Thursday, March 11, 2010

The Bulldog

Don't think it's British because of the name. Then again Mack trucks aren't British either. Anyway, this is our local community's restored Bulldog tractor and it's just got a pair of brand new back tyres ready to drive it down to the Farm Fair next month.These things are earth shattering every time their massive single cylinder fires.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It was made by Lanz in Germany. See Wiki: "The Bulldog was an inexpensive, simple and easy to maintain vehicle. This was chiefly due to its simple power source: a two-stroke hot bulb engine single cylinder horizontal engine. Initially the engine was a 6.3 litre, 12 horsepower unit, but as the Bulldog evolved this was increased to 10.9 litres and 54 horsepower. While hot bulb engines were crude , they were easy to maintain and could burn a wide variety of low grade oils –even waste oils".
Thats a very large single cylinder. A friend had a paddock of them, all different models, as I remember you heated the bulb with a kero lantern, took the aluminium steering wheel off and attached it to the flywheel and turned it by hand to get the motor running.
See I do know things other than Nagaris'
PeterG

John L said...

Yes, I'm impressed. Actually in Australia they were only Lanz Bulldogs up until WWII. The allies saw fit to bomb the Lanz factory in Dresden to smithereens. Following that war, a company in Melbourne (Kelly and Lewis) built the K&L Bulldog. The original blue and grey examples were abandoned for Bulldogs in a nice shade of bright red. The tractor in this picture is a "Kapunda version" of red and is not exactly correct.