Caterpillar 977k Track Loader sitting 12+ years. Will it Run and operate???

[Music] what's up guys welcome back to diesel creek this is your first time joining us my name is matt in the background here we have a beautiful 977k now as you might be able to tell the four indentations in the ground here there was just a another piece of equipment sitting here we just revived it now we're on to this guy so if you haven't seen the 645b revival go ahead and check that out but in the meantime we're gonna start working on this guy now the back story on this is that it's sitting in what used to be a junkyard and the junkyard shut down 12 years ago so this machinery was been sitting at least 12 years and we don't even know if it was running prior to that but the old 977 here she's not too clapped out but definitely got some miles on her sprocket's got a little bit of wear track chains pretty worn but all in all looks to be a usable undercarriage seat's actually intact we did scrape off a little bit of raccoon poo that's always dandy now thing that worries me a bit here but it's not a huge deal is the top of the dust collector on the air breather has been removed sitting down here on the track for unknown reasons basically i know nothing about it but i've made a deal for this machine and the last one that we just revived so we're gonna go ahead and see if we can't get this thing going so these old cats are pretty pretty darn reliable get over there try and see if we can see any fuel down in here and if you've got fuel and some batteries i'm hoping it'll just fire up i think i think we've got less than 10 percent so looks like we'll be needing to add some fuel and possibly there's a leak i'm wondering maybe [Music] these are pedal steering machines so push this guy to turn right push this guy to turn left and i believe the center one is both tracks you look at your gauges there you go torque converter temperature water temperature water pressure that's interesting engine oil pressure fuel pressure and of course your amp meters somebody's relocated the starting switch so that's concerning gear selector over here you've got one through three forward and verse labor don't have your lever up maybe that's interesting oh what is that what oh that that's throttle [Music] the battery should be underneath this armrest whoops the bad the batteries are underneath the armrest and they definitely look like they've been here for a while pretty crusty see if we can find a date on these things well i don't know we'll spray these connections and pop them loose these batteries even when they were brand new or amazing that they were enough to start this old girl see if we can't check the oil here pretty long dipstick and quite a bit over full that's concerning hmm interesting yeah she's like way over full like twice the oil it should oh well the dipstick says engine running at low idle with warm oil do not overfill so definitely even more concerning that it's way over full try to give you guys a peek down in here i guess we should pull the air cleaner and see what kind of situation we got going in there since the top cover has been off of it for so long you know it doesn't really look too bad carpenter b yeah look at that genuine holy crap the inner filter says february of 76 on it it's a genuine cat filter made in the usa oh and she is in there i think the filters are a little out of date holy crap that sucker's in there well we just pulled my truck in over here and we were able to reach the hose up and squirt a few gallon of fuel in it but we found a new problem the old 6-0 clattering away kind of irritated some honeybees that have made a home in this counterweight so that's going to be great but on the upside fresh local honey well after a brief intermission caused by a honeybee swarm in the back of the counterweight here they've calmed down i only see a couple more flying around here and uh hoping we can get this baby put back together and popped off without being swarmed by a whole bunch of honeybees is that it no there's [Music] oh yeah oh yeah nothing but the good stuff ah i'm just joking [Music] sucker [Music] hey that was the one doing something i bet this baby's gonna rattle a yep [Music] saw it as a rock well then from here you can see our raccoon feces covered engine broken chewed off wires well let's check the radiator i haven't checked that yet that's one heck of a cap just a mysterious brown moisture looking substance that's not good pretty big stinking radiator when you see my hand next to it oh look at that it turns over oh my bolt must have backed out there at some point and cracked that blade huh oh yeah balance just good well what i want to do here i'd like to make sure the turbo spins i think we're gonna have to do it from the intake side because i've seen a video of andrew camarata trying to change his exhaust manifold and ended up breaking everything all the way down to the manifold itself or the turbo itself so not feeling optimistic i'll go ahead and loosen this clamp i guess so after looking at this thing and deciding you know there's a gasket underneath this oil inlet that i really hate to disturb and break because it'll probably never be right so i've fished my arm down inside here and i can actually spin the turbo with