TOOLS, CONSTRUCTION, ALTERNATIVE ENERGY > Construction and heavy equipment

Ol’ SARGE aka BIG RED thread

(1/137) > >>

Flyin6:
I purchased This ugly Case 1150 a couple years ago and owning it has been quite the story. Just like battles there have been good times and bad times, and all of it cost something!

In keeping with this site, the theme here is go old school, pre electronic era and keep it simple yet effective.

Big red came into being following my purchase of some property. I wanted a place off the beaten path that was a safe haven and a place to train up my boys and enjoy family fun while practicing things I feel are critical to "Proper development" in this super safe American lifestyle. I wanted something to get everyone back to basics and practice skills that are all but forgotten by much of modern society.

So with the purchase of "the Farm" came the site surveys and initial plans. My site is very primitive and needing pretty much everything. It has a couple perennial streams that do not have running water during the hot summer months, but still pond it in places. It does have one spring fed pond some 30 feet in diameter and perhaps 3-4 feet deep. The pond along with the barn and farmhouse is in pitiful condition and needing complete overhaul.

With the condition of the road, the pond, and just about everything I needed more than what I could accomplish with a tractor mounted loader and a box scraper. I needed a heavy track machine, some real heavy equipment.

Enter "Big Red" a mis-painted, Red looking 1975 Case 1150B track loader. Weighing in at around 26,000 pounds with a 1.75 yard bucket and able to lift anything you could put in it, I purchased this heavily used Track Loader or crawler loader.

Here it is the day I bought it over in Indiana

Flyin6:
I paid a very fair price for it, but didn't know the whole story as to what it was going to cost me to put back into working condition.

When looking at it at the buyers house, the engine a 450 Cu In Case BD451 6 cyl non turbo diesel engine fired right up. It smoked some but the outside temp was in the single digits. The hydraulics functioned perfectly and I noted some small seeps at some of the cylinders and hose connections.

It hat 2 new batteries and 2 new track tension adjusting cylinders which are really big money. It came with some spare parts and drove around just fine. Behind it was a huge 5 acre pond that my machine and a excavator had dug, and that was the reason the gentleman had purchased it from the original owner.

Flyin6:
I also noted the sprocket teeth were worn to a point, but a quick check told me I could buy new sprockets for only $350 each. The roller pins and the track, a 3 grouser loader design was in great condition, so I thought that installing new sprockets would get the undercarriage in good condition...

I was about to get an education in heavy track construction equipment

Flyin6:
I paid a semi driver that same day to transport my machine to a nearby Case dealer to have the sprockets replaced and a complete "Fluid change."

Dawg25385:
Glad you're getting a thread up for this. I was just thinking about this the other day!

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page