tc, I bought a M38A1 in 1971 and sold it in 1976. I gave $1200.00 US for it and I sold it for a tidy sum more because the buyer was really in heat for the old jeep. The M38s are getting on up in their years and are hard to find in good shape now. A good one demands a premium.
Today I got seven hours seat time in the old 951C. This is the first opportunity to actually work the machine since I bought it. I ran it wide open throttle for the entire period from noon until dark thirty. It does have a lot of blow by and some blue smoke from the exhaust. It was too dark to see if it was still slobbering when I quit, but I looked at mid day and I found no evidence of slobbering. I really pushed and worked the old girl hard digging white oak 30 inch stumps in hard clay beside my driveway. I certainly found the machines limits. It will spin its tracks in first but not in second or third gears, is that about right for that machine? The engine never missed a lick and never ran hot. Starts good on 30 seconds glow when cold and firing right up when the engine is warm and restarted. I will check the oil in the morning to see how much it used. I will do the engine overhaul when I get my road work done. My wife said that she saw the smoke and thought that there was a forest fire up on the hill where I was working.
I need to cut and re ditch 1,000 feet of existing driveway. The ditching is in soft yellow rock. The loader does a better job digging the ditch than the dozer. The dozer, working with the blade tilted, the blade just wants to slide along on top of the rock. Using the loader and working at about a 30 angle to the road I can dig through the rock. After the ditching is done I will finish and clean up with the dozer. I also have to install two culverts with the loader in the same yellow rock. the rock is fairly soft until it is exposed to the sun and then it gets pretty hard to penetrate.
I did have a left track chain slip a tooth on the sprocket a couple of times. It happened when I was backing up while braking the right track in a hard turn. The tracks are running about as tight as you would run a dozer tracks but not as tight as most people run a crawler/loader. In the morning before I start I will give them a shot of grease.
When I get the dirt work on the road done I will gravel it with limestone. I have two stockpiles, about 800 ton total. One pile is crusher run and the other is about two inch rock. I will need about 200 ton to re gravel the driveway and parking area. Then I have to relocate the remaining stockpiles to a new location. Each load will be loaded with the 951C and will be hauled about 1 mile with my old 1971 F600. I'll respect the age of the old Ford and load about 7 ton per load. The gravel is a gift from a neighbor who is selling his place and no longer will have a need for the stockpiles.
I think I'll overhaul the loader engine before I clean out my lake. I intend to drain the lake in May and start the mucking in mid July. As it has a solid rock bottom under the all that muck I will start on one side and work my way in with the loader and dump truck. The last cleanout was done in 1982 and I hired a owner/operator to do the job. The guy used a cat track loader about the same size as my 951 and a chevy single axel dump truck. The rate back then was 35.00 per hour for the loader including the owner/operator with a 1 day minimum. It took him a little over I week to complete the cleanout, working from dawn to dusk.
That first cleanout was done when the lake was eight years old and that was thirty two years ago. This is going to be only the second cleanout. I should find four times the muck than was removed before. The silt is inevitable because I have a moving stream dammed up, a creek! I had it built in 1974 by the same guy that did the first cleanout. I doubt that you would be allowed to put a dam across a creek nowdays, mine is grandfathered in and shown on all maps of the area.
Man, how time flies!
