HD 15 to AC collection

Fantastic, Mel. I am always glad to hear of an AC finding a good home! You do know, that if I ever get to your neck of the woods, I will be awefully inclined to stop in and take a peek at your collection. Darrel

I would give "both" my left nuts to have that tractor Mel!!..... lucky you!!... Your a good man!! Can you put up a video of her working once you get that 671 "jimmy" runing? Chum.....

Edited by chumduffy - 03 Nov 2014 at 7:41am

Good for You Mel! There used to be an HD-21G up in that area of California a few years ago that was very straight and complete. I hope the scrappers" didn't get it. It would look good in your collection also! I told Warren next time He's here I want to see Your collection and also go up to see what John Parks at General Gear has. Fresno Tractor also has quite a lineup of AC Crawlers (and parts).

G'day Guys

My ears were burning, I thought someone was talking about me!

Darrell and Bob if you get up to see Mel and Dave's AC collection you'll be more than impressed, I was like a kid in a candy shop, although my wife fell asleep in the car.....

I missed Mel but Dave showed Matt and I around for over an hour so it was probably just as well Jenny fell asleep!!

Dry as hell down here in Aussie, just like I guess California still is?

Great to see pictures of two real nice HD15's on the Forum and better still to see that they both have good homes.

Cheers from down under.

AusHD6



Here is my first forum picture, hope it comes out alright, this shot was taken in Feb' last year when we were dragging rocks in place for our new workshop retaining wall. The rock which we guess weighs over 30 tons is on a steel sled getting dragged by a 966C and a HD6EP plus getting some "push" help from another HD6EP.

Sounds good, Mel. Jan/Feb is the best time to leave this state, but the cattle may get aweful hungry by the time I got back home. In a year or so, though, the boys can handle that deatail. Darrel

Nice looking unit. Hope it doesn't take much to get the gal going. Save the Orange! Tracy

Ok, this is are trip yesterday morning. This tractor has probably been sitting for 15 years. We learned from the owner that there had been an attempt to start it in the past year, but they gave up when the engine would only make a partial revolution. With the front cable unit in the way it is difficult to turn the engine manually. They were thinking that there could have been moisture in some cylinders to cause it to stop. So we knew that much to start with. So one of the new Allis Chalmers tools that we carry now days is a Craftsman electric leaf blower that we can run off the welder on the service truck. Yes I got to be a home wrecker, we displaced rats and mice. As you know it seems like we don't even take anything on unless it's been sitting for at least ten years
So while I removed all the injectors David removed all the floor boards so we could access the drive shaft to try to turn it over manually. Our thoughts were if we took all the injectors out, with no compression maybe we could turn it over manually first.
They needed to come out anyway because three of them were stuck. We were able to get them all working ok. (had brought extras in case)
So with all the injectors out and a pipe wrench on the drive shaft we were able to turn it back and forth enough that we could tell it was beginning to go further each time. So we put a battery in and spun all the junk out including diesel I dumped in the cylinders. It began pumping fuel out of the fuel manifold so we decided that it was close enough
So we got  it started even without either,it actually started faster than we thought, so fast that we didn't have time to get pictures of the smoke that looked like a volcano eruption
So it was pretty exciting for it to come to life that fast.
So it went south after that. I pulled the blade control lever and promptly broke the cable. My first attempt to move and steer blew a hydraulic hose to the steering clutch. But we do have a plan for all that so stay tuned.

In my feeble mind, a project such as that is more fun than hunting, fishing, golfing, watching TV, or any other so called past time. Just seems that my projects always end up taking way too long. Best of luck to you on this venture, and I will be looking forward to seeing machine at your place when I come and visit! Darrel

Excellent! 

Edited by ACcrazy - 12 Nov 2014 at 7:03pm

Ok, we made the trip to retrieve this last Friday. As I said earlier it was very tight quarters and we knew it would be tough to get the trucks turned around
But that went well and we were able to get where we needed to be off the pavement. Got the tractor started again. (and had to finish smashing a 50 gallon drum that we ran over on the first move)
Got it tied down and moved out of the way so we could get the other truck and trailer in.
So it's important to have all the right equipment to take on a tractor rescue like this. Everyone should have an old septic tank form to take and use as cribbing to stand a C frame on so it will be hiway legal and a septic tank knuckle boom truck to load pieces. The original plan was to break this down to hiway legal to get it out of there
The C frame was appox. 9'-8'' and we needed to tip it up to get it under 8'-6'' to be legal. It needed to be a little over 4' to be high enough. A survey of are back yard looked like the old form was high enough and heavy enough, so it became Allis Chalmers tool #CF123 (c frame123)Probably saved from scrapping for future C frame retrieval.
We put the blade on the back of the truck and were good to go.

So we presented a Redwood Valley Gravel hat to tractor donor John Guilliams (a much prized and coveted hat that are hard to earn). He's pleased that it is going to are collection and not scrap. He's a classic car collector and has a whole bunch of projects that he would like to get going on. With that we headed home.
Now it's parked by the wash rack for cleaning and service,reassembly and then an AC playday

Now there is a perfect example of farmer ingenuity, in repurposing sht!

Edited by DiyDave - 18 Nov 2014 at 5:52pm

Great story and pictures, thanks for posting!
Reminded me of a friend from California telling me about a septic pumper truck, all polished up chrome and painted black with the company name in gold on the side of the tank.  Below the name, in cursive was "Your s%^t is our gravy".

So not to hijack your forum but I have bought and restored several cat dozers like the d7 3t    D6 9u but I’m looking at a Allis hd 15 that’s pretty nice but the tracks are at about 40% I will be using it and don’t mind to pay for tracks in the future but I’m worried i won’t be able to find some to buy