LawnBoy UTLTV aka MULE

xxXMowerdudeXxx wrote:

20 bucks it don't whine as much as mine, mine complains at everything I do lol

I'll take your 20 as fast as anyone's... LOL- she's pretty loud. Louder than the engine at idle, and that's WITH the Cherry Bomb on there!

Doc Sprocket wrote:

xxXMowerdudeXxx wrote:

20 bucks it don't whine as much as mine, mine complains at everything I do lol

I'll take your 20 as fast as anyone's... LOL- she's pretty loud. Louder than the engine at idle, and that's WITH the Cherry Bomb on there!

Are we all having axle troubles? My axles move 1/4" in the case ends. No fixing that!

Jeez. Predictable breakage there.

Ok, mine whins loud enough I can hear it over my duel straight pipes wide open

Okay, you can keep your $20 for now- she's not that loud yet... LOL Yet.

Okay! Finally gathering a bit of motivation and strength, post surgery. So- out come the paints. Did this between last night and this morning. Here it is!

Love the paint job, Doc!

Yowza! Looks awesome. Very well done.

Thanks guys. I'm pretty new at the camo thing. I have only camo painted one other thing- my fishing rod transport tube last year. I would like to do better but I guess it will come with practice. I hope...

After a bad start to the morning, I cracked into some work that I've been putting off. Everytime you let the clutch out, it whined like Axl Rose. I suspected the transaxle pinion shaft bearings. I whipped the wheels off and the transaxle out. Tore it down, and threw in a pair of bearings I had saved from the General's original gearbox. FWIW- The General had an 800, The MULE has a 920, and they even looked the same size as the 700. I LOVE when manufacturers do that. Peerless FTW!

After getting at all back together, the noise was reduced but not eliminated. WTF? Futher investigation revealed that both clutch pulleys had bad bearings, and they appeared to be non-repairable. Damn!

Scrounging around, I found some decent replacement pulleys. One was larger than stock, the other smaller. Between the two, I figured I was good so I installed them. Success!

Now, with my super-low idle, you can't hear anything outta the driveline. YAY!

sounds good doc. literally.. lol. i gotta do my idler for my clutch. not smooth at all

i blew an idler on my clutch a month ago. lol. still havent replaced it so the mower has been sitting.

Nice job about quieting it down, how did you pin-point the noise?

Thanks. By using logic, and the process of elimination, really. Here's the symptoms: With engine running, there was a loud whine that changed pitch with engine speed. Noise appeared in all gears including neutral. Noise disappeared when clutch pedal was depressed, and noise returned when clutch pedal released. This was regardless of whether it was sitting or driving (or coasting)

This tells you that the noise is not the engine, nor is it in the final drive. Why not? Because road speed didn't matter, just engine speed. So- what changes with engine speed only? well the engine, belt, clutch pulleys, tranny input pulley and pinion, spur gear, mainshaft. Of course, when you push the clutch in, everything stops but the engine. What gets noisy when shafts turn? Bearings. Bad ones.

At one point when things were getting noisy awhile back, I locked the clutch in and reached under the machine (with engine off). I grabbed the transaxle input pully and wobbled it. It felt sloppy, and sloppy is bad. By sloppy, I mean I was able to rock it a bit (wobble) not just rotate it.

So I removed the transaxle and checked further. Indeed, I did not like what I found in terms of the condition of the pinion bearings so I replaced them with a good set from an 800. Putting it all back together, the noise was reduced, but still well audible. That pretty much left the clutch pulleys. I yanked them both, and found them both to feel sloppy (and kinda crunchy). Unfortunately, both pulleys were manufactured in such a way as to prohibit bearing replacement. Basically, the bearing was inserted, and then the 2 pulley halves were spot-welded together. Grrr!

I could have drilled out the spot welds and sourced replacement bearings, but instead I had a look through my junk. I found 2 good pulleys, one flat, one v. The V-pulley was smaller than the old one, and the flat pulley was bigger. Hmmm. Might work, averaging out and all. I put them in, having to play with height spacing a bit. Installed, I lit the engine once again. Quiet as a church mouse. I can run my idle down VERY low. Putt...putt...putt... Couldn't hear any noise, clutch in or out. Nice!

