TD 24

I note that you said you had never run one either. The simple fact that you saw one running at Rollag does NOT mean it could go out and earn its keep doing a solid day's work in the real world every day and keep it up. The two environments are worlds apart.

I have a couple of photos of 'A' TD24 pulling a scraper at 'A' vintage machinery show. I have a couple of albums full of shots of D8's at numerous vintage machinery shows. Is there a message in there somewhere? I Theeenk so.

Word of mouth from operators who have run various machines counts for a fair bit, especially when they obviously know what they are doing on the jobs you work with them on. I have never heard one operator who did claim to have any amount of time on TD24's that had much good to say about them.

Sure, they were not bad machines to operate. Many of the operators I talked to said much the same thing. The trouble was that they had to spend so much time repairing the piles of junk too.

They did have some innovative ideas in them but the engineering was atrocious. From the reports I've heard, they seemed to handle agricultural drawbar work more or less O.K., probably because there were not many shock loads to the drive train.

Put them into 'dozer work, especially clearing timber or excavating rock and it was a whole different ball game. Those final drives and transmissions just FELL to bits.

Then there is the FACT that they had virtually completely disappeared from the face of the earthmoving/construction industry in just 18 years, in spite of two upgrades. I theeeenks there might just be a message hidden in there somewhere. Especially when you consider that there are still quite a lot of old Cat D8's around from that era AND quite a bit earlier

You believe what you like. I'm simply passing on what I have heard from men that I respect and the evidence of my own eyes about the almost complete extinction of the 'species' in a VERY short time.

An 'open' mind -- is that holes in the head?

You have a wonderful day.
Best wishes. Deas Plant.

However, IF you want a machine that will go and do a day"s work, whatever day you choose, then look for something else.

I"ll give you an idea of how good these machines weren"t. The first TD24"s came out in 1947. I started my operating career in 1965, just 18 years later, and I have yet to have a chance to operate one. I have only ever seen two "in the flesh". They were such a pile of pus that they had all but disappeared from the scene in those 18 years.

Those old Bucyrus Erie blades had both angle and tilt as manual operations - in other words, no power angle or tilt.

Hope this helps.

You have a wonderful day.
Best wishes.
Deas Plant.