1812 Apple Street, Kalamazoo, Michigan 49002
In May 1972 I found a Four-pull (Cat) tractor, made by the Fitch
Four-Drive Tractor Company of Big Rapids, Michigan. I had heard
about the tractor four or five years before I saw it, but could not
and did not find it until Decoration Day weekend of 1972. After I
found out where it was, I made several trips to where it was before
I got to talk to the man that owned it. I told him I was interested
in old tractors and would like to get it and restore it, as I had
done with several other tractors, and showed him pictures of some I
had fixed up. He said he would talk it over with his son and let me
know.
Over the Fourth of July, I made another trip up to see him. This
time we talked a little more about the tractor and he told me he
had two of them and took me back in his woods to see the other. It
was not a Cat but looked the same. Also he said, it was the last
tractor the Company built. By this time I was so anxious to get
them I could hardly sleep at night, but he still did not know
whether he should let go of them.
Over Labor Day weekend I made another trip to see him. This time
I got to see his son and together we talked about the tractors and
together they agreed to sell them along with some extra parts they
had, so I made a down payment on them.
It was about three weeks later when my son and I returned for
the tractors I had purchased. The man was a little bit upset with
me or upset about selling them, but I got the tractors loaded and
told him I would return later for the parts. He said I could not
have the parts, so I left with what I had.
I brought the tractors home and unloaded them. One of these
tractors had rubber tires on it. The steel rims had been cut off
and pneumatic rims added. The first weekend I hunted up some tires
as two were of a different size and one of them was ruptured and
flat. I spent two or three nights changing the tires. This
completed, I tried to start it. It did run, on two cylinders.
The next weekend I took it to a truck and semi repair shop and
had it steam cleaned. After about four hours of this they gave up
and said take it to the junk yard. The junk yard wouldn’t care
if it was dirty, but they did get a lot of the dirt off.
By this time it was nearly deer hunting time, so deer hunting I
went. After returning from hunting and no deer, then the work
really began. I started in to scrape and clean the rubber tired
tractor. It had been inside and did look to be the best one. I
cleaned the engine first, then removed the exhaust manifold, and
broke off one stud bolt, and removed the two heads. The engine is a
Wakashaw engine. I took off the side plates to remove the valves,
so I could grind them. Two valves were stuck open, so I soaked them
with penetrating oil for a couple of days and got them loose and
out. I got them all ground and was about ready to put them back. A
friend stopped over, so I took him over to see the tractor. He
suggested I put rings in it while I had the heads off, but I
didn’t want to pull the engine because it looked like an awful
job. He said pull the side covers off and take the rod caps off
that way. I worked about four hours getting the rod caps off and
the pistons out, to find the crank shaft was worn, tapered one way
and the connecting rods were tapered the other way. I had to pull
the engine then.
My son, Ernest, and I removed the radiator. Oh yes, when I first
brought this tractor home, it sat in the area where the neighbor
kids played ball. They used the radiator for a baseball target and
jammed eleven places in the radiator. I caught them doing it and
asked why. They said they wanted to see how close they could throw
to the same place every time. I had to make a tool to straighten
the radiator fins and in about three or four nights I straightened
the radiator all out.
By this time it was about April. When I pulled the engine I
found the clutch plate of the twin disc clutch was broken half in
two. I removed the flywheel, the pan, then the crank shaft. Took
the crank to have it ground, poured new babbitt in the connecting
rods and it didn’t stick. I told a fellow and he told me what
to use to make the babbitt stick, so I poured them again. I rough
bored them in a lathe, then made a fixture and set them up in a
boring mill and bored them parallel with the wrist pins to the size
I needed for the reground crank. The mains were real good so I
removed some of the shims and scraped the mains in. I blued the
main bearing surface and used red lead on the crank shaft and
scraped and scraped and scraped and scraped! Seventeen days I
scraped! All day Saturday, every evening till way after dark and
even a little on Sunday afternoon, after church. As I drive Sunday
school bus and help maintain the busses, the Sabbath is pretty well
taken up. Along with a night or two a week for bus repair.
The crank shaft weighed seventy-eight pounds so by the time I
had it scraped in I was pretty tired. The first day I scraped, I
lifted the crank shaft in and out 117 times. I marked it down while
I got a rest each time. While I was scraping I noticed a ring
around the front side of the cylinder walls at the bottom of the
cylinders and a little ring at the top on the back side. Not much,
but a little, so I talked to a fellow who does engine work and he
could not explain the rings as they were. So during my scraping job
I measured from the top of the cylinders to the bearings. There was
.019 difference from front to back, so I went to this same fellow
and we figured the rings that were worn in the cylinder as they
were and the crank shaft and connecting rods work as they were that
the cylinder and crank were not ninety degrees square of each
other, so this created another problem.
