"The original engine in my TD 24 International crawler tractor was a lemon and, after spending a lot of money overhauling it and still having problems, I threw it out," says Charles Yokimas, Penny, British Columbia.

"I adapted a 1970 Chevrolet high performance 454 V-8 engine which came from a police car. I left the high performance camshaft in the engine when I overhauled it before installing it in the crawler. It's coupled to a Chevrolet truck 4-speed transmission and then to the original International transmission. The pto from the truck transmission is used to power the steering pump. A Ford 3-speed transmission is coupled to the front of the engine and runs in low gear to drive the main hydraulic pump which lifts the 16-ft. blade. I adapted a belt-driven governor to the engine to hold the maximum rpm to approximately 2,000 rpm's.

"The power of this matchup is unbelievable. In 3rd gear the tracks spin like mad when pushing a large tree or a lot of dirt, but the engine won't stall. I use it for clearing land up here where a small tree is 2 ft. in dia. But that's no problem for the Chev 454. I've used it a lot and it burns only 6 to 7 gal. of fuel per hour, which is less than the original diesel engine burned. I had a lot of people think I was crazy when I started this swap but they're all believers now. After two seasons, I'm only sorry I didn't do it sooner."