Steering clutches worked by pulling the levers and power would be disconnect from that particular track. The machine would steer that direction depending on the amount of resistance in the form of a hill or a load on the blade. Brakes worked on the pedals and were usually used for the most part when there wasn't much resistance to cause a turn from the hill or a blade load. It also allowed the machine to pivot steer. Really good operators seldom used the brakes when the machine was in production.
The blade control was on a lever on the right side. Pushing the lever toward the front of the machine caused the blade to go down while pulling toward the rear of the machine caused the blade to lift. Moving the lever to the left caused the left side of the blade to tilt down while moving the lever to the right caused the right side corner of the blade to go down. The key thing about the blade control is that it didn't react as soon as you moved the lever. Every D9G or H that I had ever been on reacted the same on the blade. It took some time on the machine for that delay to be learned and imprinted into your arm and hand so you could operate the machine smoothly.
There were multiple types of rippers installed on D9s. The Cat four barrel ripper had a lever on the right side that was surrounded by a plate. The plate had four slots where you could push the lever into. Pushing the lever to the right or away from the operator usually caused the ripper to drop. Pulling the lever toward the operator caused the ripper to raise. Pushing the lever into the forward would changed the angle of the tooth to either extend the upper cylinders and move the tooth closer to the machine or retract the cylinders moving the tooth away from the machine into a steeper angle. Moving the lever into the rear slot was the opposite effect. The tooth angle was made steep when starting the rip and then supposed to be moved to a lesser angle after the tooth had penetrated the rock. The lesser angle at nearly horizontal had the effect of sharpening the tooth and lifted the rock vertically into relief. Many times though, in my career, the operators would just leave the tooth at near vertical and blunt the tooth and put all kinds of extra wear on the shank and causing the machine to burn a lot more fuel. The delay effect between moving the lever was also still in the ripper controls but wasn't as noticeable.
I see,that steering system won't be difficult to implement control scheme wise most likely but physically creating it might be difficult. Do you know how the pony engine start up went? So far I managed to figure this much out from a video:
Step 1: Fuel to Pony motor
Step 2: Pony run switch set to On
Step 3: Dozer set to start
Step 4: Pony clutch lever in disengaged
Step 5: Button start (random chance to work)
Step 6: Let pony idle for a few
Step 7: Engage engage pony clutch and let it turn engine for a few minutes
step 8: Kick lever to run setting
Step 9: Wait for the sound of pony motor to jump up (Automatically disengages from engine) as engine turns under its own power.
Step 10: Shut off pony motor
Step 11: Shut off pony fuel.
step 12: Doze time.
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