By this time it was Decoration Day 1973, so my wife and I went
visiting. Our daughter lives near where I got the tractor and while
I was there I went over to see the fellow I got the tractors from,
but he had passed away in April.
I had to have the cylinders bored. Before the cylinders could be
bored, the top of the block had to be milled parallel with the
crank, so I had to remove the head stud bolts. In removing, I broke
off thirteen of them. Just half, so I had to remove them from the
block. I took some 9/16 bolts and drill holes in them starting at
1/4 inch and increased the hole to 27/64 but ended up using a 3/8
pilot. Then I got an easy out and ground it down so it would go in
a 1/2 – 13 threaded hole and with a lot of patience, I got them all
out. I then made up a shaft to fit the main bearings and put in the
engine, borrowed a set of precision V blocks from the shop to set
it on and put two bolts in the pan flange to level it up. Then I
had the block milled, bored and dry sleeved and bored back to the
standard piston size. Then I turned the piston ring grooves square,
put in a spring ring spacer, then the rings, and then assembled the
engine except for the head and manifold gaskets. I wrote a letter
inquiring where I could get new gaskets. Finally I found a place I
could have gaskets made, so I ordered them. In the meantime there
was other work to be done.
The transmission needed repairing, the upper shaft was bent, so
I straightened that. The gears that run the belt pulley had a pin
broken out and needed replacing. When I got into that, the pins in
one gear and the holes in the other gear did not line up. I bored
them both out, and in order to bore out the gears, as both were
hardened, I had to make up a special boring bar with a carboloy
tool bit that would cut the hardened gears. With them both bored
out, I made the new pins out of 5/8 Allen cap screw shanks and
ground them to fit. Then into the transmission further, I had to
make spacers for the next shaft down. The bottom shaft was nearly
worn out in the front, where the front drive shaft connects. The
front drive shaft had been broken and was welded. Both the front
and rear flanges that connect the front drive shaft to the
transmission were worn out, so I bored them out and put in a plug
and rebore them out, then made a broch pilot and rebroched a six
spline broch for the transmission shaft and key way for the front
drive shaft hub.
While I was at my daughters over Decoration Day 1973, she told
me of a man she worked with that had some parts for these old
tractors, so I went to see him. He said no he did not have any, but
his father-in-law did, so I looked him up. I told him about the
tractors and what I was doing, so he hunted up the parts. I
didn’t know what I had then, but it turned out I got a new
transmission shaft that I needed, as the old one was worn real bad
on the front end and a new front drive shaft that I needed, as the
one in the tractor was broken. How lucky can you get!
I got the transmission out to put in the new shafts and the
transmission was cracked open on the bottom. Apparently when the
pin came out of the belt pulley drive and went down through the
gears, there was not room between the gear and the transmission
case and it got cracked, so I and another fellow welded it up. I
borrowed an acetylene gas outfit from a friend, and with mine, one
to pre heat and one to braze with, we got the transmission cracks
brazed back together. With all the parts back in shape and a
complete new set of bearings for the transmission, I assembled the
transmission. In between all this I went to the junkyard and got a
flywheel off an old car engine to make a clutch plate. I had a hard
time getting clutch facing for the clutch. Finally got some from a
truck repair shop. I bored out and bushed the flywheel for a new
pilot bearing. The flywheel weighed 187 pounds. I made a new
shifting yoke for the belt pulley drive, new take up nuts for the
front drive shaft, new bronze bushing for the front drive axles,
and new stud bolts for the engine head. As I went along, I painted
the parts.
By this time it was Decoration Day, 1974, and I was about ready
to start to assemble. With a new set of bearings for both front and
rear differential, I started in on them. Everything was fine until
I got in the front differential. The rivets were all loose on the
ring gear so I had to rivet them all down. The front steering arms
on the front hubs were broken and had to be welded.
My other daughter and her husband bought a house across the road
from my house, and my son-in-law, Harold Betz, was real handy for
needed help and I sure needed some of this last winter. He helped
me a lot with the heavy lifting. Allan Bair, an elderly fellow I
know, who is interested in old tractors and steam engines came out
this spring and summer and helped me as I was assembling this old
tractor. He helped paint, tighten bolts and assemble. I painted a
lot of it as I went along. The color of the engine and wheels are
orange-red and the rims and remaining parts are blue gray.