my fingers and it spins nice and smooth so that's good i'm gonna try to just tap this air filter off of here there's a rubber gasket that seals the surfaces in there i'm thinking it's just so old since it was probably the original to the machine 76 i'm thinking that quite possibly just stuck oh good god i can't believe that so after reassessing the situation we've decided that these things must be bolting the filter in so we're removing all right now got all the bolts out finally this is a stupid design if you ask me [Music] it should come out look at that yeah look how nasty that filter is i'm going to guess without running the serial number i'm going to guess that that is original to this machine and this this is a 1976. well with the filter out at least you can see the intake pipe looks nice and clean so that's a good sign well we checked the dipstick again and stupid me should have flipped it over because the full range down here is with engine running at low idle and warm oil but if you flip it over safe starting range is a much further up the dipstick and coincidentally right where the oil lies so we're actually good on oil no worries [Music] didn't need that water anyway you could say these terminals down with some croil well yeah the 12 12 years date ranges pretty much shot to crap because this battery says june of 0 at max 21 years and i'm highly doubting that battery was new when it was put in here though air filter nuts for those guys they're down here [Music] all right we got the new batteries thrown in here we got the terminals properly hammered into place go ahead and turn the battery on see what happens now i'm just gonna bump the starter and see what we got all right ready yeah sounds like we got a starter solenoid not doing its thing okay we're attempting to bypass the starter solenoid here because she's obviously dickered i like that i really don't like that all right so here we are looking at our starter now the way this works is power comes into this stud over here that you guys can just barely see power comes in there and then one of these wires here i think it's this guy when you go to crank it engages this solenoid which shoves in the bendix which mechanically competes completes the circuit passing power through this stud down into the starter here so basically all we really need to do is arc out across these terminals and it should it should spin over if if it's just a dirty contact in here basically so if a starter is good and we arck these out it should work an easy way to check that without arcing it out and melting something is we'll use our meter here and go ahead and probe that as we click it yep hold it on for a second yeah no nothing so we should be able to just put a bar across there and arc that thing and it should spin all right no hold on i gotta get this baby into position all right yep she makes lots of angry pixies we need a different bar just melted part of my machete here making it a salt contact she cranks over danger welded this thing on there all right well she spins over so we're just gonna have to pretty much go for it here i do want to prime the fuel system and put the air filter back in before we really try to do anything though well we just flipped up the seat here to check the uh fluid too before we proceed found a mysterious toolbox what's in here about five cans of ether that are all rusted through i bet you she starts easy not important anyways it's a long little dipstick flip it over oh this is right in between full and add we're good maybe a gallon low all right so it's a little dark and hard to see in here but what this is is a primer pump and this is a filter housing right here so we should be able to crack this loose this is a bleeder and just run the plunger here and i can already feel there's fuel coming up here so that's a good sign let's get a wrench on that and see if we can get some fuel out people say it helps i don't know [Music] all right [Music] yeah we got a little bit of fuel coming welcome to the party bud well i think that's good enough for me lock that plunger back in here somehow there we go crank the bleeder down let me see if we can't crank this bad boy up stupid design yeah all right contact right all contact you ready contact all right that's a good sound that's a good sound wow i can't oh that [Music] [Music] oh oh i'm so excited oh what it runs yeah i got a whole bunch of grit in my face i'm sorry the bees aren't flying everywhere that's how we get it that's how i get rid of them smoke them off get this hey well hot dang guys she sounds pretty mean too i guess the only thing left to do is put the hood back on and see if this beast moves i got a 977 [Music] that's time now for the moment of truth we know this bad boy runs now let's see if i can get her to move all right um ready yup okay jumpy in there yeah ready yep well it might move if we could ever get it into gear basically the problem down here is that all the mechanical linkage is just uh pretty well stuck from sitting so long trying to kind of force her between gears well what may have to happen but i don't want to do is take off that top cover [Music] so we're having problems trying to get this linkage here to move of course so we took this top cover off of here and unfortunately