New to me M

Might hold on to that oil filter. I hear you can repack em:) Looks like a lot of fun.

Looks like it's got road tracks?

Looks real nice to me !!

Its a Trackson conversion with the 5 roller frame instead of normal 4,also it has foot pedals to steer rather than levers.

Rule of thumb,   crawlers with dozer blades have grouser shoes on the track,  crawlers with loaders have steet pads-no grousers on the  track.  At one timer there were a lot of crawler/loaders around.  With the advent of the articulated front end loader crawler loaders kinda went by the wayside. 

Joe, looks like you will be busy for awhile. Where did you find the M?

Crawler loaders do not use grouser shoes as the constant turning with a loaded bucket will tear the final drives apart. A company that I worked for at one time had a small IHC crawler loader with grouser type pads and they complained that there were always reparing the final drives. I told them to torch the grousers off. That cured the problem.

Grousers are the equivalent of cleated track shoes... the tracked vehicle's track-chain has plates that sit on the ground as the machine moves... those plates can be nothing more than flat surfaces to spread the machine's weight, or they can have ridges, posts, paddles... other types of shapes in them that give them the ability to 'bite' into the surface on which they're rolling. 

One of the greatest advantages of tracked crawlers over wheeled vehicles, is that they're able to spread the machine's weight over substantially greater ground contact area, hence the amount of contact pressure is very low, allowing them to traverse ground conditions that a wheeled vehicle would sink into.  Unfortunately, lower surface pressure reduces tractive effort... so for applications requiring drawbar effort... pushing a blade, or pulling a heavy implement load, the track's plates are either fitted with, or replaced with others that have cleating to 'dig in' to the ground a bit.

As Don noted, the downside to adding cleats, is akin to what happens to kids' knees and ankles when they start playing sports with cleated shoes... the added 'grip' causes twisting forces which put high stress on the drivetrain, wearing and breaking things that would normally be spared through slip.  Grousers are also pretty unforgiving when you drive across a nicely-finished surface... they can do pretty ugly things to nice concrete, and tear heck out of asphalt surfaces.

On modern machines, a popular solution is to clamp in pads into the deep portion of the tread shoes... like rubber or wood blocks... so that the tracks now have a smooth surface covering over the grouser's cleating.  It allows the operator to put 'booties' on to keep his grousers from ripping up a nice surface. Grouser pads are somewhat time-consuming to install, but not difficult, and give a guy the ability to tread lightly where necessary, and then shed the booties when traction is really needed.

For display crawlers, it's always nice to see a variety of track types, and as noted above, the tracking fitted to the machine can identify the type of service it saw... it's an important historical clue.  Unfortunately, it's hard on the show grounds, tough to parade with, and oftentimes dangerous when loading on and off a steel-deck trailer.  Many guys will make grouser pads for their show tractors using wood and/or old tire treading.

Thanks Dave. :)

Looks like junk, piper would love it.  Lol

I know it all depends on the soil but how many bottoms could you expect to pull with an M? 

Yep, it's all going to revolve around soil conditions.  Without grousers, it'll slip a bit.  From what I've been told by some of my local buddies who've talked about it, they really liked plowing with tracks and grousers just after the ground freezes... leaves a nice firm crust in the top two inches, and the grousers bite in good.  Catch is (like Claus said), when does the horsepower run out?  Clearly, you can gear way down and pull hard, but you won't get a nice 'turnover' in the soil at a slow speed.  The amount of power required to plow is determined not only by the size, depth, and quantity of bottoms, but the speed at which you need to go to 'roll' it, and finally... the soil condition... and finally... wether or not you're driving in a furrow or turned soil.  From my experince, I found that When re running in equivalent soil (right and left side) it's less tiring to handle than when having one track in the dirt... tracks don't 'follow' a furrow quite like a wheeled tractor will.