Last Update-03/13/2010 01:43 AM           

I have discovered that I have a love for all things mechanical, especially those things that can make life a lot easier and keep you from breaking your back.  If you read my site on building the shop, you will remember that I had purchased a little Hydra-Mac 8A to move stuff around the site and back fill around the shop.  I sold that little skid steer and really regretted it later.  After hand shoveling 10 yards of dirt into the new front flower beds my wife wanted this last summer, I decided that soon, very soon, I would hopefully own a loader again.

Well, this summer a friend of mines grandfather had an old Case 1537 he was thinking about taking to the scrapper so I made him and offer and went and picked it up.  This loader is a late 60's to early 70's model.  it has a 1500 lb. capacity and was originally equipped with a 37 HP Wisconsin engine.  Well, the engine was removed due to some internal issue and stored in an old car in a field.   The farmer that owned the field was burning it off and when it got out of control, it caught the old car on fire and literally burnt up the original engine.  I brought the remains home and am going to try and rebuild/add numerous new parts to it in an attempt to revive the beast.

Here she is as she sat in the field all lonely and in need of some TLC.  The fella who owned it is a pretty crafty guy. He had installed an engine out of a mercury Sable. Well, the Sable engine finally gave up the ghost when the driveshaft came loose and destroyed the driven pulley above it.   He took good care of this old case though as it has very little rust and seems to be in good mechanical shape.

This is the gas tank out of the Sable. He had it mounted on the back of the loader when it was equipped with the Sable engine.

At left you can see the large driven pulley that is part of the variable speed system used back in the OLD DAYS before hydrostatic pumps and motors.  The front DRIVER pulley or better called a sheave, is hydraulically controlled to increase or decrease its pitch in order to change the drive ratio to the input sprockets.

The pic on the right shows the input to the right angle gear box the drive shaft connects too.

Here she is at her new home.  I rented this trailer for 40 bucks from United Rentals.  The trailer tilts and made it very easy to load the loader with a couple of hand hoists.