BY JIM ALLEN
SPECIAL THANKS TO LEE FOSBURGH AT CAT HISTORICAL, BRADEN REDDALL AT CHEVRON, AND JIM RUSH
Jim Rush’s Caterpillar 1D Single Cylinder Oil Test Engine (SCOTE) is so well-trained it can practically disassemble itself. Jim acquired the engine in 1997 from Michael Murphy, an Ohio-based diesel engineer who rescued it from a Pennsylvania farmer’s junk pile in 1991. As far as Jim knows, it came from the Standard Oil lab in New Jersey and was last used for testing in the late 1950s. Its exact age is undetermined, but certain design elements indicate that it’s from around 1940.