2000 - Volume #24, Issue #3, Page #30
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Rubber Tracked Crawler Built From An Allis Chalmers C
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"Another fellow started this project several years ago but couldn't make it work and finally gave up on it," says Schackmann, of Newton, Illinois. "I bought the remains of it out of a fence row, hauled it to my shop and worked on it off and on the whole winter."
Schackmann, who retired from his job at Caterpillar a few years ago, paid $50 for the tractor.
That was two years ago. When he got it together, not only did he have a working rubber-tracked crawler, but he also had a prize winner. His favorite use for it is taking it to parades where he usually wins ribbons with it.
But it was no prize when he pulled it out of the fence row. "It had an old 32 hp. air-cooled Wisconsin V-4 engine in it and the pistons were frozen. I couldn't get them to break loose so I had to find another engine. The pistons were frozen in that one, too, but I was able to get them out so I could rebuild the engine," he says.
The rear end and transmission in the crawler are all that's left from the old C Allis Chalmers. Frank thinks the tractor was a 1946 model. He used the frame that he got with the tractor, which was made of junked channel iron, mostly. "It's put together so the sides can flex independently. That way if you run over a log or a rock with one side, it doesn't lift the other side off the ground, too," he explains.
Frank made rubber tracks for his machine by cutting the sidewalls out of a pair of used 15.5 x 38 tractor tires. The track runs on 24 in wide hubs made from well casing. "I used 24 in. casing for the back and 16 in. casing for the front," he says.
He welded brackets inside the rear hub casings so they would bolt onto the tractor hubs in place of the wheel rims. He used the front axle from an old Ford truck for the front end of his undercarriage, and bolted the casing hubs to a couple of wheels he found that fit on the spindles from the truck. The idler sprockets between the front and rear hubs are the rims from a 1949 Ford car.
The homemade track wouldn't stay on the flat well casing hubs, so Frank welded a 2-in. wide strip of iron cut from old pipe all the way around each hub. "This made enough of an arch in the center of the hub that the tracks can't slide around and slip off any more," he says.
The seat was missing when Frank bought the tractor, so he built one to his liking. The engine doesn't have a fuel pump, so Frank had to build a bracket to mount the fuel tank in front of the operator's station and above the engine so fuel would flow in by gravity.
The C Allis had a hand clutch and individual rear wheel brakes. He rebuilt those, too, because they were frozen up. Squirrels had actually built nests inside the brakes. He couldn't find brake bands for a tractor that age, so Frank made his own. Since he steers the machine with the brakes, his homemade bands get a good workout when he takes it to parades.
He completed the project by adding a bumper on the front and painting it Allis Chalmers orange and silver.
"I use it for light work. I have a grass seeder that mounts on the back and a harrow for the garden. It'll go through mud that you can't hardly walk through," he says.
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Frank Schackmann, 10727 N. 1650th., Newton, Ill. 62488 (ph 618 455-3560).
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