What Is a Cat D2 Worth? How I Assess Value When Looking At Crawler Tractors & D2 #5U4177 Walkaround

hey everybody welcome back to the channel so a question i get quite a lot is what's a cat d2 earth that's such a highly subjective question there is no one set answer because there are so many factors that play into it and assessing value on crawler tractors is completely different than assessing value on wheel tractors they're just they're not even on the same planet when it comes to that so we have this right here um well we'll get into it i'll tell you what i paid for it i actually bought it last spring it sat on the place here all summer i haven't had any time to do anything with it since but we'll do a walk around of it we'll assess it i'll show you some of the things that stood out to me good and bad and then we'll play what is it worth so let's get started first thing we want to check is the serial number so on the d2s the engine tag is always right down here we have a 5u 4177 now they also have a tag on the back end and it should be the same number if this is all original tractor and yep 5u4177 so this is a numbers matching machine it has not been repowered so it doesn't have the engine out of something else on the back end out of something else so it would be a candidate for a stand-up tractor restoration if you would go that far this puts it very tail end of 1949 model year it is actually 26 units from the end of production that year so very very late 49. so to begin assessing it first thing we want to determine is are both engines free and yep diesel engine spins starting engine yes that spins and honestly i can feel some compression yeah so that's a good sign one thing i don't like about it though well we'll pull vertically on the flywheel i don't really get much but see that in play about a quarter inch in and out that tells me that that front main bearing up there likely has lost its dowel so we don't run these starting engines when they have crank and play like that because we'll break the mag gear long story short that always happens so that's going to need some work but it rolls and it's got compression good sign as far as the diesel engine goes i know the guy i bought this from he is a old tractor guy mainly into john deere's but he had this sitting there and i trust his word and he says it does run i don't know how well it ran but he had it in a shed for about 20 years prior owner had done a bunch of cylinder head work on it you can see the cylinder head looks like it's been hot tanked it's a different patina than the block so that tells me it likely has a good head on it and the prior owner was confident enough in the rest of the machine's condition that he would put some work into the cylinder heads so that doesn't necessarily bother me so taking his word that the diesel does run we just kind of look at the rest of the machine this is a fender tank model d2 so fuel tanks up on the fender and these always had a heavy you can see here 3 8 steel support plate beneath the stamped sheet metal fender and standard seat box arrangement the fenders on these fender tank models are about six inches shorter than the seat tank models it's hard to tell because they've relocated the seat further back here the seat back in its original position is even with the backs of the fenders but i think somebody pushed that back for a little bit more leg room and we got some brackets welded back here it looks like maybe for hanging chains something i don't know they did quite a bit of that we're kind of dented up now that's not a huge deal to have to redo toolboxes now it's had some hinge work done so that's not really pristine this fender's okay it's got a decent hood on it it's got side panels on the engine yet they're a little bit beat this one's intact over here don't know why they have that wire there but they do grill's been caved in a little bit but from what i can see the radiator core the car looks pretty clean on this thing so fan blades also look like they're in good condition so yeah there's uh there's some prospects here see if we can get a read on the hour meter we have a zero seven nine three just turned into five seventy nine hundred hours it's hard to know if those even work or how accurate they are anyhow next we want to look up here at some of the controls and yeah the um the custom high back seat is what sold me on this one to tell you the truth no not at all but funny part is we even have the old seat belt safety first right oh the armrests yeah they do this one pivots i think this one's not so well we don't buy it for that anyhow let's take a look at well main clutch all right good over center snap like in that steering clutch levers okay you see how when you pull one the other one jumps that tells me that bevel gear shaft is loose down in there it's popping side to side so we'll very likely have a very worn gear set in the back end of this thing because for that shaft to get that loose where it moves those levers that far that's been running loose for a long time so we're already highly suspect of the condition of the back end of this brake pedal wear of course we look at this a lot these are pretty sharp both sides so a pretty safe bet that this has never had a dozer blade on it and we look down here we still have corks in the old threaded holes in the track frames no witness marks somebody's added that little piece of metal for something along the way so very very high likelihood this was an egg tractor drawbar tractor only and looking back here this is not good this is probably the most worn d2 drawbar i've ever seen we've added a lot of metal down here just about pulled it through again the top ears gone and look how thin we are right here how sharp that is i don't know how many times this has to swing side to side to just about wear that through that's so incredibly thin and even look at the swing plate look how thin we are here versus out here it should be about an inch thick like that i mean we're just about worn halfway through on that i've never seen a d2 drawbar so badly worn so guaranteed this spent its whole life pulling implements so at this point well there's a few good things we've looked at so far mostly bad i would have to just assume the whole back end is just completely worn out on this thing maybe we have a front half that's good a good diesel engine