Paint looks good. Quick education on camo paint, since I own military trucks. TB-43-0209 is the current 3 color NATO camo, for trailers and trucks. A quick google will bring it up, and it shows the patterns for painting camo, and markings if you want it to belong to a certain army base. 383 green, 383 brown and 383 black are the paints used, which can be bought at sherman williams I believe. You can download the pdf, then scale the patterns to fit whatever you are painting, for a authentic military camo scheme.

Just remembered your in Canada, but I think they also use NATO patterns.

They also used digitized, 4 color, and solid camo schemes.

On the bearings, I drilled a hole through a finger taking apart an idler pulley... Ow. In a pinch, you can take it apart, and swap out a good bearing from another pulley.

Thanks for the paint notes! I did not attempt to match a particular scheme, just had some fun. However, I will follow up on your notes and maybe use the "new info" when I paint MULEII. Since MULEII only exists in my head, I've got some time to work out the details...

As for the pulleys, I really did think about bearing replacement. Since I did have an easier solution lying around, I decided to go the easy route.

I like the easy route, much less painful!

Looks good Doc, looks really good. While you research those colors for the camo, look up pine straw patterns. Now I'm thinking of doing this to war machine mk 1.1 (lol) but with colors more specific to my area - Slate Grey, Sage Green (and brown), Sand Tan, and whatever others I can identify with a paint equivalent. Mule II with the pine straw camo and relevant colors for your camouflage would be pretty cool to see  

I was the transportation to the ER for Stretch when he confused his finger for steel that needed drilling... Ah, the memories of being cheap rednecks.

TheRainbowBoxer wrote:

I was the transportation to the ER for Stretch when he confused his finger for steel that needed drilling...  Ah, the memories of being cheap rednecks.

Ouch how bad was it?

Stiches. Luckily, didn't drill anything too important. Spent that haspin with one less finger working.

You know the curls of metal you get when drilling steel? Your flesh does the same thing....

Stretch44875 wrote:

Stiches.  Luckily, didn't drill anything too important. Spent that haspin with one less finger working.  

You know the curls of metal you get when drilling steel?  Your flesh does the same thing....

At least you didn't try to weld it

prometheusedi wrote:

Looks good Doc, looks really good. While you research those colors for the camo, look up pine straw patterns. Now I'm thinking of doing this to war machine mk 1.1 (lol) but with colors more specific to my area - Slate Grey, Sage Green (and brown), Sand Tan, and whatever others I can identify with a paint equivalent. Mule II with the pine straw camo and relevant colors for your camouflage would be pretty cool to see  

You... basically read my mind. I was looking into this, and opted not to do it THIS time. I wanted to take some time to practise and learn more before doing a tractor. Meanwhile, I just wanted to get MULE painted, so I went for quick and easy first. Besides- that's what MULEII is all about, right? Improvements upon the original design!

UPDATE-

After a long week in the hospital, I started turning wrenches again yesterday. MULE's got a gas pedal now! I had that annoying dashboard control that regulated both the throttle and choke. I separated the choke control, and now the dash lever ONLY runs the choke. I used the brake pedal from a 1989 Yamaha Virago motorcycle for the gas pedal. It features it's own return spring, and adjusting screw, and it's strong enough to put up with lead boots. I simply bolted the whole bracket to the side of the tunnel over the right floorboard. A little fine tuning of the cable pull and end points, and hammer down!



For my next magical trick, I will be doing away with the floor shifter. I hate it. The knob rests right at the plate and I have smacked a finger more than once shifting. Plus, I have no interest in reaching between my legs... LOL

I'll save the "underneath" picture for a time where it's a wee bit more comfortable to shoot a pic in that orientation, BUT-

I re-did my shifter this afternoon. I hated the console shift on this thing. So... I cut off the factory shift lever mechanism from the tranny shifter arm, welded another tab on the arm, made up a linkage rod with some 1/4NPT and a couple of old heim joints, and tied it to the old PTO engagement lever in the dash. Presto! Comfortable shifting, up where you can reach it.

I've marked the gear positions temporarily on the dashboard, as well as the "new" choke control. Once everything is said and done, I will re-paint the dash and apply better markings. For now, here it is!



The funny thing is: Between the foot throttle and the better shifter, this thing is actually more fun to drive now!

Ooo... I like them both. It is always fun to change the function of a stock lever. One of ours uses the deck lift as a shifter, push button on shifter to take it out of neutral.

Do you find yourself skipping gears, with the short throw of the shifter?

When you do relabel, don't forget the operating instructions!