Big Yellow
June 22, 2015This struck me for a couple of reasons. First is the heavy-duty geekery going on to build a 500-ton vehicle.
How an enormous Caterpillar mining truck is built
Forget a factory assembly line. The Cat 797 mining truck is so gigantic, it’s assembled on-site. Watch how it’s done.Everything about the Cat 797 mining truck is huge. It has 4,000 horsepower, the engine displacement is nearly 6,500 cubic inches, it weighs more than a million pounds, and it has a payload capacity of 400 tons. “Big” barely does it justice.
What does it take to build such a monster? Caterpillar shows us in the Cat 797 assembly video. It starts at the plant in Decatur, IL, but the pieces aren’t assembled into a mammoth machine until they get out to the job site.
The second reason is memories: my dad spent all his working life at Caterpillar and my sister works there now. In fact, I think sis has been up inside one of these monsters (though they didn’t let her drive, as I recall).
I recall stories from the 60s about the Scottish woodcarvers Caterpillar had "imported" whose job it was to carve the masters for sand casting. Imagine carving a full-scale wooden crankshaft or cylinder head for a large diesel engine. (Not the engines used in the 797, I should add.)
No Truce With Kings 
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