$2 million CAT tractor build

[big bubba]

I could actually care less if it was assembled in your basement...

What I'm saying that Cateripllar like any other large corporation buys parts and assemblies from the lowest bidder no matter where they are located.

Come to think about it, considering how problematic Caterpillar's last on road engines were, they may very well have been assembled in your basement.....:laughing:

In other words, they are JUNK.

5030: u are no doubt far more well informed than i am....but u sure do have a BIG mouth!!!! .... guess we all do in our own time.
non the less....merry x mas, & rave on.....

 

[Toyboy]

So Daimler kept DD after their divorce from Chrysler. Interesting.

As a kid I remember GM had the car and truck divisions Chevy, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, Cadillac and GMC. Terex construction equipment and EMD locomotives. Frigidaire appliances and Delco-Remy. Detroit Diesel engines. Overseas I recall they had Vauxhall and Opel in Europe. I assume they still have Vauxhall and Opel; but Gummint Motors is truly a shell of its former self. GM buying SAAB was disastrous for the Swedish car maker in my opinion. Heck, one year a SAAB something or another was a rebadged Gooberu (Subaru).

You missed Fisher Body and Delphi parts division.

 

[5030]

5030: u are no doubt far more well informed than i am....but u sure do have a BIG mouth!!!! .... guess we all do in our own time.
non the less....merry x mas, & rave on.....

...and 'u'' are taking it to seriously. Frankly, I do give a hoot. The more they break, the better job security I have.....

Not a rave at all. The last of the on road production Cats are not only unreilable, the suffer from mechanical ills that never plagued their early powerplants. Typically, the 3406 earlier engines (including bridge engines) were noted for head gasket/spacer failure and exhaust manifold issues (stud breakage) but little else and the internals lasted a million miles with little attention.

The latest engines typically puke at around 500,000 miles or less, Perforated oil coolers, head gaskets, compound turbocharger failures and a host of other things, most of them equating to an internal failure of the basic block and necessitating at least an in frame overhaul.

Best part is, Cat will not stand behind any of the failures so if the owner experiences one (failure) it's all out of his or her pocket for the repair.

Cat reminds me of Sarah Palin. Quitters.

So Cat decides to build it's own truck, well sort of. Remember Caterpillar will outsource all driveline components, electrical components and everything else like wheels, brake assemblies and all the parts necessary to build the vehicle from the same suppliers that every other manufacturer (Kenworth PACCAR, Western Star, Freightliner, Peterbilt, Vo-Mack) uses, with one important difference. Cat backed out of their warranty agreement with the very people who would buy their 'trucks' in the first place and that, in itself, will cause them untold grief down the road.

I don't see them making much in the way of inroads in the Class 8 market, at least until the taste of what they pulled is forgotten and that won't be for a good while.

Lets not forget the Navistar HUEI lawsuit either.

I'm informed because I work on Class 8 on road and offroad trucks everyday, so I get to see what's good and what is junk. They are junk (Cat)..

Interestingly, if you pull the pan on a new model ISX-C Cummins and flip it upside down, you'll see what amounts to a Cat 3406 lower end, full skirted block, fully supported journals and full cheek crank.

Cummins will be the engine to have in the future for economy, torque rise and ease of service because the electronics are simplified and the emissions controls are straightforward unlike the rest of the engine builders, Cat and Deere included.

Merry Christmas to you too. So long as Santa don't drop a Cat engine down my chimney, all is good.

 

[mjncad]

5030: u are no doubt far more well informed than i am....but u sure do have a BIG mouth!!!! .... guess we all do in our own time.

Yes he does. :laughing:

You missed Fisher Body and Delphi parts division.

You're correct, I did and thanks for the reminder.

I'm informed because I work on Class 8 on road and offroad trucks everyday, so I get to see what's good and what is junk.

Merry Christmas to you too. So long as Santa don't drop a Cat engine down my chimney, all is good.

Wow...you do it all, I'll bet the Dos Equis "Most Interesting Man in the World" is shaking in his boots. :laughing:

Dang, I had a CAT engine all ready to wrap up and give to you, and you don't want it. :laughing:

 

[jimmyj]

Neat video. What an awesome machine.

 

[Mark Page]

When we built out new house there was major grading to be done a 3 acre level spot. They started with a D8 with a bucket. The company's owner wasn't happy with the progress that was being made as large boulders were slowing things down. The next day they pulled the D8 off the job and showed up with a D11 on a super wide low-boy trailer.
Well there was no stopping this beast. It was breaking 10 ft limestone boulders into rocks. Even at $5,000 per day it was a bargain. In 2 days it finished what the D8 was scheduled to finish in 5.
Way cool.