possibly some good starting engine parts we don't know a few associated odds of sheet metal for the most part though this is not looking like a candidate for restoration but we'll go on to the undercarriage and pardon my shadow but some good things we have going for us here track 10 is in place we have top carrier rollers in place and they're not all worn out both sides have a top carry roller on them so that's good another big selling point these are the heavy duty caterpillar factory option rock guards with the heavy gussets heavy frames we have the stay bolts that go all the way through and bridge to the other side that's a very desirable item down there one you hardly ever see so right there those are big big items another big thing it's got going for it these are the factory option large front idlers they're not the standard egg idler that comes around and keeps the track chain off the ground until the bottom rollers contact it these idlers are large enough that they put the tracks on the ground immediately and give you a much longer footprint it's a much more stable machine doesn't pitch and rock doesn't buck quite so bad that's that's a nice thing to have we look at the sprockets now one thing you want to take note of look at how much grease is weeping around that sprocket nut that tells me odds are this was not pressed to the spec back onto the shaft at one point in time and someone just probably just tightened it on with the nut problem is when you don't press these on to spec most times they will loosen back up and we probably have some excessive spline wear sprocket hub to sprocket shaft if that's the case the hub is trashed the shaft is probably trashed but we've got some weld on sprocket rims that look very very good so if all the rest that's bad we still have new looking sprocket rims let's get out of this glare go look at the other side we'll take our undercarriage measurement gauge here and we're missing the front track tin here not a huge deal we still have the rock guards in place carry roller in place front idler so we have idler reconditioned at five thirty seconds gap and i'll tell you what that idler is looking really really good we don't have a gauge setting for this top roller but just looking at it there's no wear marks flanges are good top rollers look excellent let's uh let's see if we can get on this we have the same weld on sprocket room here get a profile here okay sprocket recondition at a 3 16 gap where those three arrows are we're gonna have to turn this around it's only we're gonna make a fit we're still very close to the original profile of those sprocket teeth so those sprocket rims are just about brand new look at how loose we've been wearing here i'll guarantee the sprocket splines are just about stripped out on the shaft right now so we know the sub's bad again we know that shaft is bad even worse than the other side let's take a look at rails so we see the reconditioned mark there we're probably 50 percent worn on rails which means we'll never wear these rails out in our lifetime so that's a very very good thing the only thing i don't understand well at one point somebody torched this rail in half to split the track but then it's like they also hogged the master pin out and replaced it with something not to spec i don't understand why people do some of the things they do on some of these but that's a deal there we'd have to fix still 50 set of rails good sprocket rims good carry rollers good front idlers large front idlers let's take a look at the bottom roller and i don't know if i'm going to get the gauge down here let's see if i can reach from the inside just looking at it it looks pretty good okay roller reconditioned at a quarter inch gap and we're at the widest not quite an eighth so again rollers conservative estimate 50 percent left we're probably a little bit better than that so i'm liking what i'm seeing on this undercarriage right here track pads growls are i'd say we're 50 again for the hours we put on these old machines we're never wearing that the rest of the way out in our lifetime so this thing just started looking a lot lot better in my book so the gears in my head are turning this is probably not the best candidate for restoration unless you had another parts d2 on hand that may have a good back end that you could substitute all those really worn parts still interested in it though let's just take a look at some minor details so yeah fender mount tank still has the factory uh original fuel cap on buy clean fuel keep it clean that's good let's have a look inside good gasket nice and clean still has the pre-strainer in there and the cap off of somebody's fuel can down the bottom dipsticks in place these are a 20 gallon tank looks like we're about nine gallons plus half a tank of fuel in there doesn't seem too bad and we look yeah this was never an electric start pony motor because we've either had a hole hacked right here or not hacked but cut a clean one from factory or a bump out being that that's the flat dash this was rope start from the beginning so we got these two pegs sticking out of the dash coupled with that witness mark it looks like somebody had like a home brew electric start set up on the starting engine where they like to put a bracket on the fender run a belt to that rope groove and the pony flywheel and then have their starter on a pivot so that they could just manually tighten the belt spin the starting engine over those were likely guides for their belt at one point i'm pretty sure that explains all that yeah um american bosch mag switch still intact still got the knobs on the throttle and choke rods and fan shrouds in place that's well fifty dollars on a bad day hundred bucks on a good day decent looking hood fifty dollars decent fender tank another fifty dollars pre-cleaner top up on the air cleaner always nice piece to have we got here waterloo foundry company rain cap waterloo iowa usa that is a hefty rain cap aftermarket of course but kind of neat yeah never had a generator drive we just have the flat block off plate next to the cam gear so yeah this was a pretty basic one from a start no electrics to begin with but oil cooler lines are still in place oil coolers still hooked up so that's good the drain tube's still on the starting engine probably because the side panels are still on when people would rip