What is the oddest machine you have worked on or operated

[Joel/ak]

Here's one. The drive ran at 6k psi, rollers ran at 2500psi.

 

[MossRoad]

Many oddball pieces of gear. Airports are notorious for weird crap. Whenever our sales rep for TLD would make a visit, I would grab him and ask WTF they were thinking on designing this crap.

Schematics on some were in French (didn't help much).

I definitely hired good fabricators and hydraulic mechanics.

Agreed about the weird stuff. Air start units. Deicing equipment. Tugs. Mobil stairs. Catering trucks.

I posted a video of this a few days ago that I came across. I used to run two of these Wheelhorse Airhorse movers. Great fun. Great machine!

 

[Fuddyduddy1952]

Agreed about the weird stuff. Air start units. Deicing equipment. Tugs. Mobil stairs. Catering trucks.

I posted a video of this a few days ago that I came across. I used to run two of these Wheelhorse Airhorse movers. Great fun. Great machine!

I would pay to see a 500+# person riding that...wouldn't you?

 

[Joel/ak]

Agreed about the weird stuff. Air start units. Deicing equipment. Tugs. Mobil stairs. Catering trucks.

I posted a video of this a few days ago that I came across. I used to run two of these Wheelhorse Airhorse movers. Great fun. Great machine!

Wow, would rather have worked on that vs the fmc b1200's and our T750

 

[MossRoad]

I would pay to see a 500+# person riding that...wouldn't you?

It can hold them no problem. That yellow fork is several hundred pounds.

I will say, and you can see it at some point in the video, if you go in reverse (towards the original front of the tractor) and move to forward suddenly, it will lift the small wheels off the ground pretty far. To make tight turns, I used to do that and spin the steering wheel while the little wheels were off the ground. You could swing the rear tires 5-6' to the other side with only 2-3' of rearward movement.

It was the first articulated machine I ever operated. It's why I'm partial to my PowerTrac today.

 

[MossRoad]

Wow, would rather have worked on that vs the fmc b1200's and our T750

WOW! Those are beasts! Had to look them up.

We had a small tug that was a bazillion years old. It was very short and had a roughly casted rear section that was a huge weight and fenders all in one piece. I'd guess the whole thing wasn't 7' long, yet weighed over 10,000#. It had a huge differential. The mechanic said it was something 17 or 27:1 ratio. Can't remember.

The original 4 cylinder engine died. We went to a junkyard and got a Buick V8 and a turbo 350 transmission, and the tilt wheel from the car, too. We jammed it into that tug. He made some custom headers to fit. Top speed in Drive was maybe 8mph.

Biggest thing I ever moved with it was a Fed-X 727.

Most uses were for small jets, turboprops and other private aircraft.

 

[MossRoad]

Thinking about it, a lot of folks would call my PowerTrac PT425 an odd machine.

 

[Joel/ak]

Thinking about it, a lot of folks would call my PowerTrac PT425 an odd machine.

Odd? Yes but functional. I've found that airport mechanics are pretty dang good and creative.

Our tractors were beasts. Alot of airlines would rent our gear. Our b1200's (had 4 of them) were 120,000lbs and the T750 was 150,000lbs. They would move anything.

Airstarts are a whole nother beast. Had a new rheinmetal. Jet engine that spun at 25k rpm. Parts were expensive and crappy fuel mileage. Went through 100 gal of jet A in 2 hours. Yelled at alot of pilots cuz they wanted to dick the dog taking their time for a start

 

[lincmercguy]

I grew up around 4020 tractors and a 105 combine. I've run and worked on both and I'm not that old. We even rebuilt the transmission on that 105 years ago. That one somehow became my project once it was out of the combine. Plenty of 60's and 70's trucks as well. All of it older than I.

 

[MossRoad]

Odd? Yes but functional. I've found that airport mechanics are pretty dang good and creative.

Our tractors were beasts. Alot of airlines would rent our gear. Our b1200's (had 4 of them) were 120,000lbs and the T750 was 150,000lbs. They would move anything.

Airstarts are a whole nother beast. Had a new rheinmetal. Jet engine that spun at 25k rpm. Parts were expensive and crappy fuel mileage. Went through 100 gal of jet A in 2 hours. Yelled at alot of pilots cuz they wanted to dick the dog taking their time for a start

We had two air start units. One was on an early 50's truck chassis. It was a 6 cylinder detroit diesel. The other was on a late 60's truck chassis. It was a v8 detroit.

I do not know why my boss purchased them. In the few years that we had them before I left, I air started exactly one(1) airplane; a Convair 580 for NorthCentral airlines. BEAUTIFUL plane!!! Props the size of barn doors!

As I recall, the air start was in the right wheel well.

The air start units were LOUD, especially the V8.

A few times a year, the mechanic would start it, and drive along slowly and I'd walk behind it and we'd leaf blow the 4 acre ramp off of dirt and stones. The hose was hard to control even with the engine at idle.

 

[CalG]

A sunflower seed grader.

An inclined vibrating table. Sorted by weight.

 

[Johndeere3720]

Ever since I went to college (diesel mechanic) I’ve strived to work on different and unique things. This street sweeper was one of my most odd purchases, mainly tinkered with it until I was moving and sold it since I didn’t want to move it. It was incredibly primitive, it had everything it needed and nothing it didn’t.

