Gaskets, make them or buy them?

[Radcam]

I had to remove the injection pump off of my D2 and I wanted to know if it is worth the effort to make the paper gaskets, or can they be had for a reasonable cost through Cat?

Also is there a source for the pre-cleaner jar?
Mine is an old plastic mayonaise jar that is to tall, and I would like to replace it with the proper jar.

[ccjersey]

Make them if you're in a hurry, but I don't think they'll be prohibitively expensive for just a few gaskets.

It's also possible they aren't available, but I'm betting they are. Seems like that for most of the old equipment, the gasket sets are no longer available, but individual gaskets are. Just costs more that way.

The precleaner jar might hurt a bit from CAT. Someone had some on here for sale a while back.

[Jack]

I got engine gaskets within the last year for a D2 5U engine, nearly ev ery gasket in the engine. All were readily available from Cat and not all that expensive. Also, consider that Cat uses a better material than I can buy at regular auto parts stores, they are cut very clean and they fit.

There was one that had to be ordered. It's about the size of a playing card and they insist on UPS shipment so there was about $7.00 freight on a gasket that cost about a buck, so you might have to consider that if they don't have all items in stock.

[ol Grump]

Something to remember when ordering parts from Cat is that if they don't have what you need at the store, they're part of a network and get stuff from other dealers. What I do is order the parts and tell them that I'm not in that much of a hurry so when they order stuff from other stores to just piggyback my order. Usually saves money that way vs having a special shipment with just my stuff.

The precleaner jar for my D47U would have run around $25 but I found a large mouth pint Mason jar fit nicely, just had to wrap a turn of parachute cord below the ring to make it fit snugly.

[Radcam]

Well I went ahead and bought the gaskets from Cat. They are able to get everything but three gaskets, and it only cost me $53. What really amazes me is that they had some of the gaskets and seals on hand and are able to get everything else the next day. This for a machine that is seventy years old, I bet I wouldn't have that kind of success at Ford getting parts for my seven year old car.

Hopefully I will have the Cat up and running this weekend, if the weather doesn't get to nasty and I'm able to repair the return line.

Thanks to everyone for their assitance, I do appreciate it.