The Fordson Tractor Pages Forum

Saw this on utube thought it might end the petrol/diesal debate, you really can have the best of both worlds. this IH dozer starts and runs on petrol and then can be switched to diesal for hard working, I think its a brilliant concept particularly for all you Northern Hemisphere types who experiance that white cold stuff that falls from the sky. Follow the link to see.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tdsl5vUGtE

Regards,
Stevo

Hi Stevo,
I had a neighbor that had a 50's model front end loader that ran off of gas then switched to diesel. It was an old Navy machine, an IH.
I ran it a few times one summer and it was an awesome oldie machine. It would do a lot of work in a day, but it was very very slow. In it's day it was a workhorse.

Hi Mark,
I know what you mean about work horse, the one on U tube has obviously had a hard life, but apparently still going strong still think its quite ingenious though using an additional valve to increase the combustion chamber space and lower the compression for the gas running. Appears the main purpose was for cold starts and given he uses it as a snow plough in winter I'll bet he's thankful. I'd love to take a look under the inspection plate to see the set up.

Regards,
Stevo

There was a problem with heads breaking due to the heat stresses in burning the two different fuels.

Only IH could dream up a complicated system like that. we just built Majors! They have no problems coping with cold weather.

Hi Brian,
I guess the fellow on Utube had a good reason for not mentioning the bit about heads breaking, perhaps he's just biased towards IH (poor deranged fellow) not like us Fordson chaps at all
Regards,
Stevo

I've ran and worked on my share of those old clunkers. A TD6, TD 9, a TD 15 Track loader, and a TD 18 once. The gas cycle is set to run at 900 RPM with no throttle control and has very little power, compared to the Diesel, It is meant to be for the startup cycle only. And yes, The heads are weak. The bigest factor in cracking heads on these units was getting in a hole nose first where the anti freeze would run forward and the rear head would not be submerged. In my oppinion, In these units, IH bult some of the most mechanic unfriendly stuff in the world. Just try to get the back nut off of the carburetor sometime if you don't believe me..... .... Cat, although not always easy still to work on either, had a lot better and tougher machine. Dandy Dave!

I've always been a Cat fan, when it comes to crawlers. IH's selling point was that their machines had more power than Cat. That was true, but they didn't have a strong enough drive train to back it up. It was like the story of the tortoise and the hare. The IH could do a lot of work, in a hurry, until something broke. The Cat would still be working while you were fixing the IH, so the Cat got more work done in the end.

A good friend of mine used to own a similar machine, only his had a cable operated blade. When he got it, it had cylinder head problems. I will never forget the 5 foot long torque wrench we used to put it back together. It ran like a charm after that. He cleared quite a few acres with that old girl. We even had great fun one summer digging a hole in the front paddock to bury my first car in. I would love to know what happened to it. His wife up and sold it one day while he was away and it hasn't been seen since. Needless to say she is not his wife anymore.

Regards, Frank.

Aussie Frank wrote:His wife up and sold it one day while he was away and it hasn't been seen since. Needless to say she is not his wife anymore.

I think I would have sent her to jail and she could sit her pretty little self right there until she gave up the information of where it went, and then I would of had the machine recovered as stollen Shark. Would be a lesson to bad wives everywhere.

Hi Dave,

It was a case of she had lawyers and Shark settlement all coming down on her side and short of digging the hole in the back yard by hand. Well maybe she was wise to sell the doser.

That was many years ago and my mate is happy now. He has an E27N with a Moore front end loader which sort of makes up for things. His new wife is nice too.

Regards, Frank.