Mr.Modified's Simplicity Adventure Edition [2016 Build-Off Finalist]

Yeah if there was a good spot, I would definitely be interested in doing something like that. That would be pretty cool. Once I get my supplies trailer ready to roll.

Finally dug out my extra engine that I always wanted to build up for the simplicity.
The current engine is just an aluminum bore, this one is the I/C


The issue is that this edge on the crank shaft doesn't allow me to use both pulleys at once.
I need more room for the alternator pulley which is on the inside of the drive pulley.
I'll either have to remove the extra steel or I also have a couple of parts engines I can swap the crank out of.


Once I get this one ready and swapped into the simplicity. The plan is to have the original engine still ready to go as a spare.
This one came out of a big self propelled leaf vac. I don't think it had a lot of use, although it may have been outside a bit.

Ooo, this should be cool! What all do you have planned for the build-up?

I'll remove any governor parts as usual and mostly just make sure everything is within spec and clean. On the current engine I have the head cut down quite a bit. Not sure yet if I will use that head on this engine or mill another one down. I could go back to a stock head on the current engine which will become the spare, just to make sure it holds together if I needed to swap it back in. But probably wouldn't make much difference.

Probably mill the new head down too. Maybe clean up the ports. I could lighten up the valves a bit too now that I have my mini lathe. We'll see. I'll post any updates as things progress.

Also have to swap in the newer 633 transaxle. So it's kinda getting a full rebuild before Haspin 2020.

Found this cool commercial from 1971. Must have been one of the first years for my style hood I think. I know mine was a system 5010 and they were 1975 and 76. In the commercial there's a sears custom too.

A better view of the damage from the Top Tractor Challenge roll over. The back of the hood and steering wheel took the worst of it.

Rear of hood support tube bent very slightly down


Rear of hood right side


Rear of hood left side


It would be nice if I had a spare hood, I might try to bent this back a bit. Probably hard to straighten it out. Also the grill should be re-painted as some rust is coming through the paint. I found out why the engine seems to be stuck when I go to start it. Turns out that some rust forms on the drive pulley and sticks it to the belt. So no big deal there. I was thinking something was messed up internally.

This weekend I'll be taking the simplicity about 20 miles north of Utica NY for some suspension and reliability testing. There's a reservoir there that sometimes has the water level dropped down. When the water level is low, you can go along the sides pretty easy. Only thing is, it's hard to tell when it will be low and for how long.

My goal is to start at the stream that feeds the reservoir and follow the edge down to a gas station about 4 miles away. It might be almost 4.5-5 miles off road with some winding back and forth I'll need to do. There's several places where it might be tough to get around some small inlets. Hopefully the water is low enough. Otherwise I might need to get around by going up onto the road which follows the edge of the reservoir or maybe cut into the woods a bit. We'll see how it goes.

Here's the proposed route with a couple possible problem areas circled. Terrain ranges from steep side hills to flat. Some very rocky with large round river rocks and other areas sandy. Deep mud is also in some areas where there are springs along the sides ect.


An idea of the terrain from google


The first possible problem spot. I'll need to get around the water to continue up the beach but the area near the road may be too steep to go along the bank. I think I pipe goes under the road. I may need to get up the bank near the road surface to get across and then drop back down.


Here's the worst looking area. I know that the sides are steep and there might be a lot of mud where I would have to get around the water. I think they are way too deep to just go straight across in line with the beach. I'll have to see when I get there how bad it is.


Here's a couple of pics from several years ago when the water was low. Near the up stream end of the reservoir.


In this area it's rough but it flattens out mostly for the rest of the route. Not quite as rocky down stream.


I'll try to get pictures and video. Should be an almost 9 mile round trip, all off road. I'm going to finally check to see exactly how much fuel the Simplicity holds and get an idea of range for future long trips also.

Wow, that's gonna make for some epic wheeling for sure! Definitely a good reliability test, I imagine the ol' Simplicity will handle it just fine though.

Hope you get some video, I'd love to see the action!

I think we all love video!  Hope the TTC Flip doesn't hinder any reliability.

