'86 Westwood T1200

Some more progress!!

Finished front belt retainers. Hopefully these will work quite good.



Swapped the rear pulley for this one. It has a deeper groove than the other one. This pulley had cuts in the surface but I've welded them up and ground them down again.



Rear belt retainer. Hopefully I only need one. I can add more if I need too.



New clutch linkage.



This is the clutch linkage installed. Its fully adjustable except for the pedal end although I might make it adjustable too. It does need some more adjusting but we're quite close to having a test run. Just a few finishing touches needed.

Looks very 90 degrees! It does look good. Do you think you will need some kind of support so it does not hang down?

I had to do the 90° to stop the belt rubbing on it. I don't think it will need support, hopefully it will stay up and out of the way of the belt.

How is that linkage working out?

Well, I'm back, long time no see. Been busy with other things but now that we're coming into Spring/Summer I should have more time for my projects and the forum.
Hopefully I'll be more active from now on

Not much has changed on the Westwood since the last update, only that I managed to snap the bolt holding the steering wheel on in the steering shaft so I had to remove some stuff to get the shaft out. I have a spare steering shaft but the steering gear and 'swivel thing' are completely rusted stuck onto the shaft and I cannot remove them to get the shaft out of the dash that it is in to put it into the T1200. I've tried Penetrating oil, heat etc but it still wont come off. Currently it is sitting it waste oil, hopefully it will be able to get into every little crevice and break the bead of rust.  

Anyways, I left with trying to make a new clutch and moving the clutch pedal to the left side. Well, the design didn't really work because it conflicts with the shifter linkage and the steering arm (something I didnt think to check at the time) so I removed it today and am going to revert the clutch back to it's original position with some modifications to accommodate for the bigger front pulley.

Here's some photos of the old clutch mechanism I removed today to refresh your mind.

It's great to have ya back Matt!! Hopefully you get that clutch figured out too.

Matt!  Long time no see!  Good to see the Westwood in here again!  Also, done any work on those engines?

Thanks Allis and Mighty, its good to be back! Yeah, I want to get it back to the original for now, then in future I may try to get a left side clutch pedal working. Mighty, do you mean the compressed air/steam engine conversion?

Some progress has been made over the past few days:

Removed the engine to clean the frame of old oil and dirt from previous oil leaks.


Also cleaned the bottom of the sump of the engine

Engine reinstalled with M8 bolts, washers and lock nuts.


I then turned my attention to the pulley situation. The front pulley is the same as I had planned before - 6 1/4 inch.

The rear pulley is going to be 5 1/2 inch. It is a deck drive pulley that was the engine pulley on this mower for a while. I cut the rest of the 1" diameter pipe off the pulley.

I then found the center piece of cut out of a transaxle pulley, the area around the keyway was a bit thin so I welded it up and smoothed it down with the bench grinder.


I then welded the center piece into the 5 1/2" pulley to make my new transaxle pulley. Most of the welding is on the underside of the pulley, the upside is just tacked. Here it is installed, and I know that the hole in the frame is rough but I plan on smoothing it out.


More updates soon!

Nice job Matt! That frame looks nice and clean up front. So now you just gotta figure out the clutch again and she should be ready to drive?

Looks good! I see someone else likes to be cheap with pulleys like me, haha.

AllisKidD21 wrote:

Nice job Matt! That frame looks nice and clean up front. So now you just gotta figure out the clutch again and she should be ready to drive?

Thanks! Yeah, clutch needs sorted and I have to fix the steering as I snapped a bolt off in the steering shaft.

RichieRichOverdrive wrote:

Looks good! I see someone else likes to be cheap with pulleys like me, haha.

Haha, I had the pulleys laying around and if I have the bits I need I'd rather make it than buy it.

Anyway, found time to get some work on the engine done today.
Stripped another 12hp carb that I had that was in better condition than the small 8hp one that's on the engine at the minute.

Boiled the carb in water and vinegar for a couple of hours, rinsed it out, let it completely dry and assembled it again and got the Briggs running sweetly again. Also fitted a screw to the choke so that I have a manual choke at the carb when I'm pull starting it. 

I removed the straight pipe for now as it was a bit too loud especially in my garage. Screwed in a muffler that I've had laying around for a while.


That's all for now

Pretty good update for zero money spent. I wonder how that bailing trick worked on your carb. You'll have to let me know how it runs and idles once it's running. Does your gas over there have ethanol in it? I wonder the braided tubing with hold up for gas line?

Crazy_Carl wrote:

Pretty good update for zero money spent.  I wonder how that bailing trick worked on your carb. You'll have to let me know how it runs and idles once it's running.  Does your gas over there have ethanol in it?  I wonder the braided tubing with hold up for gas line?

