Cat and Fiat Agricultural Crawlers...

[John Gaunt]

Herewith a pair of very tidy Cat D4E agric spec machines complete with 3 point linkage.
Plus a VERY well looked after Fiat 90C.
All the above are for sale if anyone is interested.

[RichardJW~]

top pics, John. Thanks for posting.......it's one place I really would like to go for a look around

[Scooby]

Yes, top piccies John. Thanks very much. Were these also taken at Fenland Tractors ? What are/were Fiat Crawlers like ?

David.

[John Gaunt]

Yes, Dave, the pictures were taken at Fenland. I have no personal experience of Fiat crawlers, but they were quite popular in this part of East Anglia.

[DaveS]

A lot of Fiats of all sizes were used for forestry ploughing from the early days of their import through to about the '80s when most ploughing stopped. There was a fairly large fleet owned by the Forestry Commission and many independent contractors had them.

Most worked with 'Clark' mounted single furrow ploughs, which didn't use three-point linkage, but were mounted directly onto the rear of the tractor.

Many were fitted with front mounted hydraulic winches for recovery and wide track pads, some had lengthened undercarriages to give low ground pressure. Some worked in pairs pulling a single plough were conditions were bad.

They worked in extreme conditions either on very soft peat where they would sink out of sight in minutes, or on steep, rocky mountainsides where they would reverse up and plough back down. It was only judged to be too steep if the tracks began to slip when you were going up and you couldn't get any further!!

They were well thought off, and well priced!

The FC built a larger one into a superb de-bogging tractor. I wonder if they still have it?

Dave. S.

[RichardJW~]

Yes, top piccies John. Thanks very much. Were these also taken at Fenland Tractors ? What are/were Fiat Crawlers like ?

David.

Lighter & faster, I think.......I have an old Power Farming article somewhere about using Ag. crawlers.....I will try to find it and post here

[RichardJW~]

found them.....

specs of 90C crawler......



Tips on Ploughing......(June '77)



Crawler comparison......(March '77)














**** if any part is difficult to read I will repost it larger size

[John Gaunt]

A very interesting article Richard, thanks for posting. I guess History will show that Rubber tyres won the battle with steel tracks in agriculture. This isn't to say which is better or worse.

[RichardJW~]

A very interesting article Richard, thanks for posting. I guess History will show that Rubber tyres won the battle with steel tracks in agriculture. This isn't to say which is better or worse.

Yes, I guess they now have the ultimate compromise in the form of rubber tracks......plus tyre technology has progressed substantially over the last 30 yrs

[RichardJW~]

I was looking thru some old books and saw a spec. sheet which stated that in '79 you could buy a D7G with a direct drive gear box and somewhere on an old video I am sure I have seen one at a demo here in U.K.......anyone heard of any being sold in to the UK market?