what we found under there does not look good looks like a lot of water and rust that is bad news bears there i'm going to take the whole big top cover off here and see what the real story is uh there we go uh let's see what's behind door number one ladies and gentlemen oh not as bad as i thought maybe yeah it's not good just knock some more dirt in there first well she's definitely due for a fluid change nothing else all right well it's a week later we had to let this sit up for a while we were pretty beat and tired and out of options the other day so we come back with a little bit of a game plan here hopefully we can get this baby moving but uh either way we're gonna end up having to change all the fluids in this machine and i just looked on this fancy chart here transmission bevel gear and steering clutch compartments hold 24.5 gallon and uh it's a milkshake so i have to change it so that's a that's a kick in the wallet yep that's all it is probably an o-ring set in there or something underneath it oh wait is there something i feel like it's connected on that side yeah oh i see it now there's like uh huh would you look at that so this is held up on that little o-ring right there yeah that's what i thought it was but i just couldn't get the clearance on it those old yellow cat o-rings still looking good in there look we can take this valve block off there's a couple bolts there that might be the ticket so here is this unit that we just finally got out of here it actually it looked worse than it is i think of course the oil is no good but i don't see any rust internally it all looks pretty good and correct me if i'm wrong anybody in the comments that knows better but i'm like 80 sure that this is just a cushioning valve for when you switch between gears it's supposed to blow off the excess pressure so that you don't slam into gear god bless the cordless impact here's where we turn a working machine into a basket case [Music] will it move that is the quality ever again yeah growing up it's kind of in my blood my shoulder is just so cramped on this tower over here i can't get a grip on anything i'll get the front if you can get the back there see if you need a good magnet and a crane yeah okay just put your finger down here get that out of the way i headed up it's just sitting down on something it's all on your side let me try to lift straight up let your side down there we go okay watch the spring assembly doesn't come apart sideways i got it oh yeah there's some serious water pouring out of this thing all right okay all right look at that mint look at how much water came out of that party that seems to be where all the moisture was hanging out at really the clutch backs don't look that bad i do see some rust but they'll clean up so oh look at that you see how much water just poured out of there there's your problem this is the reverser valve and it you can see it freely moves i'm almost hesitant to pull it all the way out but oh yeah yeah look at the gunk that's good for the transmission huh some sort of cushioning spring here it's still moving freely but this is this is the culprit right here this is our one through three spool valve and she is locked up tight we're just going to soak this baby up with some croil give that a minute to really soak in there one thing kind of door advantage is high quality steel so it doesn't rust and pit like lesser metal wood really this this rust that's on here is more like surface rust and i think it's going to clean up with some scotch brite here so we'll do that while we're letting that stuff soak like brand new caterpillar wouldn't tolerate anything in this caliber no they throw that away no rust tolerance my lovely assistant here works for caterpillar or worked indirectly for caterpillar they made him throw a bunch of new old stock parts away because they had slight rust pits on them i want to cast them i'm using a nut rounder on here because i can actually squeeze this tighter than the wrench was there we go nice fit all around that really that broke up nice look at that look at that it was barely stuck at all there's some chunkage coming out oh yeah nicely done nicely done but i'm betting that was 100 of our problem look at that really not too bad at all i kind of wonder about the internals there it's going to be flowing some of this junk for a little bit but i don't know what else to do about it it's going to go into the pump and everything else just like our reverse spool though this one looks like it's going to clean up okay it ain't good but i think we should be able to clean it up no nothing to it but to do it [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] well we power flushed this thing out with the fuel nozzle on the pump and she comes pretty darn clean did find some pretty bad pitting on the bottoms of the spool valve in question uh so that's unfortunate but i think all it's really going to do is rob power from us i don't think it's going to be a show stopper by any means we're gonna fire the air compressor up and blow it all out now that's like the third flushing we've got in it everything looks pretty clean at this point we'll just blow it all out with compressed air and hopefully put it back [Music] together all right it's been flushed and blown and blown