I have been following this thread about the Rubber Tired Dozers, I was in the US Army back in the early 60s, 60 to 63, i went was with a Heavy Equipment Support Co, Near Verdun France, we had a number of the LeTourneau Dozers, i wish i knew the Model , what i do know is they were powered with 671 GM. all were pulling pans, about half had a Blade on the front, the one i operated had a push Block on the front, they had 2 Elect. winches on the rear to work the pans, and the ones with blades had a elect winch on the front, all the macjines had a place that a blade would attach to that was on each side between the front & rear Tires, they all had a 4 speed tran. the ones with the blade were geared a little slower the the ones with push blocks, there were toggle switches that worked the winches, the winches were very powerful, if you blocked out the pan, it would snap the cable like a piece of string, They had one of the best seats i have set on, no moving parts, put the way the bottom was made, in rough places it rode fine, the biggest problem that i remember with the machines were all the air problems, the Brakes were air multi. disk so many driven & some drive disk, but when the air diaphragm cracked you had no breaks, and when you tried to use the brake you were losing air pressure, the same for the Tran. there were a number of Clutch packs in front of the Oper. they had a lot of clutch disk in there, some driven & some drive, if the Diaphrang burst, that gear was no good, we never had any trouble with the drive system other then the clutch packs blowing a diaphrang, they were trickey to oper. with a load, going down hill you had to release the sterring clutch on the right it you were needing to go left, and just a little at a time, if you were not careful it would jack knife, the draw bar/hitch point was so far behind the center of the machine that it was like a leaverage it you let it get much out of line going down hill with a load, they told us in school how many kw the generator was, it was big Gen. but never knew how many KW it was, but being a 23 year old Buck, i was not paying a lot of attention to that part, i dont know how wide the dozers were, but loaded on a lowboy the tires were close to a ft. over each side, talk about a mess, try to load one of the in wet weather, our tires were always just about like racing slicks, those machines would slide rigth off that lowboy if you were not careful,we were building a Railroad from the French Line in Eatin Fr. to a AMMO Dump that i think the line we built was 10 to 15 miles back from the main line,
If any of you Guys know what Model the US Army was using back in the late 50 & Early 60 i would like to know, we all knew them as T Ds tournneau dozers, i saw some MRS rigs while i was over there, i think the MRS rigs were before they went to the TDs, The name MRS i think came from Miss. River Service & they were use to build a lot of the Miss River Levee system, the MRS was about like a Big Truck with no cab & Big tires on the back, and a big double drum winch setup to oereate the pans, some kind of way i wound up with a MRS operater Manual if i ever run across some one that has a MRS i will fix him up
LakeRat1
