Page 197 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong
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• design and build a new electrical harness
• fabricate 1500 pieces to make everything fit properly.
“The whole project was a huge undertaking,” says Stickney, who has spent half his 33-year career as an ace field tech. “We had some minor changes along the way, but for the most part, we ended up with what we had originally planned. We put a lot of thought into it and hashed out a lot of details beforehand. What we came up with was a really good platform.”
Building the prototype was all about finding, or making, the right parts and fitting them into a huge jigsaw puzzle that would ultimately look like it came out of the factory. “We had that engine in and out many times before we got it right,” says Carl Clarke, the project lead on the shop floor for the prototype and first two production ma- chines. “I found different Cat parts I could get to fit off of other machines. It could be any ma- chine running a C7 engine. I pulled parts off a 525 skidder—hoses for the radiator, turbo hoses, and all the different clamps, electrical relays, A/C con- figurations, and accumulators—so we wouldn’t have to use after-market parts. We wanted to min- imize what we fabricated to make parts ordering easier.” Clarke worked extensively with Stickney, who has been doing repowers and upgrades since the early 2000s. “At one point, Cat had their reps there watching us, surprised at what we were do- ing. I really wanted to see this succeed because the 527 is my all-time favorite machine. It’s something I grew up with. It’s the most beat up machine in the woods. It’s a mean-looking, bad-ass machine.”
TRACTOR IN A BOX
The prototype took eight months to complete. Once it was finished, welder Pat Good joined the team. “Carl built the first one, then tore it apart to document everything so we could make patterns
Top to bottom: Techs worked on 3 TSKs at a time in the Portland shop; Completed Peterson TSK
for the rest of the machines. I did all the fabrication on parts and extended the frame.” One of the more challenging aspects was getting all the mea- surements right so everything matched up. Even though all the machines came from the same
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