Wrenching Tales
By Cindy Ladage

Many have never seen a UD24 engine, but several visitors to this year’s Summer Farm Toy Show in Dyersville, Iowa, got the chance. The massive engine was sitting on a Maclander trailer in the International Harvester Chapter 5 display, where owners Jerry Wessel Sr. and John Boyens deem it will stay into the future as far as they can see.

“It weighs about 8,800 pounds (and) has 1,091 cubic inches,” Jerry shared. “There were about 2,000 of these made and a lot of the engines went into crawlers.”

This particular engine that John’s son, Chris, found on the Internet was used in a rock crusher in a quarry in the 1950s. John and Jerry have known each other since their youth and living near a quarry, they could hear the engines whirring late into the night as they worked away.

It was that sound that stuck with these two International Harvester collectors and made them want to add the UD24 to their bevy of IH equipment nearly a decade ago.

“They had two rock crushers,” John explained. “This one came off a rock crusher that had been replaced by an electric motor. The electric company had made them an offer.

“This is a 1953 setup. It makes 180 horsepower at 1,200 rpms. They had put it out in a wheat field with lots of other machines.”

The two headed to the northern location and picked up the engine in howling 40-mph wind. Once they got the massive machine home, the restoration began.

“To restore it, we had a lot of trouble getting the No. 1 piston out,’ John and Jerry said. “We froze it with CO2 gas. We then rebuilt the heads. One had a crack we welded it up and knurled the pistons, then honed the sleeves before sandblasting and painting.”

Restoration was a family effort. Jerry’s sons, Matt and Craig, helped him and John. The UD24 is part of a series that John and Jerry are working on. There is both a gas and diesel series, and the diesel engines are signified with the D after the U.

“We got into it,” John said. “There are 10 units in that series and the smallest being the U1, which is basically a Cub engine. Between Jerry and I, we’ve got them all.”

Out in front of the UD24 engine John and Jerry had an advertisement explaining what the IH engines had to offer their customers: “With International Fastest Payback Power starts your equipment engines. Your best equipment investments are dependable machines that pay for themselves.

“Fastest on the job and by powering those machines with International, you can make sure fastest payback power starts in your equipment engines.” It all boils down to a big engine for a very big job!

Readers with questions or comments for Cindy Ladage may write to her in care of this publication.