Thanks Carl! The carb works fine once it was adjusted. Idles perfectly and revs up nicely. I've used that trick before on a couple of Honda clone carbs, works well on those too. Yeah, there can be anything up to 5% ethanol in our fuel but I think it's going to change to 10% soon. The braided tubing works really well for a fuel line, I use it every time I have to change a fuel line. It also allows you to see if there is fuel flowing through it or not.

More progress;
Fitted the clutch pedal

Clutch mounted and linkage sorted 

Clutch pulleys mounted and belt routed

Belt guides for the engine pulley

Belt running to the trans.

Flipped the rear pulley upside down to lower it down in the frame and added a rear belt guide.



Previously I had snapped the bolt in the steering shaft so I replaced it with a spare I had laying around.




With everything sorted out, I took her for a spin! It went pretty well to be honest, although the test run did highlight some things that I need to address:

• I need to wire up a on/off toggle switch
  
• The belt is a little loose, probably need to add either a spring loaded or adjustable tensionor 
  
• The trans makes a terrible noise, especially when not under load. 
  
• Need to replace a tube in one of the front tyres.
  

Otherwise, I'm very happy to finally have it running and driving, now I can improve on it.

Nice job Matt! Good to hear she's driving again, haha. I like how simple the clutch setup is on that rig, there's not really much linkage per se, just the pedal and the actual clutch. Seems like a good setup.

Thanks Allis! The only downside to the clutch being the way it is that you can't adjust the it.

Oh yeah, I suppose that is true. Well either way, still kinda neat haha.

Today I wired in a on/off toggle switch...

...And swapped out the Peerless 801 for an oil filled MST 205. The MST is in much better internal condition than the 801 and I want to use the 801 in my Westwood S1200 (when I get round to building it )


Got it all bolted up and the shifter connected. Tomorrow I'll install the pulley and get the brakes sorted out and get it driving. This trans swap should also hopefully reduce the whining noise from the drive train.

Stay tuned for more...

oooooo trans swap this is getting exciting!  Thanks for returning to tractor modding and ATLTF @MatthewD

Very nice MatthewD.  I'm on year 2 now of my MST, granted it hasn't had too much stress other than doing some pulling burying my tires in the dirt. Doc locker on it is pretty solid!

Crazy_Carl wrote:

oooooo trans swap this is getting exciting!  Thanks for returning to tractor modding and ATLTF @MatthewD

Thanks! Yeah, over the winter I kinda lost motivation to do any work on my mowers so wasn't very active on the forum. Now I'll be more active and doing more builds (hopefully)

MightyRaze wrote:

Very nice MatthewD.  I'm on year 2 now of my MST, granted it hasn't had too much stress other than doing some pulling burying my tires in the dirt. Doc locker on it is pretty solid!

Thanks! That's good news about the MST, I don't think I'll lock this one because it's just a workhorse and won't really be seeing any deep mud.

Made an exhaust for the old girl today. The end of the steering arm was hitting the old threaded muffler when the front axle was tilted. 
I used this exhaust that was on a 8hp Briggs I have. I believe it's made from an old mini exhaust. I then modified it to look better and fit with the hood.









When I was pulling a trailer I put the clutch in and nothing happened. It turned out that the clutch rod had broken off. I welded it back on at a slight angle to allow the clutch to move more and also installed a bigger clutch pulley. The clutch now bites a lot more and I don't think the belt slips anymore, I still have to test it under load.

I still want to make another belt retainer for the rear pulley as the belt comes off there now and again. Apart from that she's being really a useful workhorse pulling trailers etc. I'm also thinking of setting her up with 2 tanks to run on gas/kerosene. The flathead Briggs' run on kero very well when they're warm so a small tank for gas for starting would be needed. Let me know what you think!

I like it. Do you just make exhaust gaskets out of thin cardboard? I need a couple exhaust gaskets lol

Thanks CQ! As for exhaust gaskets, I just found some in a box of Briggs bits I had. I'm not too sure if cardboard would stand up to the heat.

I wasn’t sure either that’s why I asked lol. Would be a fun experiment I suppose

Finishing up the trans swap.
The axles on the MST are shorter than the axles on the 801 so the axle spacers from the 801 wouldn't work. 

So I made my own up. I used an axle spacer from my box of transaxle parts and cut it in half which fitted perfectly on the axle.



I also got the brakes sorted out. The brakes on this MST work better than the brakes on the 801 which is a bonus. They're still not perfect though and I think the pads are a little worn.

I also fitted a fuel valve.

And removed the dipstick and replaced it with a threaded cap because the threads on the shroud for the dipstick bracket are stripped.

Yeah fuel shut offs are always a good idea. Did you consider welding a couple of nuts inside your blower shroud and using something like an M5 or M6 to hold the dipstick on. I prefer to check my oil level with a dipstick, but it's pretty easy I suppose to unscrew that cap and see right where the oil level is.