60's Springfeild Mini Speed Tractor

It looks bendy in one pic, did it flex?

redlinemotorsportts wrote:

21.5HP, Yea, i bet it will with my a$$ right on top of the rear tires, a wheelie bar might be in order....   

Or some fancy throttle work. Should be enough horsepower for you, older VW beetle's are only 40 some hp and weigh what, a couple thousand pounds. What's this thing gonna weigh? Probably no more than 275lbs I'm guessing.

mr.modified wrote:

redlinemotorsportts wrote:

21.5HP, Yea, i bet it will with my a$$ right on top of the rear tires, a wheelie bar might be in order....   

Or some fancy throttle work. Should be enough horsepower for you, older VW beetle's are only 40 some hp and weigh what, a couple thousand pounds. What's this thing gonna weigh? Probably no more than 275lbs I'm guessing.

I really dont know. im hoping under 200lbs. But not really a big goal.

Got the running boards totally done. Just used some pipe, and mtd footboards, few hours and its all fabbed up and very smooth.

They look nice

Looks good red, did you find a big washer for the input shaft support yet?

Thunderdivine wrote:

Looks good red, did you find a big washer for the input shaft support yet?

I'm using a snapper hub to do it, it's in my previous thread before this.

Looks good so far

Running boards really are pretty neat with the pipe going around them like that. I like the idea of having holes in them, I was thinking of drilling holes in my running boards but I don't know if i'll get to it or not.

Yea the holes are like punched so it kind of crowns up for grip if that makes sense. I was originally found to just weld the stock ones on but messing with the tubes wasn't to hard so I decided to make it look better.

Not much to say today, but i did lock the spider gears in the rear axle. using a 210 miller matic mig. like my third time on a mig welder and damn, they dont like anything but shiny metal, PITA compared to fluxcore, where sometimes i dont even prep anything. Oh well, burned in awesome. just grinded down the excess.

The key advantage to GMAW, to me, is that there is no spatter/slag to deal with when finished. If you can flow a clean bead you don't need to grind most jobs. A modern bicycle frame is a good example. However, I run a flux-core wire feed Lincoln for anything that wouldn't be affected by spatter/slag. On everthing I else I run a TiG unit. The best part about TiG is that you can get perfect penetration every time and the bead is never any bigger than you want/need since you feed it by hand. Like on those gears. No grinding!!  
By the way, those welds look nice, vs flux-core, as far as cleanup goes. GMAW doesn't like rust any better than grease.
What I wanna try is shielding gas over flux-core. In some fields of industry, apparently, this is done for the ULTIMATE welds with wire feed. I need a new stinger though before I can play.
Keep up the good work.

A lot of people don't like flux core because of what you said, the little balls of slag and the powered left over. It doesn't bother me at all, usually I finish welding and wire brush it. Then like with this build, I'll flap disk the hole frame before paint. I welded my boat trailer with the same mig and I couldn't get a clean wire burn, kept jumping because I couldn't get it all shiny metal in a notch of a bracket (rounded corner) and it was just so frustrating. I feel like flux core is the way to go with our builds, cheap, don't have to prep near as much, thinner metal work. But that's just me and my experience so far.

3rd bearing mounted, locked spiders in position, gunna try and swap the rear sprocket to something smaller too, stay tuned on that.



I have sense gusseted with little triangles from the green part to the flat stock that the green part is welded to for added strength

I havnt worked on it in a few days, but this is progress from last week.

Hopefully the last junkyard trip for it. New 35T rear sprocket (my original was so big, gearing was so high, and tires so small, the tranny was gunna BE a 35T.... LOL, dont even have room for that!) Mtd plastic bushings for steering shaft, buying these AFTER i got 4 oil bronze bushings that didnt fit the inner rim DIA tubes i was going to you (incredibly frustrating!!!!) and a sprocket im welding my tranny sprocket (yes got it off a MTD FNR axle and it fits!)

Got a 24T tranny sprocket.

Battery tray completed.


Steering shaft cut with the pitman arm at the bottom im probably re doing. Single bushing and bolted bracket to the motor plate.  Welded the small section on splined part on the steering shaft.



The rest of the cut steering shaft has splined parts for the steering wheel, and that shaft goes thru a 5/8" hole i drilled in some sheet metal. That small piece was welded on the bottom side to the shaft, then cut in a circle and welded to the u joint.


Strip of metal welded to the two pieces of angle iron that make up the steering colum/dash. that single bushing and sleeve will be clamped to the black strip. The long sleeve holding two bushings slid over the upper steering shaft as you can see. Brackets will hold it to the frame.


And how the steering wheel will sit. in the most comfortable position as its going to get-and it isnt that bad really!

24T tranny sprocket, is'nt that going to be overkill?

Thunderdivine wrote:

24T tranny sprocket, is'nt that going to be overkill?

well I'm running it gov'd, on 16's rear, and 1:1 pulleys. Math comes out to 45mph.

Besides, he'll have spare gears and chains in the race hauler, just in case track conditions change...

Man, I really like this build, my next project might have to be something like this.

MurryMaddnes wrote:

Man, I really like this build, my next project might have to be something like this.

Thanks man, its a different build being so opposite to my offroader.


So anyways, after a bunch of measuring, finding out angles, length of throw in arms, and re checking, the steering system is done, very satisfied. Made it run under the engine, as there was no room under the chassis. The main pivot with three tie rods connecting to is from a snowmobile, witch has been chopped, and has a 7/8 bolt running through it with a jam nut locking system.

Tie rods being shortened. cut, welded, grinded down to look stock. Came out good



The piece from the snowmobile. has bushings, grease zerk, and proper ackermann effect. Trimmed and modded to work...



I get my rod ends from snowmobiles, and had these aluminum tie rods laying around left over from the snowmobile. So i bent, chopped, and re threaded the end to fit and work around the crankshaft.


Dat ackermann...


And turning radius. Witch is less then half a turn of the wheel click to click. Not super ideal, but i cant really change it. No room at all.

I guess I'm fairly satisfied. I think with mine, I could gain just a hair more if I shortened my pitman arm. But, bleh! I'm done messing with it lol.

thats real nice how fast do you think its going to go

If I ran my numbers right, it should be around 45mph. I'm sure it would do 60 just fine.

68.3 mph on methanol/benzene blend and special super secret 14:1 heads direct from the briggs factory.

mr.modified wrote:

68.3 mph on methanol/benzene blend and special super secret 14:1 heads direct from the briggs factory.

Totally, and with some horse injection.

thats a cool idea has it been done