The damage from the flip is mostly cosmetic. Except the mangled steering wheel which has been bent back into shape 3 times. But it's good enough to use for now. I just need to check everything over, get some tools together and grease everything. Probably will change the oil again before I go. The steering has a bit of play (I think more than when I built it). Looks like some minor wear at the forward pivot and also the gear at the bottom of the steering column. Not the gear itself but the shaft that it pivots on. Later on I may try to work on that some. I might be able to machine a bushing or something with my mini lathe.

Changed the transmission oil, engine oil, greased all the steering and clutch pivot points. Checked for loose bolts in the steering and cleaned things up a bit. Getting closer to the big test run. Four and a half miles of suspension snapping terrain......


Draining the 633 transaxle. This was the first time I drained it out since building the tractor in 2016. I did it more to check on the condition of the gears and things than anything, although I have not experienced any problems with shifting or staying in gear.


There was some light metal color/metal shavings in the transmission oil. Nothing serious. No large flakes or anything like that. When I changed the engine oil, once again I had more aluminum color than I would like to see. But no large pieces or flakes there either. It seems to run good and doesn't smoke. The only thing I can think of is that it must come off the cylinder wall or the piston. When I remove the engine to put on the new one, I'll take it apart and see what it looks like. I don't think it's anything serious enough to cause immediate failure, and since the water level at the reservoir is down right now, I might as well use the current engine and transmission. No point in putting extra wear on the new items too soon if I don't have to.  


With the new carburetor setup, I'll be checking to see that the intake manifold bolts don't come loose like they did before. I used to have a brace hooked to the intake tube on the carb, but I think the engine vibrated more than the brace and it might have made the problem worse instead of better. So far they have stayed tight through the top tractor challenge and some driving around at the house.

Also this will be a good test too see how it runs once it gets hot and in different conditions with the new carb. I didn't think the mixture was 100% at higher speed and also, I had a slight issue getting it to idle down where I wanted it. Otherwise it's much better than the old setup. At least now it stays running consistently. The new carb could be just a bit too big for the engine. As long as it isn't too fussy on this run, I will probably leave it that way on the new engine.

A big thing that I never checked very close before is fuel economy. One of the big reasons why I went with the smaller under powered engine on this build. It's not supposed to use a lot of fuel! And although I pretty much designed it with longer trips in mind, I never really got a chance to do any long runs with it. At Haspin yes a lot of ground is covered and I have probably went this far before. But this time it's a straight run and a known distance. (More or less) And over rough ground. So it will be a good gauge to get an idea of range.

After this run, if anything major needs to be done, it would be a good time since the engine and trans will be out. So it's time to really push things hard and see if anything breaks.

Im excited to see how this trip works out for you, I was just thinking the other day theres a 40 ish mile dual sport loop that I ride and with just a little rerouting I figured how keep it off main roads so that it could theoretically be ran by tractors, prolly take 2 solid days Id guess, and the woods that its in Im 99 percent sure we could get by tent camping for the night without any hassle, as its a local timber company and they dont mind rzrs and trucks running all over the place so the chance to get hassled is very low. plus if we had some sort of major breakdown I could get a buddy to do a rescue mission no problem.

I’d be down for the log run. Ohio isn’t too bad of a drive. I need a new engine and new steering first though haha

Creepycrawler, yeah that sounds like it would be alright. As long as you could keep moving along it wouldn't be so bad as far as covering the distance.

I'd definitely be interested in something like that sometime in the future.

I'll have to sell everyone a custom mr.modified hood rack...

Just a short video I made basically explaining what I already posted. Just taking a look at the area with google earth.

Weather for Saturday at the test area is supposed to be clear with a high of 58F.

Made it back in one piece from the tractor expedition. Took a ton of video, which I'll be editing up soon. Turns out I couldn't make it very far off road because the bank was much steeper than I thought near my starting point. I had to hack my way through the woods and made some progress until I got into some really thick vegitation and also I was close to the back of some houses. I figured it was best to not cut through their property too much so I went back. Also the water was up higher than expected because of recent rain. The inlets were definately not passable and I would have had to winch up a really steep hill. Maybe if the water was down more there might be a way to do it, but it's tough terrain. I decided to risk riding the side of the road to the gas station and everything worked out. Didn't have any problems. After I made it to the gas station, I went farther beyond it to the point I had expected to end up with the off road route. There is a really wide area there and ATV's ride in there all the time. From there I headed down along the edge of the water and made it all the way to the dam, which is maybe another mile or two off road. Some places were just smooth hard packed sand. Got stuck a few times and used the winch a lot. Some cords broke in my drive belt and it somehow flipped upside down. But I flipped it over and it held up the rest of the weekend. The simplcity ran pretty much perfect. I would say I put at around 15 miles on total.








