D8 Dozer, Will It Start? | Using Our Infinity 1300

foreign good morning and welcome back to our awkward property in North Idaho court and I have been building this property together over the last two years and with our second winter coming to an end it's time to start thinking about projects this spring and summer and so today we're going to answer one of the most asked questions we've had this winter which is what happened to the bulldozer well I'm going to show you what happened to the bulldozer last spring Courtney and I set out to do a massive Road improvement with the hopes that we'd be able to get concrete trucks up here and pour the slab in our shop and we quickly realized that with the equipment we had we weren't going to get the project done so I started shopping for bigger equipment and ended up buying a 1965 caterpillar d8h bulldozer and it is absolutely massive we knew virtually nothing about heavy equipment and certainly had never operated a bulldozer before so there was quite the learning curve I had so much fun learning how to operate that Dozer last summer and I can't wait to get to use it again this summer we've got some huge projects planned and the Dozer is going to play a key role in that but it's got some deferred maintenance and some repairs that I'd like to do to make sure that it stays serviceable through the entire summer we've got some warm temperatures and a lot of rain in the forecast and this road is going to turn into snot so I'd like to get the Dozer moved before that happens so that we don't tear up the road and we don't get the Dozer stuck it's cold and I haven't fired the Dozer up since the end of last summer I really don't know what to expect step one I'm headed out right now to get the battery on the charger [Music] thank you foreign I can't believe I actually unhooked the battery it's the negative on on there we go bad battery charging aborted no no which probably means that this battery got too cold out here over the winter and lost all its charge I was a little worried about this but luckily I have a plan B [Music] foreign [Music] Ty time for Plan B but I don't actually know if this battery is charged either all right charging 12 volts all right this one's 71 charged we'd like to give a huge thanks to grow watt for sponsoring today's video today we're going to be using our Infiniti 1300 to get this Dozer up and running just like today A lot of times when we're working on projects around the property we end up pretty far away from the shop and we need power with 1800 watts of total output this unit is capable of powering basically any power tool or household appliance but it's also small and lightweight allowing us to easily carry it from Project to project so while we wait for the dozers battery to charge I'm going to start doing a once over okay first things first is their diesel in it yes there is Diesel's at about 20 so it's got about 20 gallons plenty to get to the shop now we're gonna check the gasoline this Dozer actually has a pony engine which is a small gasoline engine that's used to start the large diesel engine and if I remember correctly the gas cap is right here somewhere there it is yep it has gas I would say also about 20 next is to check the engine oil and the big engine well it's got oil so I'm actually supposed to check the engine on this Dozer with the engine hot and running but I wanted to make sure there was at least whale in it before we gave it a shot at starting uh hydraulic fluid now you're supposed to check this with the transmission hot and the engine idling so it's low right now but probably because I'm not checking it right so next up is the coolant and this is the one I'm most worried about I mean I know I checked it last summer and that it had coolant I just really hope that we didn't make a huge mistake by not winterizing this thing more I'm gonna go this is the only way I can figure out how to get to it right here I think it's like right here okay it's this thing that's the thermostat and this is the radio well I do think the coolant is low but I can see it in there so I know it's not empty and now let's check the oil on the pony engine oh there it is Perfect all right all the foods look good it was super cold last night and I think it's about 28 degrees right now I brought a heat gun and we're gonna see if we can get a little heat on this Pony engine before we try to start it alrighty 1400. the Infiniti 1300 has 1.4 kilowatt hours of capacity which means it can run a high-powered heat gun like this for an hour and that's pretty impressive start on the carburetor foreign for the motor to warm up I might need to use that thing to warm me up no it's for the Dozer it actually feels kind of warm cool I think that's going to really help the pony motor start well I think the only thing left to do is see if we can get this Pony motor fired up hi have a love-hate relationship with this Dozer I love this Dozer because it's an incredible tool and I know that Riley loves operating it but it is so loud and it is so hard to film and I don't want to get run over and then Riley's gonna have to get it out of here somehow Hotel do you think the snow is right there my feet six feet of snow yeah right here where I've been you guys are gonna get your wish and you're gonna get to see Riley plow some snow at this Dozer today I think okay step one is to turn the fuel on to the pony motor okay step two is to turn the choke on and now it's time to start it it's been so long I don't remember where all the buttons are here we go this is the starter for the pony motor are you ready never uh uh well we got a little click and then nothing it's like it's either the starter is stuck or it doesn't get enough juice I can feel what feels like the starter solenoid engaging but I'm not really sure so either the battery isn't charged enough or the starter motor on the pony engine is frozen I want to start by investigating this ice ball around the starter solenoid also means more heat gun through the grow up micro app we can connect to the Infiniti 1300 either over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi allowing us to change settings monitor loads and turn things on and off so right here we can turn on the AC output the heat gun turns on and then when we're done we can turn it off again and if you connect the Infiniti 1300 to Wi-Fi it allows you to monitor the device from anywhere in the world which is great for powering things like security cameras when we're away from the property foreign let's try starting it again attempt number two to start the pony engine oh yeah okay turning over but it's really slow oh it's so close it is so close to starting [Music] okay you guys it started that is amazing I'm laying the pony into warm up for a little while and something that's really cool about this Pony engine is that it's actually circulating the coolant from the main engine through the pony engine to start pre-warming the coolant for the main engine also the output air from the exhaust of the pony engine runs across the intake of the big engine so that it will also start to preheat the intake manifold and therefore preheat the intake air into the big engine so while the pony engine is a really kind of old archaic technology it's also super cool because it helps to start preheating the big engine making cold starts in climates like this a lot easier I can tell now that the pony engine is warmed up I'm going to take it into gear so that it starts turning over the big engine there's a gearbox there with two speeds so I'm going to start by turning the big engine over