McLaren MP4-12C: Cats, Cat Tracks and Backtracking

Saturday, April 21, 2012

Cats, Cat Tracks and Backtracking

The idea of a belt of traction treads goes way back in the history of mechanical movement. In the 1770's there were experiments with a system dubbed the "endless railway."
Inventors and manufacturers all over the world helped to shape the design process.

Mainly what people were trying to do, is avoid getting stuck in soft ground conditions like mud, tundra, snow and farmland. The linked tracks that that form a continuous belt, offers a larger footprint to the ground This larger footprint delivers less ground pressure, allowing the machine/contraption/invention to "float" on the soft surface.

The Caterpillar Tractor company did not invent steel tracks, or even the machine that rolls on steel tracks. The Caterpillar company formed to take over the assets of the struggling Holt Manufacturing Company...and went on to create a legend.

The standard steel tracked, diesel engine, push blade...and sometimes a winch machine is called a "cat"
Like Xerox, Plexiglas, BandAid and Kleenex, the Caterpillar name is forever associated with tracked machines.
Then, if you think about it too much, it gets kind of complex for outsiders to understand the lingo of the tracked machine world.
You can "run" a cat, but that doesn't mean it's a Cat. It could be a John Deere, Komatsu, International, Terex etc.
When you are "running" a cat, you are a cat skinner. No felines are injured in this process and in the industrial world, no one will blink when you say "cat skinner." At a downtown city dinner party, they will most certainly blink, while they speed dial the police.
Size does matter.
The bigger the cat, the bigger the ego of the operator. It just works that way. If you are running a small John Deere 450 cat ( not Cat )...and your buddy is over there with a much bigger D-8 Cat ( Cat , not cat )...he wins.
If the guy across the way moves in with a bigger D-10 Cat, then he wins the of the be prize for cock of the block.
The same rules apply for pick-up truck size, horsepower and carrying capacity, it's the penis thing.

So...back to machines.
When you run a cat, it's not always a Cat.
You can tell people that you are running a John Deere cat, but you never say, "I'm running a Cat cat"...that's just stupid.
Coworkers laugh and point, when you are on the small D-4 cat, and turn you into the Pope if you operate the giant Komatsu 575.
When the shit hits the fan on a jobsite, and someone is horribly stuck...you always reach out for a cat to do the recovery. The cat to the rescue. The bigger, the better.

Hard worker out to pasture

That'll polish right out

This old beast was set-up for rock drilling. It has attachment points for the drill mast on the front, and a deck for the compressor out back. The drill operators controls are out in the weather.

The same Cat set up for rock drilling ( minus the drilling gear on this day )

This one was so bushed in, that I had to climb on another derelict machine to get a photo

Picture perfect oldie

Here is a smaller cat set up for rock drilling. This one had a separate tow behind air compressor. Further down the pics, there is a couple images of this rig when it was in the bush on the Sterloff property.

D-5 Cat and log grapple...also out to pasture

Close up of the small rock drill cat

D-8 Cat resting for a spell

D-8 Cat with a grand view of the ocean

Downhill with a tailwind

D-8 Cat with a brush rake. Hasn't seen any action for a while

Drott ( manufacturers name ) with a bucket instead of a blade

Drott cat seen through the boom and stick of an UH-07 excavator....total retro operation. This was shot in 2012 and not the 1970's

Old D-6 with the trees growing up around it

I was told by my friend that this hidden relic is a Cat 977. I'm not an expert, I'm just here to take pretty pictures...but a little bit is rubbing off.