Upton Tractors and UD's

JOHN.K. wrote:

Its been eating at me.....I knew what it was ,should of remembered ......Its on of those junk Nissan UD 6s that were imported here in the early 70s ......not one of them was any good ,and there was no spares.

Hi there John. A friend bought a Upton tractor years ago off a farm here on E/Pen. Tractor were built in the eastern states.
Where ? It came to him as a runner with a Cummins engine. Also in the deal he was given the original engine , with a hole in the side of the block. It had thrown a leg out of bed. The engine . A Nissan UD 5 cyld 2 stroke with a s/charger.
Now this is many years ago so i am happy to be corrected. The UD engine is in storage if anyone was wanting parts. The stand out of picking up this tractor. Peter drove it home (65-70 kms), with me following. This tractor has 2 gearboxes and without getting it into top gear he was able to sit on 80kms/hr for some of the trip. The other stand out feature of this tractor is the arse end is taken from a Sherman tank fitted in reverse. I am happy to be corrected on any details. Thought of the Nissan motor. I will try and get some photos. The tractor is still in P/L and still a runner. Hope you find this interesting. Dave.

Upton tractors were built in Corowa N.S.W. Your friend's one should be an Upton 225 originally supplied with a supercharged UD 5cyl 2 stroke 225hp motor, 25 speed drive through a 5 speed gearbox and Mack built tank 5 speed gearbox as a joey box then onto a (I think) General Grant tank differential built to withstand 450hp , weakness was caused by the duals overloading the axles.
Does he want to sell it?
Forgot to add post up some pictures and I will be able to hopefully give you a positive identfication

Hi All
Googled Upton tractors and almost first up-
www.hcvc.com.au/forum/oldjunk/4856-does-...-of-tractor?start=10
Cheers

Back in the early '80's We had a Commer with a UD3 in It..We got a workshop manual & quite few parts for the UD off Upton Engineering..

Well. That got a bit of feed back.. No. The Upton is not for sale. The UD Nissan motor probably would be. Suitable for parts.
A few years ago while visiting the Kulin museum there was an Upton parked across the road. It was or is the bigger tractor they
built. It has a v8 Scania motor and Terex arse end. Tried to buy it but . NO GO.
I will dig up photos of the one here and also the one in Kulin WA. I am always prepared to be corrected. It keeps the conversation
going. Bit of news on the AB150. After asking for help with specs , Brett was good enough to send through info needed. Today a friend presented me with a complete w/s manual on the AA series trucks. Covers ABD240,264,282,,BD282,RD372,RD450.
Funny how these things turn up ,when least expected. ABD240 engine looks the same at first glance. Dave.

Late 1970's one of A R Neal's subbies had a UD4 in a C or D line Inter.
Carting local in and out of the Fairfield Paper Mill.
Think it was Tony Donato, IIRC. He was happy with it - made the right noise.

There were a few new UD 4s .........most of the UD s were imported by R Moore & Sons ,and came from Japanese scrapyards...........Paddy O Driscoll was the boss ,head mechanic and development engineer.....they fitted a 6 to an IH TD 24 dozer ,and it couldnt get up the ramps onto a float.......the dozer belonged to family of rich canefarmers from around Gympie ,and they commenced to sue Moores ...dunno what happened ,but the dozer was still there when the place was sold ..........the shed belonged to the Ford truck dealers at Darra ...Denmac Ford.....Dennis Mc Innery?

John you’d remember Maros Construction.
Ted Stacey fitted 5-cylinder UD in one of their Steelweld carriers, it had a 6354 on the crane winches.
I dropped around one day when they had the head off, thought my eyes were playing tricks, 5-cylinders.

I had a Leyland truck with a UD3 motor. A 24ft tray that had been shortened from the original longer tray and single rear axle ( not sure if it had a lazy axle originally). I bought as a water carting business with a 7500litre water tank pumps and hoses. The motor had plenty of power, doing 100kph was no trouble at all but I rarely went faster as I didn't trust the brakes.
Two incidences stand out , first was delivering a load of water to a farm where I had to negotiate down then up a steep gully. I put it into first gear to negotiate the tight bends up this goat track, just as I got the front wheels over the top the teeth stripped off first gear. To this day I don't know how I managed to control it down to the bottom with the weight of the water pulling me down, the crappy brakes and the tight bends.
Second was delivering a load of water into a dry dam on a travelling stock reserve so the drover could water his stock. I parked near the dam on a slight downhill slope put on the handbrake, put it in first gear as it was pointing uphill, set up the hoses, started the pumps and was watching the water go in when the hoses began moving. Sure enough it rolled backwards and started but very slow in first gear no revs so was no trouble catching up to it and stopping it.
It made me money as it gave me an income in dry times when I couldn't do much on the farm and I would take the tank off and put on a 100 bag bulk bin and cart our grain and neighbor's grain in good times. I have a photo somewhere, I'll post it up when I find it.

hi john there was a few in trucks way back and moores were the ones in a shed just beside denmacs sales yard was, from memory moores all so sold berco walking gear, iwas 19 just got my old butter box worked for brisbane tippers, dave russ worked there to he had built up a commer 8 wheeler permatrak front end and rear end, i think it was single drive had a 5 cyl init, then he did another one a boogie permatrack lazy with a four cyl, lex brown had an acco a with a 5 cyl , a bloke subbied for boral asphalt at eagle farm had a cd 1840 pulling single axle tipper had a 5 cyl in it , joe durrie had an old white with i think a four cyl in it, and there was a bedford tray truck getting a round permatrak lasy with a three cyl in it , that was the ones i knew of, there would have been a lot i didnt know about so i think they must have been a pretty popular repower but as oliver said they went pretty good brakes might have been an issuie on some of them lol