at a very slow speed and then once the oil is thinned out and the engine's warmed up we'll kick it over into a higher speed let it warm there for a little bit until we start building compression alrighty let's see so choke off oh no it died okay the goal now is to get this Pony engine running smoothly so we can Engage The Big engine it definitely needs a carburetor rebuild and it's a little finicky choke back on a little bit of throttle start it again there it goes okay a little more throttle and a little less choke foreign [Applause] is engaging high speed and low speed so that should be low speed and now we're going to engage the pony engine into the big engine [Applause] trying to get in to engage it all right we're engaged so now the big engine is turning over at a low speed because I've got that gearbox in low range now with the big engine turning over the pony motor is under a little bit of load and I'm gonna try to feather the choke out and get the RPMs up a little bit all right we're just gonna go ahead and let it run like this for a couple of minutes [Music] well it seems like so far so good and we're just gonna keep letting it warm up and then it's time to drive it out of this hole that it's in all right now we're gonna kick the pony motor into high gear so that it spins the big engine faster step one is to disengage the pony motor and then we're going to come down here and we're going to kick this over into that gear and then now we're going to re-engage the pony motor again all right there we go now we're in high gear so now we're just gonna go ahead and sit and wait and let this big engine to warm up a little bit because it's been a long cold couple of months at this point I'm feeling really hopeful that this Dozer is going to start getting the pony motor started with sort of my biggest concern and the pony engine started it's running good the biggest is turning over which means that the only step we have left to do is to crack open the throttle and give the big engine some fuel I think it'd be smart to let this thing warm up for a little while so standby something that's really difficult for me especially on these big filming days is keeping all of our camera gear charged something that's awesome about the Infiniti 1300 is it has six USB ports which means I can charge all of our camera gear at once and the wireless phone charger on the top also means I can make sure my phone stays charged the lithium iron phosphate Battery Technology used in the Infiniti 1300 has an incredible lifespan of over 3 000 charge cycles and of course charging the unit is equally as important as discharging the unit and the Infiniti 1300 has three convenient ways to charge it there's an AC plug right here that lets us plug it into the wall of the house and charge it at 1200 watts which means that this thing can get fully charged in less than two hours there's also a car adapter plug so we can charge it while we're on the go in the car or my favorite is the solar input this unit can accept up to 800 watts of solar panels and up to 100 volts of solar input which makes it compatible with almost any solar panel on the market including rigid residential style panels if if you'd like to learn more about the Infiniti 1300 portable power station you can head to the link in the description below do you guys hear that yeah me neither it stopped running okay what is going on now my best guess is it's out of gas it's definitely out of gas luckily that's an easy fix I don't think it gets very good fuel economy we haven't even gone anywhere Don't Spill the gas all over the hot exhaust I'm sure there's one right here [Music] [Music] now we patiently wait for the Dozer to warm up good at being patient or awaiting plenty motor's been turning over now for a little while and it's time to kick the compression on so until this point the exhaust valves have been open on the big engine so that it spins over freely now we're going to give the motor some compression so we can start building some heat of course this is all with the fuel turned off so that it's not going to start yet although it is kind of chugging away like it wants to start [Applause] thank you now we're just gonna let it do that for a little while okay here we go it's time to start the engine which all we have to do now is crack the throttle are you ready Courtney says she's ready [Music] foreign right up it has never started that well that was awesome the pony motor automatically disengages once the flywheel spins at a certain speed so once the big engine started the pony motor kicked itself out of here and disengaged from the big engine now I've chucked Tony motor off by turning its fuel supply off [Applause] I thought I'd give you a little tour of my cockpit and what all these controls do so here my right foot is the decelerator pedal you push the pedal in to slow the engine down the next two pedals here are the brakes left and right so those break each track left and right our left brake doesn't work so we only have right brake it makes this thing a little interesting these two here are the clutches so before you hit the brakes on a track first you engage the clutch that disengages the drive on that side then you can hit the brakes this right here is the throttle this controls you know that controls the throttle and then we have our decelerator pedal on top of that this one right here controls the braid blade up down left and right and then right here in my left hand is the transmission we have three forward gears and three reverse gears it is an automatic transmission let's see what happens I'm looking according now to get the wave and she says go ahead I'm going to start by just lifting the blade it does the blade left oh yeah all right blade left and I'm gonna use the blade to lift the entire Dozer to make sure the tracks aren't stuck to the ground all right tracks are not stuck to the ground we're gonna engage it into first gear and we're moving guys we are pushing snow [Applause] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] that was the hole that she was in now she's up there on the road [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] time to shut her down foreign got a lot smaller yeah no kidding pretty much one of the reasons the dozers hasn't been parked here is because it takes up so much dang space I'm really relieved because as Riley was driving it on our only Road I had this thought of like what if it breaks down right now did driving the Dozer today make you like way excited for this summer I am so excited for the projects we have this summer I mean this Dozer is so powerful I just moved a Giant mountain of snow and I couldn't even tell what was in front of me this isn't the only equipment we're going to be running this summer we have some really big plans including a really big piece of equipment for me so I can't wait to start sharing these projects with you guys it's gonna be a great summer you're going to want to stay tuned thanks for watching we'll see you next time who is doing donuts in my front yard all right time for Plan B but never mind she knows there's a big hole there

Channel: Ambition Strikes

Views: 404,846

Keywords: off-grid barndominium, diy pole barn, couple builds rv, diy snow tracks, husband and wife build, couple builds dream home, building our off grid home, heavy equipment, bulldozer, growatt, infinite 1300, catd8, cat d8, will it start, cold start, will it run, d7, d6, d5, d4, d9, first start, first run, dozer

Id: lGiK7yhfKw8

Length: 23min 20sec (1400 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 30 2023