these side panels off well then the first time the tracks would snake something come around it would snap these drain tubes right off so that's a nice piece to have starting engine parts if we have a good grindable crank in that thing that's 150 200 right there if we got a decent block decent pistons whatever that's more money still it's got oil in it that's a good sign diesel got oil in it it's black but it is a diesel he said it ran yeah this was their home brew battery box i'm sure that's what that was all from right there yeah just kind of looking at it decent dash a few dollars there we're pretty much writing off the seat box pretty much writing off this tool it's that curiosity well they left the key in it there's that and an old glove an old rag broken funnel spark plug wrench just some other what's this well that's a drain off the bottom of the fuel housing that's uh right and proper i don't know if that's ever been installed it's got a wire on it like a tag used to be there and yellow paint on the flange surface that might be new old stock interesting got another neat spark plug wrench with a brush on it and your mechanics wire so they must have like starting fluid back in the day several of those caps in there anyway that toolbox pretty much written off this fender's pretty much written off it's it's okay but we might as well figure that the whole back end is pretty much trashed unless we get in and find a couple good bowl gears but odds are if they didn't press the sprockets back on they also did not press the bull gears so the boat gears might have worn hubs too bow gear has been wobbling around that means the bull pinions are probably shot let's have a quick look underneath okay this is interesting here we have this quarter turn valve like a drain with these pipe fittings coming out of the steering clutch compartment um plug hole down there and that tells me that this steering clutch on this side this compartment would fill up with grease from the back end so often that they decided to plumb a quarter turn valve on there to drain that out from time to time more evidence that that bevel shaft has likely just been popping back and forth in there forever and it's completely destroyed the seal on that side which the other side is probably not good either and well we got good-looking final drive housings anyway so i guess we found something good about the back end right so to tally it all up at this point what are we really buying here i'm buying parts i'm not buying this for a fixer-upper because i you're only buying about half a tractor at this point that part's bad that parts may be good a question mark this part's pretty decent so tallying up the list in my mind if it weren't for the undercarriage on this i wouldn't be interested at all because of the undercarriage all the aspects that i listed if i farm that out piece by piece and sold it all fifty percent condition everything maybe better with the guards with the tin the larger idlers the 50 rails pads sprocket rims eight good bottom rollers 2500 bucks right there if i sold that piece by piece we have a few other interesting pieces like the fender tank the hood the radiator the guard starting engine parts whatever even if nothing in that back end is good i'm betting well take a look down here too we've got a good main spring under there with the pony spring still in place all that tallied up i got three grand worth of parts sitting right here if i wanted to break it down sell it piece by piece to buy into it i'd like to be at a thousand bucks i'm telling you that's where i'd be real happy with this because you can't go wrong with this undercarriage on a thousand bucks i still would have been happy at fifteen hundred offered fifteen hundred seller didn't wanna take it said he had to get at least two thousand i took him up on the two thousand dollar deal because we're still in green light status we're still not upside down in it being that i've got everything i need to take this thing all apart break it down scrap what's bad keep what's good transfer good parts onto other machines this is a parts unit at this point that we're hoping also has a good diesel engine that's where we are um the undercarriage is what sold it for me combined with the fact that this was sitting 30 minutes from my house if i would have been into hauling an entire day to get there and back to bring it here 1500 would have been my max but being that i could go back home hook on the trailer get back there winch it on and still get back home before lunch same day we're doing 2 000 on this all day long so that's my walk around and assessment of this particular d2 and what it's worth as it sits in my part of the world of course these prices vary depending on where you are in this country or on this planet because it's a supply and demand type situation um now if this tractor in its non-running questionable running state right now had a good back end on it three thousand dollars is not out of the question if it had a good back end was a good runner could be verified and had a little bit better paint on it thirty five hundred four grand if it was completely restored six thousand maybe seven thousand on a good day depending on who you run across so i'd say east coast u.s price is pretty similar to like what they sell for around here in the midwest you go out on the west coast you can cut all these tallies that i gave giving you down to like a third of what i've stated because there's so many of them out there and it's not hard to find ones that are way better than this just about around every corner so that's the place to be if you want to find some really good quality cats and for decent money because supply and demand there's so many of them out there so yeah that's pretty much the whole rundown on this long-winded again but i wanted to kind of walk you guys through my thought process show you guys some of the things that i look at some of the things that i notice and see and just take it from there so that red tractor sitting there and i've got a chain on it already maybe we should pull this around the yard and see if it makes smoke huh

Channel: Squatch253

Views: 170,608

Keywords: caterpillar, cat, d2, tractor, diesel, undercarriage, walkaround, value

Id: EzdZGTQ9Zhs

Length: 20min 13sec (1213 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 27 2021