Page 415 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

the drive pinion for the final drives.” He then ran his idea by Robbins. “Phil was really the key guy on this whole project because he knows the insides of all these tractors thoroughly. And he agreed.” They also added a total disconnect. The end result? With one lever, one engine can drive the whole machine or each engine can drive its own tractor. The right engine can also power the left tractor, and vice versa.
“It’s still basically the same,” says Jack Ravaz- za, general manager of Special Services. “Buster’s original Twins were bolted together at the two ham cases. So you take off the inside one, where the sprocket comes out of the back of the machine, where the final drives are. That’s where the frames were bolted together.”
Ed Akin also wanted to substitute an electric start- er motor for one of the two pony motors of the original design, strictly for convenience. By having one electric motor and one pony motor, the Twin was much easier to start up.
WHEN ONE PLUS ONE EQUALS ONE
Transporting the 28-ton, 14-foot wide machine in the late 1940s and early ’50s was another en- gineering feat. Back then, hauling anything that wide was just not possible—either by railcar or by truck. But today, that’s no problem. The Retro Twin was built to stay intact as one solid machine.
“Back then, they had no way to haul something 14-feet wide,” explains Robbins, “so they built it in two separate halves with couplings in all the shafts for the controls. All control levers were on the right tractor, except the left transmission. The left half had a rod sticking up from each of the control shafts, which you slipped a pipe over so you could run the clutch, the brake, and the governor. Buster really thought this stuff through.”There was also a specially designed skid that bolted onto each half to keep them upright during transport.
Top to bottom: Glen Ghilotti was proud of the new Twin D8 and his part in making it come to life in 2016; Hi-Clearance Twin split in half for transport in 1951; Team Ghilotti provided all the transportation of the Twin D8 during the build process and afterward to various equipment events in 2016.
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