Hello everyone, I'd like to thank you all in advance for the wealth of knowledge made accessible here. My father and I made a purchase last weekend of a 1952(?) D4. The service meter shows 0417, if it is working correctly, and it is a direct start. I am going to do a full service and clean it up as soon as the weather is decent enough. I ordered the operator's manual and service manual, but I'm sure I'll still have a lot of questions. I'll get some more pictures up tonight if anyone is interested.

Pictures of machines and projects are always welcome!! Congratulations on getting involved with the old yellow iron! Don't pass up a chance to join our club as it is well worth the investment just for the magazine either online or paper and all the good advice the board can give you.  My D47U in the Avatar is a couple years older than yours.

Welcome to ACMOC! That is a cutie! Keep posting and sharing photos, don’t be bashful about asking questions. Plenty of folks here with hands on and technical resources to help out. Share your location as well if you don’t mind, as sometimes somebody close by can assist. JM

Located 9 miles south of Charleston Illinois. Definitely the oldest piece of equipment on the farm and only the second dozer and be ever ran. The last one wasn't very old maybe mid 90s. Knowledge is appreciated and any advice for this rookie is welcome. For my first question the throttle lines to back itself off, is there a way to tighten it up? The throttle control rod was bent and I got it straightened out but it still will vibrate back to almost idle when moving.

As a temporary fix remove the clevis pin and replace it with a bolt that has the right unthreaded portion and thread length. Now you can pinch the yoke to increase the drag on the linkage.

Unlikely that the tractor only has 417 hours. That's less than 10 hours a year.
Look at the hour meter again - probably has 1 digit to the right that's hard to see under the housing.
4170 hours on the meter is still real low - cool looking tractor.

The grousers look more like 417 hours than 4K hrs?   Nice straight machine. Welcome to the forum!
Don

Spent all afternoon yesterday on the family farm crawling over under and in the D4, and I found a few things. First is the transmission has water in it so it’ll need flushed, the RH lift cylinder has been hit right on the cap and broke a bolt off so it seeps pretty bad. The drain plugs on the brake housings are gone (heard this was common?), I believe there is an exhaust or intake leak I can hear. I got all the filters ordered and bought 5 gallons of Rotella 30w. Hard to find straight 90w, so is 80w-90 ok to use? I’m going to become a member as there is a chapter north of me around Peoria, IL, and I can use some help. Thanks again for the positive comments and help.

Ells84 wrote:

 Hard to find straight 90w, so is 80w-90 ok to use? I’m going to become a member as there is a chapter north of me around Peoria, IL, and I can use some help. Thanks again for the positive comments and help.
 

i use textrans tdh in the trans and hydrualics. it is a universal tractor drivline and harvester oil it is a 75w80 oil developed for caseih-austoft harvesters. in the finals we use torqfluid 454 which is a sae 50 oil 434 is also available and is 30 weight for lower temp below 25 deg celcius ambient temp. all these oils have caterpillar TO-4 approvals.
the engine will take delo gold ultra 15w-40.
beware of oils that contain zinc as the trans and finals have bronze gears and bushings that will react with the zinc.

these are the oils reconnmended by caltex and chevron your preferred company will have equivalents.