Quote:
Originally Posted by Alex van de Wetering
I believe Jack Olding & co in the UK built the dozers under licence, and also did the (British) armoured conversion, but hopefully Caterpillar will be able to help you with more info.
|
Alex,
Jack Olding only did the armoured conversion. The tractors themselves were licence built in the USA but I don't know who by. I was told about 15 years ago that Caterpillar at that time denied the existence of the 1T series as 'nothing to do with us' but that might just have been one particular employee's ignorance. The tractors were shipped to the UK as complete standard tractors and the conversion is very much a matter of adding a big armoured box so of course it was equally easy to remove it, replace the missing sheet metal parts and you have a standard tractor again.
The Dozer kit was supplied by LaPlant Chote who were major manufacturers of hydraulic dozer conversion kits in the US at that time, when tractor manufacturers only built bare tractors.
Jack Olding also did many upgrades to Ram tanks and other armoured vehicles but never built complete vehicles from scratch.
David