This was the steep part that I had trouble getting around. Really steep sides and much bigger rocks than I remembered. Got past some of it in the woods until the brush got too thick.

Cool pics! How was the fuel consumption?

Thanks, and oh yeah I almost forgot. It seems to me with the current gearing, I would say a close estimate for fuel consumption is around 13 miles per gallon. I would say that's the most I would figure on as a safe guess. I went at minimum 11.6 miles, probably a good amount more, maybe closer to 13-14 starting off with a full tank of fuel. I checked the tank capacity at 1.88 gallons. Had just about half a tank when I got back.

I didn't have a way to get a really accurate check on distance or on how much I used. As for distance, once I got off road I played around a bit and probably added a couple miles. Also got stuck for a few minutes and let the Simplicity idle while we got it out. I could have checked how much I used better but I didn't have the ability to do it right there at the time. So I could be off a bit. You get somewhere between 13-16mpg most likely.

That's not nearly as good as I expected for that small engine in there but I would guess the big engine machines drink even more. I'll probably do some more testing on that in the future and try to be even more accurate. The 1.9 gallon tank is plenty good for hours of run time as Haspin for example, so it's not too bad. In this case I ran wide open all the way down the side of the road for about 18 minutes straight each way. It was quite a load on it.

I should be able to just make it home from where I work with a full tank of fuel. That would be around 17-18 miles off road and a few miles on pavement (If I went the full distance).

Looks like a pretty cool place, I had a feeling from your video explanation that some of those spots were going to be un passable, hopefully you had a good time and it wasn’t a waste of a trip, those are some good pictures

bummer you couldnt make it around, but you look like you still had a good time, and got to do some long range testing. what is the top speed of the ol girl? and not sure if your really looking for much more economy but we ran a bunch of 6.5 predators on go karts and those things sip fuel, and are crazy powerful with a minkuni carb carb. at least the hemi ones are, and their only a 100 bucks brand new. I know when I went from a 8 hp flat head kohler to a 8 hp honda ohv back in the day on my sears I couldnt belive how much less fuel I used. also when I went to a 13 hp honda I was suprised how much it used compared to the 8hp

We checked it with a GPS and I think it was around 18-19 mph tops. That's about all the gearing I can use with the HP available and all the dragging stuff added up. The alternator, jackshaft, slight belt mis-alignments ect. Up hills slow you down a bit on the road, or if you get into softer ground like sand or mud of course. Doesn't take too much to slow it down in high gear. But as long as it stays fairly hard packed you can move along pretty good. Definately beats walking.

And Redzz, yeah I figured I would be able to sneak through a couple places but the brush was pretty heavy around the water inlets. And the beginning part of the route was way too steep and rocky anyway. It still worked out pretty nice though because I ended up still getting a couple mile long (roughly) run in beyond where I was going to stop anyway. Starting to work on editing video tonight so hopefully I'll have it ready soon.

@mr.modified well I’m glad you got your long run in , maybe if you can make it to haspin this year, maybe we can convince stretch and rainbow to try and do the perimeter of haspin like they’ve tried in the past

Hey I’m down to take the mk2 around the perimeter

Yeah sure. Hopefully I'll be able to make it out this year. That's the plan anyway. As long as nothing comes up I should make it. My back, shoulders, and my knees are still a bit tired from all that driving around. Guess the old sears leaf spring seat wasn't meant for that sort of thing. I was surprised it didn't blow up though. Everything worked pretty well. I got pretty used to shifting the 633 on the fly with the jackshaft brake too. Sometimes it went right into gear no problem. Just have to be careful to time it right.

I’d definitely be down for a perimeter run at haspin, that sounds like a good challenge. Not sure I’ll be there but if I am you can definitely count me in

Here's part one of the New York state run. This one is the initial attempt to get down the edge of the water. I could have kept going and probably found a way through but I didn't want to hack through brush on some people's property. Part two will have more of the action shots and less talking. I didn't bother to get all the video in sequence on the road run to the gas station. I just took video where I could. Mostly off road just past the gas station.