Truck motor in a lawn mower

I want to put a v6 or v8 motor in a lawn mower and i want to know whats all involved with doing this.

Near impossible. You will need the engine, transmission, and a rear axle. Lots of money involved, lots of fabricating work.

Doug Fackler wrote:

Near impossible. You will need the engine, transmission, and a rear axle. Lots of money involved, lots of fabricating work.

X2 At this point its not really gunna be a mower anymore, it would have to be a custom frame with the drivline from a truck/car with a lawn tractor body on it. But people have put v8s on garden tractors dont think they used the transmission from the vehicle tho ,if you look around on google im sure you can find one someone has allready built for inspiration .

Yeah i found a couple on google.
It will be alot of fab work but i got alot of time so all i need to get is a engine,tranny,axle.

it can be done, ive seen a v8 ATV on YT before ( used a 350 small block)- even seen pics of a v8 shoved in the front of a snowmobile - but the trick would be to make it look good .

Itll take a bit of money, time and lots of fabrication.

Its best to figure out the drivetrain and build the tractor around it first, because if you dont, the sheetmetal will be all hacked up to make it fit right.

You want to look for an older carb motor, otherwise if it has EFI, thatll be a serious pain to try and hook up right ( youll need the entire wiring harness, computer, all sensors, gas tank, ect) .

You also might need a manual trans, depending how the car/truck trans is setup- most new ones use computer control - older ones use vacuum to shift, but a kick down lever is needed.

The rear end you pick would need to be drastically shortened to fit right, then that means either buying new axles or attempting to shorten stock ones.


Id look for an older 4 cylender toyota truck drivetrain ( be plenty of power for a tractor) .

i have a friend who took a V4 engine from a generator and put it in his lawn tractor, last time i saw him was in december he said there was a pulling competition March 8th or 9th, i think i should get a hold of him and ask how everything went(im assuming everything's done and ready:P), he put it in a cub chassis and used the Cub Transaxle, since it was shaft drive i dont think it was too much work to do. And he used the original frame, etc. but its a cub not a MTD so the frame isnt that flimsy.

Yeah it will be alot of work to do this.

Im gonna get me a older cub cadet thats shaft driven and put the trans in my mower that way i would be shaft driven and then get a motor.

Sounds like you might break the cub doing that Im gonna be building something like this soon... Im gonna build It out of an old nissan 4x4 Im gonna chop the frame from the truck use the stock axle lengths and build a tractor body around it... Its gonna be four wheel drive too

Haha I'm doing the same thing! Just a smaller engine.

Yeah.
Yeah the cub is just for a parts mower.
Mine gonna 4 wheel drive to.

you are gonna have alot of work ahead of you lol

Yeah i figured that.

I saw a twin cylinder roto mower or something on YT sounded like a import.

redlinemotorsportts wrote:

I saw a twin cylinder roto mower or something on YT sounded like a import.

Yeah iv herad them to.