Equipment Roundup: Inside Cat’s Seguin engine plant; Ram will continue selling “Classic” 1500 body style; ’48 Power Wagon service truck will make you jealous; Mini ‘Cat’ dozer looks fun; Cat indicates Perkins SmartCap 2 is on the way

Updated Jul 3, 2018
Cat Seguin engine assembly 4
The Seguin engine plant has a 2,000 workforce, 35 percent of which are contract workers.

Cat indicates a Perkins “SmartCap 2” engine oil filler cap is on the way

Caterpillar is continuing to develop its Perkins-brand SmartCap engine oil filler cap, named a 2018 Edison Award gold winner earlier this year.

Now in three sizes that fit most Perkins engines ranging from 25 to 270 horsepower, the coming “SmartCap 2” will likely expand to Cat engines and offer additional technology when it’s introduced at a later date.

“We’ve gotten requests for expanding it to other brands, but we haven’t developed that strategy right now,” says David Nicoll, marketing and dealer operations director, for Cat’s Industrial Power Systems Division. Complications include the fact there is no standard size for an oil filler cap, and that the SmartCap connects to Cat servers, Nicoll told Equipment World in a recent visit to Cat’s Seguin, Texas engine plant.

 

To read more, click here.


VIDEO: Don’t let this adorable mini ‘Cat’ dozer fool you. It’s got small-scale capability

The delightful video below comes from the YouTube channel of Lane Hanson, whose videos of his diminutive ‘Cat’ dozer have garnered more than 1.3 million views. As you can see in the videos below, Lane is finding ways to make good use of a mini dozer, from clearning snow from the driveway, to leveling out a patch of soil near the house.

 

To watch the video, click here.


This ’48 Dodge Power Wagon custom service truck will make you jealous

It’s hard to beat a million-dollar headline.

Barrett-Jackson’s recent 2018 Northeast Auction earned headlines across the country for selling the final 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon and the last 2017 Dodge Viper. The two were bought together for $1 million to benefit the United Way.

But there were a lot of other head-turning cars and trucks that sold over the course of the auction from June 21-23 in Uncasville, Conn., including a custom four-wheel-drive 1948 Dodge Power Wagon.

 

To read more, click here.


Ram will continue selling “Classic” 1500 body style alongside redesigned 2019 model

As Ram edges closer to launching its all-new 2019 Ram 1500 with a new body design, the automaker has decided to continue selling its former and popular body style that has endeared Ram fans for years.

Ram says it will offer both the 2019 Ram 1500 Classic, with the more familiar legacy body style known internally as the ‘DS’ model, and the all-new 2019 Ram 1500 (‘DT’) at its North American dealers through the 2018 calendar year.

 

To read more, click here.

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Inside Cat’s Seguin engine plant which plans to produce its 400,000th engine this fall (VIDEO)

When Caterpillar bought Perkins Engines in 1998, the two brands shared similar diesel engine heritages. Cat made its first engine – placed in a dozer — in 1931. A year later Perkins’ first engine, the 4-cylinder Vixen, debuted in Peterborough, England.

Since 2010, both engine brands have been going down the same assembly line in Caterpillar’s 1.7-million-square-foot Seguin, Texas, engine plant. The plant forms the nucleus of Cat’s 2.5-million-square-foot-plus engine presence in the area, and is fed from plants in Shertz, Texas, and San Antonio that manufacture engine blocks and heads. In addition, the Seguin plant is the Americas headquarters for Perkins Engine and manufactures gen sets up to 500 kilowatts.

The plant will also have a role to play in Cat’s first Next Generation 36-ton excavators, which will be manufactured starting this fall in Victoria, Texas, and powered by Cat’s new C9.3B engines, built in Seguin.

To read more, click here.