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PITTSFIELD, Maine — A local man has transformed an old workhorse of a machine back to its former glory.

Behind Mike’s Auto Body sits a restored Caterpillar D7 bulldozer. It took owner Mike Braley a little more than two years to make it look like it did in 1939, when it was first sold.

“I probably have about $4,000 into rebuilding it, but a lot of hours,” said Braley, whose body shop has been in Pittsfield for 34 years. “I traded an old Mercury Cougar for the machine.”

Braley said he put about 400 to 500 hours into restoring the bulldozer. He had a lot of help from his friend Tom Berry of Thorndike, who is a retired Caterpillar mechanic. Ben Gilbert, a painter for the auto body shop, painted the tractor in classic Caterpillar yellow.

The 73-year-old CAT had a fairly easy life, said Braley, and that’s why it was in restorable shape.

“Originally, it came from Central Maine Power Company. They bought it brand new in 1939 and used it down to Wiscasset at the coal-fired power plant,” said Braley. “[CMP] actually used to do their own line work and they pushed all the brush back [with the Caterpillar] and then it was sold off.”

The dozer was sold to a farmer in Brownville, who used it to make roads on his property. After it developed some problems, Braley said the owner was unable to pay for repairs.

“It sat around for 15 years without being used at all,” said Braley.

The dozer’s fate was all but sealed when the price of scrap metal skyrocketed.

It was sold for scrap, but it was never cut up. Braley said it was in remarkable shape for its age and he decided to give it a new home in Pittsfield about three years ago.

Braley traded the Cougar for the dozer and set out to restore the 20-ton beast.

“It took about two years of working in the summer part time,” said Braley. “We rebuilt a lot of the mechanical parts [inside in the winter], and when summer came along, we’d come out and put them on.”

Some parts had to be fabricated and it took some improvising for Braley to get some of it apart to work on. He said he enjoyed the challenge.

“I had it restored just for the historical significance. I like big machines that are kind of neat. And it was a challenge to see if I could do it,” said Braley. “No one [else] would probably take the task on.”

The dozer holds up to 60 gallons of diesel fuel for the engine, but has a second gasoline-powered engine to get it fired up.

“You start the gas engine first, which is the pony engine, and then it runs and it turns the big engine over,” Braley explained. “Sooner or later, it warms the bigger engine up enough to start it. It doesn’t have an electric start.”

Being able to operate it is also no easy task.

“The men that ran those machines back in the day, they really earned their day’s pay. Everything is all hand-controlled. You have to make all the right moves to make the thing work right,” he said.

The D7 isn’t just for show. Braley said he plans on using it to level about 25 acres of sand pits on his property to make it into one field again.

Awesome, nice work! Bangor should have an industrial museum. There’s an incredible amount of old machinery within 50 miles radius of the town just rusting away. Always think it’ be really cool if someone wealthy fronted the money and built an museum large enough to house and organize all the age old equipment. There’s so much history that could be appreciated just wasting away in someone’s aged field or quary.

Yes, lots of history lessons in these old machines . . .

But the Bangor area is not without museums where vintage and antique machinery is king:

The Curran Homestead Living History Farm and Museum in Orrington is one place where “ageless iron” is respected, preserved and (perhaps most importantly) *utilized* to demonstrate to current and future generations the tools with which their recent ancestors created what was once the world’s most industrialized nation.  Several items from its collection of vintage and antique farm equipment are used on a weekly or daily basis, underscoring the quality that is all-too-often absent in modern machinery.

The Cole Land Transportation Museum in Bangor also has a great collection, especially of snow-removal equipment.

A little farther afield, the Owl’s Head Transportation Museum, Boothbay Railway Village, Kennebunkport’s Seashore Trolley Museum, and other similar institutions all maintain serious collections of “functional antiques” for the enjoyment and education of visitors.

It is indeed a shame that much of this antique equipment is being sold off for scrap when institutions such as these are available as refuges and safe havens for “tired iron.”   The factories will never make a new one ever again…

Nice!      Watch out for the SeaBees……….I know one in Belfast who landed at Omaha Beach and was on the Red Ball express, is only 84, and would love to operate her, as I’m sure others would.   Would make a nice exhibit at one of our state fairs.

UPDATE: I told Mr. Hermie about this article this morning. He said he drove many of ’em during WWII. The SeaBees used to cable two side by side D7’s together (cable had a huge metal wrecking type ball in the middle; they’d drag this thru the woods. It would clear the trees; then they’d remove the roots, grade, and place metal grids and presto, there was a landing strip.) He said one D7 sunk into a peat bog somewhere near Oakland; it was never recovered…………….

Nice machine, great to see it restored.

I owned one like this (cable type) years ago when I built logging & camp roads, what a power house. The only thing I didn’t like was the crank on the pony motor.

awesome job it looks real good now you dont find them like that anymore power house nice job

Well done!!!  I would think Caterpillar would make you an offer just to have it on display in the company showroom.

Nice job and very unique, but since it was restored by an auto body shop, why in the pics do you see yellow Cat paint on the tracks… Shouldn’t those have been masked off before spraying?

A little nit-picking aren’t we …………………….. as soon as he uses it the paint will be gone.

it had to be moved some time  and think it  had to stay outside while he was working other things.  duh

Great to see someone preserve the past over chopping it up for scrap value.