That one dates back to the late construction phase of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. It was owned originally by Frontier Trucking based on the paint. I'd bet it's a 1743 with a supercharged 4-53 Detroit. If I remember right, they weigh about 8200 pounds. The Detroit motor is a heavy one especially compared to the Chrysler gas motors. The latticework frame on the big 'cat is taller than the gas 'cats too.
The body on these is a good 2 1/2 feet wider than my '77 1742. My 1742 is silly tight for three in the cab (about 4 inches between the bucket seats) but the big 1743s could easily seat three across the front, though there were only two buckets. I think Tucker considers these a 12-passenger - two in front and ten in back in two facing rows. As I recall the spec plate says you can carry 3500 pounds in the cab.
It also looks to have what Tucker referred to as "tundra tracks". These ran the steel grouser (really just a solid bar with the integrated tire guides) on the inside of the track belts with a just a backing plate on the outside as compared with the standard steel grousers which run outside the belts and have the backing plates to the inside. They had NO traction elements and were designed to be able to run in minimal snow conditions with little or no ground disturbance. They were used on North Slope, which is generally flat and they were run in established tracks where traction was not really needed.
I owned two of these machines for about a year, although I never had a chance to run them in the snow. I can't imagine they'd climb hills well at all, especially when compared to a snow track-equipped one.
One thing to note about these tracks is that the track belting uses a different bolt spacing than the standard snow track both on the grouser and between grousers, so "standard" belts bought from vendors like FallLine won't have the right hole spacing and may not be long enough.
If you had a line on snow tracks, the price sounds in the ballpark to me... but it's probably not the kind of thing you'd buy as a hobby sno-cat. It's big and heavy and not terribly capable in it's present form unless you have a bunch of people or cargo to haul on established, flat terrain.
