Iconic Cat D8H set for restoration

Last week I was out and about on some assignments and whilst in Carmarthen visiting M.D. Plant Hire and Machinery Ltd I spotted a lovely old girl at rest behind a shed.

Mathew Davies has recently become the importer for Chinese excavator brand Carter, and this was the main reason for my visit which I will write more about in a future edition of Earthmovers. However, Mathew was also keen to talk about his old D8H which has a strong connection with the Davies family and which he has purchased with a view to restore to its former glory.  

This particular example of D8H 22A was built in 1963, I believe these were built in the UK and from online research I think around 1,514 of them were manufactured. Mathew took up the story, “My dad’s brother the late Cyril Davies used to have this machine, and he used to operate it on the open cast coal mines up here. His son Kelvin took on the machine and operated it doing the bypass road job in Cardigan during the 1990’s, it also worked on the bypass job at Cross Hands, so as you can imagine, she has done some serious work in her time!”

Mathew continued, “It was later sold in 2005 to a local haulier Geoff Davis, he did a bit of work with her and also fitted a beefy 50 tonne winch on the back of her. A while later Geoff decided to have a retirement sale and I saw the opportunity to buy it and to do a full restoration job on it. We have traced back its history and we know it’s the one as its still got the horseshoe on the front that Cyril put on her, he was mad about horses in the day!”.

The D8’s upgrade to H series status began in 1959 which was then offered with a 225hp engine. This horsepower increase was gained by turbo-charging, and Caterpillar continued to tweak this further, very early in the production run, to 235 horsepower. However, several other improvements, notably to the operator’s area and the sheer size of the machine, were apparent.

Photo: A nicely restored example of a later D8H which was on display at the SED 2007 event in Rockingham (Digger Man Blog Archives)

When Mathew gets the job done on this machine which tips the scales at around 25 tonnes, we are invited back to take a look at it, I look forward to that.

Checkout this old promotional film from Caterpillar on the then new D8H.