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Cletrac/Bowen Manufacturing

B

Bob Bancroft

Well-known Member
Location
Aurora NY
I've been watching a girl on you tube, who, based in Las Vegas, has taken to exploring the very rural west. I saw an episode recently where she explored an abandoned TB sanitarium[sanatorium][I've seen it spelled both ways] on an island, on Mono Lake. There she came across a Cletrac! The tracks had such complete shrouding you couldn't see any track. It looked like it was an orchard/vineyard machine. Then she read the lettering off an oiler, or greaser, near the operators area. "Bowen Manufacturing" Auburn NY. Auburn is the central, and largest city in Cayuga County, and therefore the county seat. [Where we go shopping, when we're allowed!] The oiler/greaser had a handle/plunger. What might that have been for?
 
Oilers are common on machines prior to WW2. Commonly used where a journal is open to the elements, and not sealed, or sealed well. They can be used at the journal, or hooked to a steel, copper, or flexable line to admit oil to the journal in a metered Drip Drip Drip, or extra with a plunger. What it feeds is not likely to be known unless someone has that model, or a person studies it on site. Jim
 
Bob,

IBM's old "Unit Record" processing machines handled 80-column punched cards, one at a time. Some of the machines were quite complicated electro-mechanical devices. Many of them used small Bijur pumps to meter and deliver small amounts of oil to continuously running shafts and gears. The oil was expelled from the pumps at low pressure and usually were controlled by a certain number of revolutions of the part.

Probably not the same as the oilers that you saw, but at least it triggered a 50 year old memory in my mind.

Tom in TN

Happy Easter
 
I hadn't thought of that, as my "modern" dozer has sealed rollers, with oil in them. Prior to owning this, I had assumed rollers were greased.

This apparatus by Bowen was quite large. Much bigger than any oil cup I've ever seen. And with a pump handle on it. Maybe it did do just what you theorize. Do we know if old Cletrac rollers were oiled, or greased?
 
Cletrac rollers were oil filled. Sealed to the extent possible at the time, but not like newer machines. The seals were oriented to keep material out, as you pumped oil into them, the oil would overflow out of the roller.

Would need to see a pic of what you are talking about to hazard a guess.
 
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