It was getting along toward show time and I wanted to have this
tractor at our show this year (1974). The time seemed to just fly
by and the show was just a week away. The tractor was almost all
together except for the fenders, the deck, and the seat and oh yes,
the head gaskets had not arrived yet so I called about them. The
fellow said they would be shipped on Monday morning. They arrived
Wednesday and show time was the next Saturday and Sunday. This last
week was sure a busy one, all these fellows helping to put the
finishing touches on this old Cat. Now with only three days away
from the show the gaskets finally arrived. Stuart Webster came over
and installed the head gaskets besides helping with other jobs.
We got the gas tank on, the carburetor to quit leaking and still
did not have the engine running yet.
Friday, the day before the show, I had to haul some other
tractors, so I took a day’s vacation to haul tractors to the
show. When I arrived with the first one Friday morning, a fellow
club member, Gene Furry, was at the show grounds. He asked if I had
more to haul. I said yes, so he came along with me. We went and
loaded up a tractor and swung by my place to get another. That was
the first this fellow knew I had this Cat, so he started to help.
The tractors to be hauled just sat on my trailer. Gene made the
playwood deck while Allan Bair and I installed the fenders.
At supper time Gene Furry called his wife and told her where he
was, because when he left with me in the morning, she wasn’t
there yet and he wasn’t expecting to be gone that long.
About four o’clock on Friday afternoon, my son took the
tractors that were loaded down to the show grounds. At 4:30 P.M. my
daughter, Laura Betz, showed up with a new seat cushion. At 11:30
P.M. on Friday night we were ready to start the engine. At 12:00
midnight it fired the first time. The engine was so stiff it was
hard to turn over. My son came back from delivering the tractors
and figured from the sound of the first bark it was slow on timing.
He advanced the mag one notch and away it went. Was that ever a
good sound! After a few minutes of running time, we all retired to
bed, at my house.
My wife had gone down to the show grounds in the car right after
supper. We had our travel trailer there for the show and she was
expecting me down there too. She got a little bit worried when I
didn’t show up and had no place to call from. I didn’t
sleep too well and had an uneasy night because of the excitement
and a lot of long hours.
Morning finally arrived. We all got up and had a good breakfast,
then went over to the shop to finish up the tractor and take it to
the show.
We still had the seat to bolt on. We got it on, but then we
could not get the engine started. I decided to take it no matter
what, after all that work. We decided to pull it up on the trailer
with another tractor. My son-in-law, Harold Betz, went to get a
John Deere tractor to pull the Cat on with and it was out of gas.
We drained some gas out of my truck for the John Deere tractor. All
this time Gene Furry was cranking the Cat. We just got the gas in
the John Deere when the Cat started and everyone returned to the
Cat. I drove it out of the shop. My daughter Laura was there with
the camera to take a picture. We loaded it on the trailer and in a
few minutes were ready to leave.
We arrived at the show ground at the Boot Hill Ranch at about
10:00 A.M. the morning of the snow. By the time I got back up to
the ramp to unload, there were so many people around the trailer
and on the trailer, I could hardly get it off. Well I cranked it
and on the first quarter turn it started. I got on the tractor to
drive it off the trailer and the engine stopped. I had forgotten to
turn on the gas. That is when I found out how much choking it
needed to start it.
There is one thing I have not mentioned and will note here. The
name plates I had made. They had to be photographed and retouched
and then printed. They were in real bad shape to start, but look
real good now.
My wife thinks I spend more time with this tractor than I do at
home and I guess, this last nearly two years, I have. So I want to
dedicate this article to my beloved wife.
Also to say Thanks to the shop foreman and department head for
letting me work on this tractor after hours and on vacation time,
and to all the people that so faithfully helped to make the
restoration of this old 1929 Four-drive (‘The Cat’)
tractor, #3009, a reality.
There are over 4700 hours in the restoration job, along with the
disappointment, the anguish and the heartbreak. The long hours of
work make a fellow nearly give up, then the joy and anxiety of
seeing it go together and the thrill of hearing it run sure is
rewarding and gives a fellow the spirit to try it again. This must
be what people mean when they say you’ve got it in your
blood.
I still have to make a draw bar or hitch and a hood for it. So
if anyone, anywhere, has any literature or knows of one of these
tractors, I would surely like to hear from them.
I did get the rest of the tractor parts and along with them a
complete set of iron wheels that I want to get ready for next
year.
When I finish this one, I am going to slowly tear into the other
one. In about two or three or more years and the Lord willing, I
hope to have it going.
Respectfully, Ray B. Noel
1812 Apple St. Kalamazoo, Michigan 49002
