What have you done to your tractor today?

Oh yeah Beal! Nice job. Looks like you made it from an old class 1 (1") hitch for a car.

Beal did something????? Lol nice welds man!

Man, I bet that will break the tractor before the hitch.

i found a fuel delivery issue, not really sure why since it's been running fine up till now, but the molkt atv carb on my murray is suddenly starving for fuel, hooked up a cheap electric pump i had and it's no longer starving for fuel, only now the pump leaks under pressure and it causes the carb to flood out, so i'm going to go with a pulse pump and that should give me the right pressure without having to use a regulator and T fitting setup, plus the pulse pump is a little cheaper than a new non leaking electric pump, on the other hand my brother made out like a bandit, he traded a push mower with a 3.5 Tecumseh, he found it in the trash yesterday, and $30 for a running, mowing 1st gen craftsman, it has a 14.5 ohv briggs on it, he only had to get into our spare tire stash and grab a good front and rear tire for it, since 2 of the tires went flat in minutes.

I got a deal on a mower, mostly the 20hp vanguard v twin in it,$50 for the whole tractor, just needs a starter solenoid to run and it does mow, so i'm giving the chassis to my brother who has a 14.5ohv briggs he'll put on it and i'm taking the engine for the murray gt i'm building and he's going to use the new mower as a spare until I can get a couple issues worked out on my saber mower

we picked up a john deer 125 a few days ago, briggs vtwin and hydrostat transaxle, no deck, $100, my brother wants the twin for his craftsman lt1000, and the chassis we are making into a trail machine for when friends want to come riding, we have several 12hp flatheads that run good and will pull the hydro just fine, it'll never be a speed demon or good for deep mud, but the trails around here are mostly dry hilly terrain and it should be great for that

I just got a cub cadet zero turn, Honda 2113, and John Deere GT for 200 bucks. Also traded a Murray for a craftsman 2 that will become my Mark II build

Nice score! Is the Honda hydro? Is the Craftsman II the squarebody version?

The craftsman II is not the square body unfortunately. Thinking of runnin it as is, swapping a square body front end on it, or a Murray hood like mighty has on kal el. Haven’t decided yet.

Yes the Honda has a hydro, but it’s blown. Engine runs great though

we went for a ride, 1st ride in weeks, but we wanted to see how the jd125 would do stock, it did good really, but the reverse is weak, we had a friend riding it and he's pretty light, maybe 145LBS, and it struggled to pull him at times in reverse, forward is strong, it actually pulled me out of some nasty sticky mud I got stuck in without a problem, we were out for 6 hrs, right up until I destroyed the clutch pulley on my murray, that sucked because I was in a mudhole when I lost the pulley and it threw the belt.

i had to make a decision today, my poor old murray lt is in need of some serious work, the dash has broken free and I pulled the transaxle for another murray wide body that's in much better shape, I also got my old noma going, but the chassis flexes like a cooked noodle so I decided to combine the two, i'll take the body off the murray chassis leaving the good stuff like the steering and frame, the noma has a nice solid body, the dash and everything else is in great shape, except the steering and the fact it flexes so much, plus I like the look of the noma better than the Murray so I will strip everything off the bottom of the noma, and mount the pan directly to the murray frame, the combined frames should give it good strength with a little bracing I plan to add and will end up being my 4x6 later on

This sounds like a pretty good build plan.  Kinda like a fraken murray.

this is what i'm dropping onto the murray chassis

I don't know if it was branded as a noma or dynamark or what, but the tag on the rear says noma so that's what I refer to it as, or I just call it rusty, the transaxle is a hi/low unit out of a yard machines garden tractor, it is like the 600 series transaxle with the gear shift as a one piece unit and has 1" splined axles with 4 bolt hubs, it originally had a very-drive between it and the engine but now is direct drive from the engine

Sounds like a good plan there. Are you going to put the Noma body onto the Murray frame?

MatthewD wrote:

Sounds like a good plan there. Are you going to put the Noma body onto the Murray frame?

i'm dropping the whole thing down on it, the noma body and original pan frame, i'll strip the underside of the pan totally anything that doesn't unbolt i'll cut off, so the pan sits down onto the murray frame, i'm hoping I can use the engine mounting holes as a sort of guide to get the two aligned nice and straight, i'll have to make some modifications to the noma, because I plan to use the clutch setup on the murray, so i'll have to cut a slot in the left foot board so the clutch pedal fits and operates, the noma's in on the right foot board, and i'm going to have to cut some of the bottom of the pan away in the rear because the murray clutch set up sits higher than the frame rails and would hit the bottom of the pan, that's about as far as I've gotten in planning atm, i'll know if I have to make anymore mods to the noma chassis once I get it stripped and get the murray frame set inside it

should I start another thread for this build, because I've made some changes to my original plan but don't think it's really worthy of a thread of it's own, if one of the mods wouldn't mind giving me their opinion on it

If you feel you should make a new thread that wouldn't be a problem.

Definitely start a new thread!

I threw a wrench at mutt today i think

Not my tractor, but today I made a shifter fork out of scrap steel for Carter's Jake to replace the broken cast aluminum one. It worked too! Sorta proud of that.

PIX or it didn't happen!

Well I guess it didn't happen then, LOL. Last thing I wanted to do with oil covered hands was pick up my phone.

LOL

Replaced the input shalf's two needle bearings in my Spicer transaxle  case.

Hey!!!!! @muddstir While you're there drill and tap for a grease zerk!

I'll be going back through this in a week or so to measure play in the bushings. When I do that I'll be putting a few in the case.

But finally got it put together tonight, but i still have a few things to build for it before I can install it in the tractor.

I replaced the clutch pulley on my new to me sears ss16, the one on it was an aluminum pulley with a brass bushing, no wonder it locked up almost instantly I will have to get a new belt, the one on it is way to short with the right sized clutch pulley on it, I wonder if I can put the 4" pulley I have on the transaxle, it's a standard 5/8 keyed bore, i don't know what the transaxle input shaft is or what the stock input pulley size is for that matter, looks to be around a 7" but I can't be sure.