Building your own tractor

[cerlawson]

My brother, now dead, built two tractors 4 x 4 and all wheel steer. He used the front ends of junked Jeeps. My son liked the idea so he latched on to two front ends from Blazers. Also bought a new engine and a transmission. Did a lot of planning, etc. I helped by starting with axles. Anyhow it has been sitting idle for about 10 years now and he figures he won't continue. Apparently will part with it for junk price.

I posted something about this on a home machinist site. If interested, see this link.

http://bbs.homeshopmachinist.net/forums/7-Home-Shop-Welding

That forum has a way of reaching posters with e mail.

 

[Daren Todd]

That sounds similar to something my grandfather built before I was even thought of. He had some junk trucks kicking around that were in various states of repair. One had a good engine. Took two granny three speed transmissions and mounted them in it, along with a transfer case for four wheel drive Not sure how he did it. But you could gear it down so low that it would take a week to leave the yard or do 100 plus miles an hour The man was a genius with junk

 

[Tooljunkie]

Necessity is the mother of invention.
I dream of building a skidder/loader/ backhoe and a mobile jib crane.
Need something all wheel drive, off road capable and lift dig carry place type machine.

Little kubota is awesome, but i need something a little larger.

 

[Mike9]

I remember a very old Mother Earth back in the 70's where a guy built a tractor using two transmissions to really gear it down. I always thought that was a nifty idea.

 

[CaveCreekRay]

Frank,

If you really need off-road capability with lifting, my neighbor just bought a surplus Army boom crane on an off-road chassis. $6500 and its near mint with new tires. It had low hours/miles.

 

[skeets]

M. E. N. 's !!!!! OMG I thought i was the only one that remembered the rag

 

[dandeman]

Building "tractors" out of old truck chassis and other scrap parts was not that uncommon in the area I grew up in the early '50s.. There even was a name for them.... "short dogs", no idea where that came from. "Doodle bug" was another name for them. They typically replaced a team of horses for doing logging work..

Hard find much on the internet about them, but the passage in this book about short dogs is right on..https://books.google.com/books?id=A...INzAF#v=onepage&q="short dog" tractor&f=false

Earlier passage in the book mentions Wadesboro, NC not far from where I grew up. Not surprising that the same mechanical creativity that fostered boot leg cars, early racing in the south would have also included building short dogs.

From searching the internet, apparently "doodle bug" was a much more common name for them.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/32687125@N05/sets/72157626692069451/