An Auction for the Rest of Us.

Garlic Mom, Ray, Billy and I went to an auction near Merced on Saturday.

Garlic Mom and I went to Billy's Friday afternoon.  We brought him a present of a Fifteen parts tractor that WyoCat was nice enough to arrange for us.  Billy had a Fifteen parts tractor which used to sit in front of his house connected to a tumblebug.  A guy stopped by regularly and asked him to sell it.  One day he had a weak moment and had been regretting it ever since.  Now he has a Fifteen to complement his tumblebug again.

Billy and Annette were kind enough to host us for dinner and let us stay in their guest house.  Billy's house is about two hours north of us, and the auction was about an hour from his house.  Here's Billy's truck in its house.

Saturday morning we woke up early and unloaded the Fifteen and put it where it belonged.  We went to Firebaugh for breakfast at the Giant Burger, which is the local duck bill club.  There we met several of Billy's friends, including one who has mules and showed us lots of neat pictures and videos of the mules, interesting tractors and other stuff.

After a good breakfast, we headed north to find the auction.  Our original plan was to bring three trucks, ours, Billy's and Joe's, along with our 966.  It turned out Joe had other commitments and Billy's truck turned up with the shifter air lines eaten by mice, so we were down to one truck and the 966.  That was O. K. though.

When we got to the auction, there was even more, better stuff than the flyer had advertised.  In addition to the Allis Chalmers Wheel Dozer and neat Allis Chalmers HD-16A we were interested in, there was another bareback Allis HD-16A, about the most pristine Adams pull grader I've seen.  The big one with ten foot wide axles, two neat military Jeeps and quite a few Cats.

Many of our Cat friends were there, so we didn't figure to get any of the Cats, but we did strike on a few good things.

Here's a really neat 100 year old flat belt pump with pipe which we got for a couple hundred.  This'll go in Daron's front yard.

Here's the Allis Chalmers HD-16A we got for $850.00.  It hadn't run in over ten years.  It has a Detroit 6-71 for power.  It also has a really neat Garwood blade with Garwood front cable control and Garwood double drum rear cable control.  We added water and removed the valve cover to check for stuck injector.  Pulling the engine through a revolution revealed three stuck injectors.  I was able to pry them up and down a few times and get them loosened up.  I pulled it through a couple more revolutions and they were still a little stiff, but the rack stayed free.  Ray pushed me with the 966 and in about a revolution or so it was running just fine.

Everything works, including the front cable control drum and both rear drums, all steering clutches and brakes and the master clutch.  We tried the starter with two good batteries, but it didn't want to spin the engine over.  We were just using jumper cables though and the old batteries were still connected, so sucking current too.  I think if we got two good batteries and wired them up correctly, it'll start as it should.

Here's an absolutely spectacular big Twenty which Skinner bought.  I think he got a steal.

Here's a really nice, straight Wooldridge which we got for $450.00.  The tires all hold air and it looks really good.

Here's a really nice ripper which we let go to a friend, who kindly backed off on bidding on some of the stuff we wanted.  I think he gave $500.00 for it.

And here's a nifty little Allis Chalmers wheel dozer.  I believe it is a D-30 model.  It has the Allis Chalmers six cylinder turbo diesel which was originally a Buda design, before they were purchased by Allis.  We got this for $550.00.

We were a little worried about the right front tire.  The lock ring was pushed back about six inches off the o-ring and the tire was pretty cracked.  The other three tires took air and appeared to hold well.  We lifted the trunnion and set it on a big block, then ran a chain around the right front tire.  We jerked on the chain with the 966 to try to pull the lock ring back out.  At first, no dice.  We tried pushing the ring in a bit with a fork tip and got the ring to move.  Some nice people gave us a can of P. B. Blaster which we used liberally.  With it all lubed up, we started jerking the chain again.

It took lots of jerks and creative repositioning of the chain, but eventually we got the ring back up to the o-ring and started pumping in air.  It took a bunch more jerks and repositioning of the chain, but we finally got the air inflow to overcome the leaks and the ring seated, o-ring sealed and the tire held fifty pounds of air.

Saturday after the auction, Skinner needed some help hauling a nice Twenty Eight parts tractor to his place, so Garlic Mom and Billy followed him with our pickup and car trailer while Ray and I worked on the HD-16A.  When they got back, we had it loaded up and were ready to take it to Billy's house.  That was all we could get done that day, so we spent Saturday night at Billy's and returned Sunday morning, after another nice Giant Burger breakfast.

Sunday morning, after fixing the wheel dozer tires, we were going to try to start it, but we discovered the fuel filters and canisters had disappeared.  This engine has a Roosamaster pump and the filter base is a remote affair bolted to the block.  It has provision for two canisters with what looked like six lines coming from it.  My theory is that, even though it is mounted canister down, it is similar to the International scheme, where one canister is a prefilter from the fuel tank, then the lines go to the lift pump, then back to the second filter for a fine filtration, then back to the pump for injection.

If I'm right, Billy has a spare set of those from his International MD, so I may be able to adapt something to work.

Since we couldn't start it, we towed it around and got it lined up with the trailer.  This has that fully hydraulic steering, where the steering wheel is connected to a rotor and lines go to the steering cylinders, no mechanical connection.  That worked out good because we could just bump the wheels to steer where we needed.

We got it all loaded up, chained down and hauled over to Billy's.  We fired up the HD-16A to unload.  Here's s short video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnkwNAXlDV4&feature=youtu.be

and some photos.

Here's Billy and granddaughter McKenna, who were supervising.

We had a little play day over the weekend.  There is a bit of off topic in here.  Didn't really do any digging, but did repair a few things, start and run several things and had a really good time.

Daron and Marianne came over from California City and Joe came from Buttonwillow.

Daron helped me figure out I had the Allis Chalmers batteries hooked up backwards, should be positive ground.  After fixing that, and a bit of manual adjustment (bending a voltage regulator points spring attach point) he had the generator generating.  The last piece I need to fix on it is the Hobbs mechanical hour meter.  I got it apart last night and need to figure out if it has an electrical problem or a mechanical clock movement problem.

Tom and his Brother Doug came down from Tehachapi in his immaculate 1959 GMC Cannonball.

He has put the axles from a 2001 Peterbilt under it, so it rides nice with the Peterbilt air leaf suspension.  He also just finished overhauling the 6-71 to solve a heating problem.  The Detroit injectors fit into a copper sleeve which can develop pinholes and let combustion gasses into the cooling system.  It is an absolutely spectacular truck.  Tom was kind enough to take me for a ride and let me drive it a bit.  It is better than new!  Steering is tight, everything works, it is just beautiful.

Garlic Mom wanted to get her Allis Chalmers UC going, so we aired up the tires, added some gas and got it running.  Joe took it for a spin, then Garlic Mom took her turn.

Here's some video of Joe riding around.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2v5oc0WU8I

Joe spent some time on the RD-7.

https://youtu.be/_yWE2rbvl8U

Tom also got some seat time on the RD-7, but we were too busy having fun to shoot the video!

We started the sawmill turbo D7 17A.  I hadn't been able to test the steering brake repair I did, but it seems to work, steers in both directions now!  I still need to swap out the rusted through transmission filter tower and get some new cable so that the blade will work.  No pictures or video of that, though.  Too busy trying to start, operate and evaluate.

After lunch, Tom and Doug took the Allis Chalmers HD-15AC and Wooldridge for a spin.  Video courtesy of Tom's (Rileydog362) YouTube channel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBH6XLapxRg

We had a really nice time.

Pete.