construction house! We were kids! Good luck,find the info you need to make project go smooth. I have friend who works on heavy equipment,mainly welding.

Cool story, MC, and good to hear from you.

Scott

Ok, so today was a GREAT day!

Got on the road at 6:15. Picked up sidekick at 6:30. Got to dozer at 8:45. Owner was there waiting for us; he's a really good dude, 5th generation on their 550 acre cattle ranch. His dad bought the D7 10 or so years ago from a neighbor who lived a few miles away. They were going to use it to clear some of the land, and when you have a 550 acre ranch, I think you can justify a D7 to clear land.

Dozer was easy to get to. Didn't need to break out the chainsaw or weed-whacker. Just like you see in the pics.

The owner had 4 big freaking batteries in the back of his truck. I think the smaller ones were 4D's, but they were dead. The larger ones had 11.5 volts each, and look like they've been sitting in a shed for a decade or two.

We got unloaded and got the generator fired up (sidekick has a Honda generator) and got two chargers going on the big batteries.

Then we checked fluids and such - good on antifreeze, good on fuel, good on engine oil, milkshake in the transmission...gonna have to pretend we didn't see that...

Checked for air filter and it had been deleted at some point. Ruh-roh. Mice had made it into the turbo on the cold side, but not a worst case scenario. Just had to clean it out a bit.

Then started on fuel system, and that's where we ran into a problem. Injector rack seems to be immobile. But wasn't able to get it moving and the parts between the rack and the fuel filter are throwing me for a loop. Will have to wait for me to download pics and video, but we didn't want to force the issue, so we buttoned it back up for the time being.

Fuel filters (3) all had fuel in them; they were all full. And tank is gravity feeding the first fuel filter (small wire screen), so we don't have an obstruction between the tank and the first fuel filter. Fuel filters look almost new; we saw old filters laying in box that must have been changed out the last time someone tried to start it.

At that point, we figured we wouldn't be able to start it, but we could at least try to turn it over.

Starter was already wired with a pushbutton and we ohm'ed all the wires and everything checked out, including working pushbutton. We then built some quick 2/0 cables to connect the 12v batteries in series for a 24v system. Used the positive wire that was already in place because it ohm'ed fine and it was in good shape.

I was worried about a stuck rack and WOT/runaway engine if it started, but I really didn't think there was much chance of it lighting off immediately. I also had a thick denim shirt sitting right next to the intake; I could have smothered it if it caught.

Verified all controls were in neutral and then hit the starter. Almost forgot - no real way that I could see to turn it over manually, at least not at the front of the engine. Anyway, the sumbitch spun over quickly! No funny noises, just nice and smooth! I was turning it over with the compression release in the "start" position, so it wasn't building much compression. No smoke, so it wasn't getting any fuel that I could tell. Second time I turned it over, it spun for a second and then I switched the compression release to "run" position and it definitely has compression; really slowed it down.

Seller was there watching and he was certainly happy to see the engine turn over. He did mention that the winch was turning as I was cranking the engine, so that's a problem that we need to address; can't be using battery/starter power to turn the winch. The problem is the two controls for the winch -- one is "bluetooth" (i.e., cable is busted) and the other is frozen in position. Anyone have any ideas on how to disengage a Hyster D7 winch that has MIA and frozen control levers?

Anyway, at this point, we called it a day. Seller was leaving to go out of town for work for a few weeks and sidekick had to be back to for parental duties, so we packed up and headed home. Batteries also weren't happy from having to turn the engine and the winch.

I have pics and video. I'll post pics here when I get a chance, and I'll work on editing the video to put up on the YouTube channel.

Next step - figure out the fuel system, source an air filter, figure out how to disengage the winch, and plan the next trip!

Thanks for all the input!!!

Scott

Bat sh-t crazy is what this is. I want to see the picture of it parked in the front yard of your home…..if possible, with your wife sitting on top.

If you can make that happen … You win whatever “best wife ever contest” you can find.

If you knew the Long Haired General, you'd know how unlikely that is!

Has been a long time, but I believe you remove the cover on the top right side of the winch to access where the push/pull cables attach and are adjusted. I'm sure there is a manual for a D7D winch online somewhere that has information for where neutral point is. Controls look like brake (long lever) is released and shorter lever is engaged to forward or cable in.

Epic project.

Barry

Thanks, Barry!

Scott

I am, by far, no diesel mechanic. Heck, I can hardly spell diesel but a friend had an old Ford tractor that would not run. Long story short, there was a filter inside the tank that was clogged up. He changed it and had no more problems. Can you get a fuel system diagram for the D7?

Be careful! :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1r3y-SRsNPI

Although this has a D9 in it.

Usually the first thing do on a piece of heavy equipment that has been parked a long time is to check all the fluids, if anything is over full, that means it is overfull from water at the bottom. Can also crack open drain plugs to get excessive water drained out before it is moved. Mostly on final drives and transmission, and most importantly, the engine.

Bad connections on a 24V system or low voltage will burn the batter connections off. Only start it with the batteries charged up good.


We have a 2 IHC TD24s, IHC TD20C, and a Cat D8H. Used for mostly conservation work on our property.

Watching one of those programs getting dozer started. They had the fuel rail(I call it) was stuck.They either got fuel on it or sprayed it with penetrate, finally it moved they were afraid of run on also. I have no experience with construction equipment. The wife use to say 'you'll never grow up' with my projects. I would say ,'what's your point'! She would walk away.

as long as we are on the equipment sitting subject, i was able to drive my kubota tractor today for the first time in over 3 years. blew a tire on it and thanks to kubota for their stupidity on having bridgestone build odd size tires that nobody makes i have had a piece of equipment that i normally use at least 3 times a week for a short time just sit. i have always fired it up at least every month or so and let it run for a while and lift the bucket up and down. but cant use it. finally after embarrassing the owner of the dealership last year at the farm show and then again this year they made it a mission and found me a tire from japan. got hosed on it but at least its useable again.

Posted a video on my trials and tribulations in case anyone is interested -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBif6E-jFNQ

Use fresh fuel. Drain and refill filter housing. Make sure rack is not stuck. Crack all injector lines to make sure getting fuel. My 1984 Peterbilt with a Cat 3406b had sat in a barn for 12 yrs. Fired right up. Probably doesn't have a bloch heater that could be plugged in.

Thanks for posting that, just think of all the fun to come. I was surprised there was no inline fuel shut off valve between the tank and filter(s), our machine has one right under the pickup location. Also, on our machine there are filters for both transmission and lift arm hydraulic filters, transmission filter under the floor board. There is a dealer in Dallas that carries filters for our machine (air, oil, diesel, etc.): Harlow Filter Supply (also have a warehouse in Houston). While not cheap, they used to be better priced that Holt CAT for sure.

It's all downhill from here.
Mike Pearson

Yes been watching your trials. I'd like to be there to get in the way.

Seems like every young boy with a Tonka wants to grow up and have the real thing.
Sounds like your growin up.
Have fun playin in the dirt.

No block heater available on this.

Thanks

There's actually a shutoff; it just didn't have the type of valve that I was expecting to see. I'll use that when I go back.

Thanks for the info!

Scott