Pony motor

• Big JD 2 cyld. Diesels

I saw a bunch of these sold at a public auction in Halifax NS about 10 years ago. Mainly big tandem trucks and construction equipment being sold as parts vehicles. Some of them were conventional highway tractors. The day of the auction they had a tire guy going around with his mobil truck jump starting these.

I know a couple of guys bought these for dump trucks here in what we call the south in Canada. Most soon got changed to electric starters. The air starters were almost as much trouble as old describes early pup starts. I know a guy that ran one of these for years in a dump truck. He claimed it was less expensive as one had the air supply anyway for brakes, and the truck didn't require anymore battery than his gas pickup. I didn't know him that well, but his friends called him stonehead. I think they considered him rather stubborn on issues like air starter among other things.

You first started the little gas engine with an electric starter (a recoil starter was also available on the "R"'s), then pulled a lever to engage the starter drive on the "pony" engine with the diesel's flywheel ring gear, and the little gas engine cranked the big diesel like an electric starter cranks your car.

For extreme cold weather, you could release the diesel's compression (and leave it's throttle in the "shutdown" position), and allow the "pony" to crank the big diesel for a while to limber it up a bit, for better starting, while the pony's coolant circulated through the big engine, warming it up, and the big diesel's intake was heated by the pony's exhaust by means of a heat exchanger.

• Hobby farm