Thank you for visiting HeavyEquipmentForums.com! Our objective is to provide industry professionals a place to gather to exchange questions, answers and ideas. We welcome you to register using the "Register" icon at the top of the page.
We'd appreciate any help you can offer in spreading the word of our new site. The more members that join, the bigger resource for all to enjoy.
Thank you!
Here are a few photos of TTY70 - R7091. It is currently parked up at Titans Taupo, NZ. I assume the machine is for sale. It has been sitting there for quite some time. The engine in this one is an 855 Cummins.
Here is the PSY I mentioned a few posts back. Unfortunatly it is being wreaked but if it keeps another of these machines alive then I guess it is a good cause. This one would have been built around 1978. It appears that they built about 10 of these per year. This one is a 12V and has a 2 speed twin disk. The most obvious difference is hydraulic pump is mounted further outboard on the 12V as opposed to the 8V. I am not sure exactly when they changed the engines or if either engine type was an option. From what I have noticed the earlier machines had the 12V and the later machines had the 8V.
If anyone has any info on these machines I would appreciate it as I am trying to put a bit of a record together.
I dug out all my old literature, pics, build lists, etc and will be posting them here over the next 20 years or so. I have alot more than I remembered, so that's that.
Here are a couple Thunderbird 'BC Series' shovel shots for warmup.
Ross Corp published a magazine for years called 'Pioneer'. I managed to collect and save these as they came to me and have them going back I think to 1983. Here we see the June/July 1989 cover with the article introducing the Thunderbird log loader line and shows the first new Thunderbird 1146- sold to longtime Ross customer Pete Dancer Logging.
Also is a back-cover ad showing Fred A. Moore's new 940.
TY-90 S/N 9038 was delivered in December 1984 to Griffey Logging of Coos Bay Oegon. It went on to be sold in 1988 to Jensen & Grove of Woodland Washington, who logged on Elk Mountain with it until 1992 or so when Hamilton Logging (Raymond Washington) purchased it and took it North to log around Hoquiam/Grays Harbor. Wallace Rock (Toledo Washington) aquired it for dredging gravel later. It sat at Exit 57 on the West side of I-5 for some time until finally being purchased in 2010by a Canadian firm who is currently dredging rock in Saskatchewan with the machine in February 2011 as I type this.
This picture was taken upon delivery of the machine to Griffey in 1984.
Kind of an unfortuneate choice of words for Thunderbird- "IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHERE THE INDUSTRY IS GOING, FOLLOW THE LEADER."
Neat stuff Logger. I would really like to see one of those 1100 RB's. That would have been quite the hoe!