Page 416 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

Glen Ghilotti handled all the transportation during the build and to the different venues the Retro Twin was invited to. “The original Siamese Twins were designed to split in half for shipment. And when they arrived at their destination, you had to bolt them back together again. Today, you can get permits in California to transport up to 14-feet wide without much trouble,” says Ghilotti, “so we built our Twin so all you need to do is take the dozer blade off. Then you can ship it together all in one piece.”
THE BIG UPGRADE: EQUALIZER BAR
The most notable improvement is the equalizer bar underneath and between the two track frames. “Duane suggested we design something to make it oscillate,” says Ravazza. “So we designed an equalizer bar so it would pivot a little bit. This lets the track frames pivot separately and follow the contour of the ground without rocking the whole machine.”
There was no give in Buster’s original design be- cause it used a rigid bar between the track frames.
“As far as I know, no one up to that point had de- signed a true equalizer bar yet. Not even Cat,” says Spencer. “But this equalizer bar allows one frame to come up over a rock or hill, but not the whole machine. Just like any new dozer, the track frames move independently from each other. The track frame pivots, letting the machine stay more level and stable so you get more traction on the ground. And it’s way easier on the operator.”
THE DRAWINGS
Using Buster’s drawings was a unique part of the Retro Twin project, and completed the circle with- in Peterson’s custom fabrication history.2 “It was a thrill to find Buster’s drawings several years ago when Ed Akin requested copies to build his dream machine,” says Eileen Grafton, Peterson’s corpo- rate historian. “For me, it was a treasure hunt down in the dim, dusty basement beneath San Leandro’s main service lunchroom. I spent hours culling through records, looking for the right drawings: A-321, A-348, A-459, A-499 . . . and so on. One by one, I found them, rolled up in 5x5-inch slots inside an old wooden cabinet—the repository of some of Peterson’s oldest and coolest history.”
“I didn’t know we had those blueprints at first,” says Spencer. “I was working on the Twin when our engineer said he had the drawings. We blew them up so we could see them better, and I was blown away! Those blueprints were amazing! I had never really looked at blueprints myself. In my job, I never had to. But these were wow! Although we didn’t go exactly off the blueprints, they really helped with a lot of things. To me, in their own way, they looked like very professional artwork.”
For Ravazza, who has spent his career around blueprints, these were exceptional. “Working with the original drawings was really cool because they
2 Buster drew many of his own designs in the 1940s, but the finished drawings for the Twins were done by Fred Stevens, and the Quads were done by Bob Hickey. Other Peterson engineers who drew for Buster included Don Stroot, Ron DeMello, and Roy Barnes.
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