Randy Chrisman built a mini dozer for his 3-year-old son Henry and admits he got a little obsessed with what eventually became a scaled, working replica of a full-sized Cat D5.

Check out the video above to see Henry and his mini dozer in action.

In building what Chrisman dubbed the “Cat D.5,” he spent about a year off and on studying the designs and specs on Caterpillar’s website of its Next Gen Cat D5 with a straight blade. Using 3D modeling software, he designed all the components to scale as similar as possible to the 170-horsepower medium-sized dozer.

“Everything's purpose-built for the dozer,” he says. “I spent many hours just staring at Caterpillar’s website just following the lines.”

The D.5 runs on a 24-horsepower Cat 1.1-liter diesel engine obtained from the local Holt Cat dealership close to Chrisman’s home near Sacramento, California.

It has Parker hydraulics. The straight blade is about 50 inches wide, 18 inches tall and 240 pounds. The blade goes up and down and tilts with proportional-controlled hydraulics.

“It’s fully functional,” Chrisman says. “We had to tone the hydrostats down a little bit because it has more pump and weight than it has horsepower, but it will get a full blade of dirt.”

The mini dozer even has a full LCD touchscreen display, where Henry has a tachometer, parking brake control and throttle.

It has seat and seatbelt switches and indicator lights. “Both the seatbelt and the seat switch both have to be activated before it'll move,” Chrisman says.

The little D.5 has three operation modes to be selected:
• Remote Only enables the dozer to be operated solely by its belly pack remote control.
• Local Only enables it to be operated solely by the joysticks and requires the seatbelt and seat switches to first be activated.
• Blended mode enables Dad to override the joysticks when Henry is in the seat. “When he gets too close to Mom's car or whatever may happen, we can redirect him.”

Videos of Henry operating his new D.5 delighted Chrisman’s Instagram following for the “Henry’s D.5” channel.

One video of him operating in the snow drew close to 3 million views. Two others hit close to the 2 million mark.

To read more about Henry’s D.5, go to equipmentworld.com.

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