2015 Antique Caterpillar Machinery Owners Club National Show

The Rock River Thresheree in Edgerton Wi hosted the annual Antique Caterpillar Machinery Owners Club show this year. I have never been to this show before and I've never been to an ACMOC event. So far, I have to say it was the best show I've attended to date. The show had a lot of variety including a steam driven pile driver, a couple of dragline shovels, a big "sand box" for all of the dozers, graders, shovels etc and a steam locomotive that runs around a 1.5 mile track to name a few things. But on top of all that, I was able to meet a lot of great people from the club and see a good amount of vintage Caterpillar equipment.

So I took my sons little dozer around and snapped a few pictures next to the big boys. Click on the picture below to see more from the show.

Update

Started chopping up axles. See the rest HERE.

The New Build Begins....

I've had a renewed interest in my Jeep lately. And I've been offroading twice this summer so far. That's more than past years. Wanting to do some upgrades, I purchased a Chevy 14 bolt full float axle from the junkyard a few weeks ago. I was planning to find a Dana 60 for the front. Don't really need that much axle but I like building things. Obviously.

However, I haven't stopped thinking about the mini truck build. I have more ideas and ambition than I have time or money. The design has stalled a little because of the lack of parts. Like the dozer, I need to know what parts I'm going to use so I can model it properly.

I need to start from the back and move forward to know how much cab space I'm going to have. And I struggled with what I was going to do about the axle. As I was sitting there looking at the 14 bolt, it dawned on my. I needed a fairly narrow axle but I wanted the outer bearing support of a full float axle the handle the dual tire setup. So I went back to the junk yard yesterday and picked up the narrowest axle I could find; a 2wd axle from an S10. I have a plan to graft them together. I'm going to start modeling it in cad and will explain more soon.

Update

Added a new video yesterday. My younger son rode the dozer for the first time yesterday. He loved it. Can be seen HERE.

I'm going to take it to the Antique Caterpillar Machinery Owners Club National Show. More info can be found HERE.

Haven't done a whole lot lately. Trying to clean up the garage a little. Going to start buying some parts for the mining truck soon. I need to know exact dimensions so I can continue the design.

The Next Build

I'm still a ways out on this one but I've been slowly working on the design. I've started a new page to show progress.

New Keychain

I found this at an antique store in Iowa a few weeks ago. I've been looking for something like this for some time now. I think it looks pretty good. Click HERE to see the build.

Update - Porch Swing Build Page

I built this a few years ago. I wasn't too far into the dozer build when I built a porch on the front of the house for my wife. And no good porch is complete without a porch swing so I built this (click on picture to go to the build pages)

Minor technical difficulties.....

We're back up and running now.

Update

The majority of the pages for the dozer build are complete. The Index can be found HERE. I'll add a few more pages of the dozer in action soon.

I'll also start updating some other random projects I've done including the porch swing I built as well as a DRO install on my Sheldon EXL lathe.

The beginning......

I'm starting this website to recap the almost 3 years it took me to build a mini dozer for my sons. I tried taking as many pictures as I could during the build and I regularly posted build progress on a few forums. This blog is meant to clear some of the clutter from the forums and better describe what I did now that I've had time to look back on what I did.

This was only the first of many projects I plan to do.