 

[TnWV]

D11's are an amazing machine. I work for a coal company that has a fleet of 76 of them. At one tine this was the largest fleet of D11's in the world (may still be). The last new one we purchased was in late 2008 and then the cost was just under 1.8 million. Fixed Asset accounting is one of my jobs, so I get to account for all of the costs for these beasts. Believe me the purchase price is just the beginning. In a MTR coal mine, theses machines move mountains of rock and they break often. It's nothing to spend 100's of thousands of dollars a year on each one in maintenance & repairs. We typically get about 5-8 thousand hours out if an engine. With two 10 hr shifts a day 6 days a week that's a new engine every 1-2 years at about 160k each. Then theres transmissions, final drives, etc. Very expensive to operate but they sure move a lot of earth in hurry.

 

[westcliffe01]

By late 2007 CAT realized they they had made a severe strategic mistake with their high EGR engine (Acert series). At the time, they owned about 60% of the heavy duty truck engine market. They ran into problems with the emissions systems for their on road trucks which was being developed with an external vendor. The timing was so late that CAT took over the production of their emissions units, something they had never done before so as not to risk delaying the launch of the 2007 model year compliant engines.

They then decided that to conserve their core business (off road) which had its own emissions law to comply with in 2012 (next year) that they did not have the resources in place to develop a 2010 emissions system for the on road engines, as well as develop the emissions systems for 2012 (Tier 4A) and 2014 (tier 4B). As a result, they had to discontinue the pursuit of the on road truck business as well as completely change their engine strategy so that they could get back to the kind of durability customers expect from a CAT. CAT agreed to market the on road engines through Navistar see announcement here Caterpillar and Navistar to pursue strategic alliance on engine technologies: Fleet Equipment

Many companies are incapable of making these major decisions and fail as a consequence. They no sooner got started than we had the economic crisis, throughout which their income fell, yet they had to invest in the development of the new engines, emissions systems and package all of this stuff in an acceptable manner under the hood of their machines. If you have seen one of these emissions systems under the hood at a few trade shows it is a truly remarkable job. I had just a small role to play in all of that...

The reason Cat got out of the Class 8 market and decided to build their own (utilizing drivelines from Rockwell and others, just like everyone else in the industry) is because Cat got tired of paying the EPA fines for particulate emissions and their compliant engine was unreliable.

Hopefully, they've perfected their emission hardware. We won't be buying any after Cat hung owners of late model engines out to dry on warranty related issues. POT.

 

[mcd176]

I think the point of the original post was to show a nice machine being built in a nice factory, and I agree the D11 is an AWSOME looking dozer...... Unfortunately NOTHING is entirely made or manufactured in the good old USA, sucks but it is true, I don’t care what it is if it is electronic in nature there is something from another country in it. Its fact we all have to live with, at least the whole thing isn’t built in another country and shipped over!

 

[5030]

By late 2007 CAT realized they they had made a severe strategic mistake with their high EGR engine (Acert series). At the time, they owned about 60% of the heavy duty truck engine market. They ran into problems with the emissions systems for their on road trucks which was being developed with an external vendor. The timing was so late that CAT took over the production of their emissions units, something they had never done before so as not to risk delaying the launch of the 2007 model year compliant engines.

They then decided that to conserve their core business (off road) which had its own emissions law to comply with in 2012 (next year) that they did not have the resources in place to develop a 2010 emissions system for the on road engines, as well as develop the emissions systems for 2012 (Tier 4A) and 2014 (tier 4B). As a result, they had to discontinue the pursuit of the on road truck business as well as completely change their engine strategy so that they could get back to the kind of durability customers expect from a CAT. CAT agreed to market the on road engines through Navistar see announcement here Caterpillar and Navistar to pursue strategic alliance on engine technologies: Fleet Equipment

Many companies are incapable of making these major decisions and fail as a consequence. They no sooner got started than we had the economic crisis, throughout which their income fell, yet they had to invest in the development of the new engines, emissions systems and package all of this stuff in an acceptable manner under the hood of their machines. If you have seen one of these emissions systems under the hood at a few trade shows it is a truly remarkable job. I had just a small role to play in all of that...

The only emissions systems I've seen are the Acert botched up systems and the large displacement (3406) engines with aftrerburners (furnaces) and gobs of failure prone components. I'm not sure I'd be bragging about having any hand in that fiasco. Compound turbocharging was tried 20 years ago by Cummins Engine with mixed results on their 855 engines. You'd think that Car would have looked to the past to govern the future.....

I agree to a point and that point is Cat was levied with EPA fines for non-compliance in particulate emissions and had an ongoing lawsuit (not an agreement, but an agreement not to disagree) with Navistar over the HUEI system and proprietary rights pertaining to, all deciding factors in their exodus from the class 8 market and it will hamper their return because the very people that bought cat engines in their trucks and were loyal customers got shafted.

Our company was entirely Cat powered but will never order another Cat, no matter what it comes in. Every new unit is coming in ISX-C powered, not just company trucks, but customers as well.

I dislike working on them knowing that our customers and our company will ultimately get screwed on what should be warranty related items that Cat decided not to warranty in an arbitrary and capricious manner.

Of course the DD 15's and 16's are also complex and failure prone. It appears that DD is going the Cat route. We'll see where it leads....