I like knowing how things work, whether it’s tractors, construction equipment (excavators/skidsteers), light towers, generators, vertical mast lifts/scissor lifts, forklifts, cars/trucks, and small engines/lawn garden equipment. Each thing has its unique challenges and I’ve found certain brands of things tend to have similar problems across models in a series.

 

[jjeff]

I wonder how well that cool primitive sweeper would work Doing lighter snow removal with tire chains?

 

[Helogabals]

I have deep connections with forestry industry, but never ever have seen such tractor as topic starter have posted.

I thought this fancy looking is something:

Track Tractor TDT-55 (Saldus) - redzet.lv

This track tractor is used in forestry, particularly logging of timber, building and packaging timber piles, loading, as well as for groundbreaking and road...

www.redzet.eu

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Just something from my album

5 axis CNC for chairs

Nothing special, just big
Once had to hire this. 3 guys 1 day worked on assembley. Actual lift was 30 minutes

While ago have sold sanding machine for CLT panels. 10 FT wide
Take in entire wall and work with 5 m/min

 

[Helogabals]

Drilling machine for Ikea

Can do more than 100 holes in one shot. 6000 panels in a shift

Friend have made this (I supplied spindle)

They do "visual communication", 3d objects, like this:

CNC machine for CLT panels. Wooden housing

You discussed loading platforms. Bologna airport. Arab airlines loading. Someone will have new toy at evening

Paint drying in UV light. Split sec and ... dry

 

[Dennis Mohn]

I'm not sure if this counts, but at one time I worked in a furniture mill.

We had one machine called the "RF Machine" or "Radio Frequency Machine". It was a big microwave for gluing wood together. Whatever they were laminating, they'd run glue along the edges then push anywhere from one table top to a whole pile of legs into the machine at once. It would press the pieces together and hit them with the microwave for about a minute at which point it would shove a sticky mess out to be thrown on pallets with sawdust thrown between to keep them from sticking. Thinking back, a lot of manual labor.

Anyway, the interesting part of the machine was on the back side, outside of the machine, there was an ordinary florescent light tube sitting on a wire rack. No wires going to the tube. The RF power from the machine lit up the tube without wires and the person tailing the machine knew it was turned

I'm not sure if this counts, but at one time I worked in a furniture mill.

We had one machine called the "RF Machine" or "Radio Frequency Machine". It was a big microwave for gluing wood together. Whatever they were laminating, they'd run glue along the edges then push anywhere from one table top to a whole pile of legs into the machine at once. It would press the pieces together and hit them with the microwave for about a minute at which point it would shove a sticky mess out to be thrown on pallets with sawdust thrown between to keep them from sticking. Thinking back, a lot of manual labor.

Anyway, the interesting part of the machine was on the back side, outside of the machine, there was an ordinary florescent light tube sitting on a wire rack. No wires going to the tube. The RF power from the machine lit up the tube without wires and the person tailing the machine knew it was turned on.

A number of years ago I was working on an electric forklift in Cleveland Ohio. It had stopped operating and when I tested it found a couple components burned out. I made the repair and put the unit back in service after testing the operation . A few days later I got a call the machine had broken down again, back out, test, same problem. Repaired and tested back in service. This happened a couple more times and I removed the unit for more complete testing and cleaning before returning. One day later it had broken down again. After asking where it was broken the owners stated it always quit next to the "dryer" turns out it was getting blasted by electrical interference. I added shielding to the unit and never had another problem with it. I serviced equipment at the same company for a few more years until they moved their opperation.

 

[Dennis Mohn]

View attachment 850697
CAT 631 Probably the funnest off road machine, 500+ HP, hauls 30+ yards and goes 35MPH. When you are riding you get to look down into the cabs of dump trucks and tractor trailers.

I worked on the WABCO electrics

 

[jjeff]

Used a cleko brand hydraulic boat trailer a lot moving customers boats on there specific cradles around the yard, pushed with a forkless fork truck won't bore you with the process and unfortunately can't find a good picture of what I've used. But they were specific and odd looking for that job.

 

[Dennis Mohn]

I have deep connections with forestry industry, but never ever have seen such tractor as topic starter have posted.

I thought this fancy looking is something:

Track Tractor TDT-55 (Saldus) - redzet.lv

This track tractor is used in forestry, particularly logging of timber, building and packaging timber piles, loading, as well as for groundbreaking and road...

www.redzet.eu

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Just something from my album

5 axis CNC for chairs
View attachment 850866


Nothing special, just big
Once had to hire this. 3 guys 1 day worked on assembley. Actual lift was 30 minutes

View attachment 850867

While ago have sold sanding machine for CLT panels. 10 FT wide
Take in entire wall and work with 5 m/min
View attachment 850868

Nice stuff. I worked on and repaired EIMCO loaders and dozers looke similar to the dozer you posted.

 

[Dennis Mohn]

My brother owned a Bell for many years in his small land clearing business. He said only one of his employees could properly operate it. Odd looking machine.

They could be a challenge. Simple design, not easy to keep in adjustment