again and got it looking pretty darn good in here go away swippy looking pretty darn good i mean like i said there is some some metal going out of these spools here it's not it's not brand new but worst come to worst i think we would just be able to buy one of these new valve spools here or find a used one somewhere and we'd be good so let's go ahead and reassemble this thing and get it back in the machine this top piece here what i suspect is a cushioning valve we're just going to clean the rust off of it if you look here the spools on it don't look bad at all well we've got her completely back together here our spools are in there they slide like butter now look at that big improvement so yeah let's pop this thing back together and see if this thing is going to move don't drop that socket in there all right so that top unit that goes on here is what i suspect is a cushioning valve as i said before and that little pipe coming in there i think is the pressure line that feeds the whole transmission so there's an o-ring in there and when we took it apart we broke the o-ring so we just got back from auto parts hopefully this o-ring will work it's obviously not a cat o-ring uh but maybe maybe it'll work in a pinch so we're going to reassemble this thing hopefully and go from there an hour and unethical uses of tools we're not real proud of it but it's in there now it it it almost broke us folks there was a lot of expletives going on i had to shut the camera off and just get it in there took some finagling and some prying but we literally have like how many pry bars out here six yeah and it's not that we were like doing any crazy prying it was just having to hold it ten ways to sunday to kind of push that stinking o-ring on in there but we got it run these bolts down and we're good what night night transmission sleep tight [Music] okay transmit transmission is all buttoned back together and we're finally ready to see if this bad boy is going to move now it hasn't started in over a week now so we'll see how easy it pops off hopefully we don't need any ether we'll see when you're ready yep contact yeah looks like she's ether trained contact here we go [Music] man i swore i started to see bees swarming i hurried up and shut her down i don't need to get tied up in that kind of mess today huh that'll ruin a day [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so well as you may or may not have been able to hear that didn't go as scripted i was going to leave the bucket up in the air and give you a nice walk around but as soon as i got up to full tilt one of the hydraulic lines that keeps the bucket up in the air went so there's that's another problem the beast seems like she runs good though drives good steers good so it's really it's a good machine it's ready to go uh it's gonna end up getting a complete servicing on it because as i've mentioned at the beginning of i don't remember is this video or the last video i took these machines on trade or barter i guess you should say for doing some work for the gentleman that owns them he's got a big old hay barn down here over the hill that's leaning pretty far over and he wants it knocked down and cleaned up it's i really hate to knock down barnes and me and him looked at it and assessed it and it really is beyond saving it's it's pretty scary it's kind of like a death trap so anyway i was planning on using this machine to do a majority of the work so it's worth putting some money into so he's not in any big hurry which is great for me because it's going to take a little bit of time to get this thing going but i guess that just means this video turned into a two-parter anyways guys that's my new cats 977 loader still going to take a bit of work to get this baby ready to do some jobs but i think it's worth it in the next video we'll get the hydraulic line fixed we'll do a complete service on the transmission radiator engine and the fuel system i could when we went to start it up back in the building there it cranked for a minute and i had to give it a little bit of ether just to get it to pop off and and then it still stumbled and fell on itself until it caught fuel so it's getting some air into the fuel system somewhere hopefully we can get that easily fixed up on the next video anyways i'm really excited for my new toy here and there'll be plenty more where that came from as always guys thanks for watching i'll see you on the next video later oh by the way if you didn't already know we got diesel creek hats t-shirts stickers and other merchandise at the store at dieselcreek.com link's down in the description if you guys are interested in any of that give it a look [Music] later [Music] you

Channel: Diesel Creek

Views: 2,159,599

Keywords: cat, caterpillar, crawler, loader, traxcavator, 931, 955, 977, 983, 933, 450, 350, 850, diesel, cummins, power, turbo, antique, vintage, old, iron, whistling, will it start, will it run, repair, fix, track, cold, start, resurrection, barn find, heavy, equipment, hitachi, john, deere, fiat, allis, chalmers, international, harvester, tractor, dozer, bulldozer, hilift, highlift, bees, overgrown, junk, yard, abandoned, detroit, gasoline

Id: 5et2i2aIpcM

Length: 43min 23sec (2603 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 19 2021