Page 338 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

Top to bottom: Challengers in process in Portland shop; 3 of the main team members (R-L) Bill Roberson, Joe Frati and Mike Stubb (in back)
Koch.1 Portland’s fab shop built custom parts as needed since the very idea of a prototype requires pioneering solutions.The contract called for several equipment changes—some major redesigns, oth- ers more basic. “Everything we did had to be rated to 40 degrees below zero. That was our target,” says Frati. The Challengers were built in two configura- tions: three had Fassi knuckleboom cranes on the back; the other six had large 16-ft-wide Grouser blades on the front. Each machine took six weeks to complete and cost just under half a million dollars. In the end, they replaced the Case Quadtracs and doubled the traverse fleet to nine- teen machines. The new generation of machines are tough, customized power walkers capable of pulling 100-ton loads at 7–13 miles per hour.
The most significant change to the machine was the engine hood. “On the previous generation, you had to remove twelve bolts, take off the grill, and remove six more bolts down each side of the hood before you could hydraulically lift it up,” explains Bolton, who’d tangled with his share during the 2012-13 Traverse season. “All that takes a tremen- dous amount of time and when it’s thirty or forty below, the last thing you want to be doing is trying to get out a bunch of M-10 bolts so you can get the hood up to even begin to figure out what’s wrong.” With the old-style hoods, it took a half hour to get to the engine. Now it’s a matter of undoing a few buckles and powering up the hood. One minute, tops.
The standard factory hood was a vented fiberglass piece, which didn’t work in sub-zero conditions. “If there’s even a tiny crack, the engine compartment will fill up with snow when parked because of the driving winds,” says Frati who designed the new aluminum hoods to completely enclose the en- gine. “Eventually that snow will turn into ice that’s pretty hard to thaw out when you’re in the middle of the Antarctic at twenty degrees below outside.” The custom-designed hoods have a hydraulic lift
1 ThinkBIG is a 2-year Cat-specific program, which earns an Associate’s Degree in Applied Science. See CH20 ThinkBIG, on p317.
336 | PETERSON: 85 YEARS AND GOING STRONG