TRACTOR PROFILE
Cate rpi lla r
1939
D2
WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPH Y BY JIM DONNELLY
PROUD, PRESERVED PULLER FROM PEORIA
What’s missing from the photos, has a power takeoff.
besides dozens of pounds of Perhaps more memorably, it’s one
baked, compressed clay? The of two engines aboard the D2. The sec-answer is also the same reason you’d ond—on secondthought, maybe itought
expect to see that evidence of excavation, to be the first—is a two-cylinder gasoline
a bulldozer blade, which isn’t there. Nor engine that you start by wrapping a cord
is any means for mounting one. This is a around the flywheel and yanking it hard.
strongly unusual find, a Caterpillar that It’s just ahead of the driver and above the
evidently earned its keep by pulling stuff main transmission. Once it clatters into
around from time to time, rather than life, engaging a clutch allows the gasoline
pushing it. engine to turn the diesel until its com-
Really, the idea’s not that radical. pression, 18.5: 1, builds enough heat to
Depending on the turf, a tracked trac- fire it. No glow plugs or compressed-air
tor can be more useful than one with starters to speak of here.
pneumatic tires, which could more eas- This Cat came home new when Bill’s
ily get stuck in very loose or wet soil. grandfather, Charles Albert Cannon,
Also, remember that wheeled tractors longtime president of the Cannon Mills
had solid wheels with welded-on cleats Company, bought it for handling chores.
for quite a while, and landfills use steel- Bill now keeps it on his own farmstead
wheeled compactors today. That provides outside Concord, North Carolina. A sim-some edification on why the Caterpillar ple tow bar is at the rear of its tracks. The
D2, exemplified so outstandingly by the engine meter shows 2, 500 actual lifetime
restored, single-family crawler of Bill hours. Its restoration essentially dates to
Cannon, had such a long life, existing in 1971, when a local paving contractor got
the Caterpillar lineup from 1938 through the D2 started after it had been idle for
1957. a decade. The restoration and repainting
It’s a middleweight with punch for its is the work of Salisbury, North Caroli-
time. The data on the build plate is some- na’s, Gene Kepley, whose specialties are
what worn away, but Bill is pretty certain antique tractors but who also works on
that his D2 dates to 1939. Its overall weight classic cars and fire apparatus.
is just on the high side of 7, 400 pounds, “There were no parts missing. All of
then fairly substantial. The prime mover the original sheetmetal was still there,”
is a Caterpillar 251 diesel, water-cooled, Bill said. “Even when it wasn’t running,
with four cylinders, displacing 221 cubic it had never been left to just sit outside.
inches. Its ratings were 36hp and, more This isn’t the kind of thing that was saved
importantly, 125-lbs.ft. of torque, the lat- very much, and I’ve never seen another
ter achieved at 1,050 RPM. The engine D2 that was restored to this degree.”
74 HEMMINGS MOTOR NEWS • JULY 2009
