MTD off-road build (Mobile Terrain Dominator) "1"

Happy 1500th on your next post!

Yeah I guess that's true hahaha, and thanks!

Yeah, but I am right behind you! You come up with any ideas to make rear suspension yet on the MTD?

{sorry attempt to put thread on track}

I have thought about it, but I dont think that I'd attempt it. Keeping the belt and clutch happy would be the worst part I imagine, and those are my two least favorite things to have to mess with hahaha.

Well I did a bit more steering stuff on this ol' girl today.

I noticed my tie-rod ends were wore out and had quite a bit of play, so I decided to replace/upgrade them.

It was pretty windy today and was spitting on and off, so I tried to stay hidden as well as possible hahaha.





Dropped the tie-rod and started cutting and welding.









You can see where I re-welded my steering arms to have the proper Ackerman angles





Much better!

Looks good @alliskidd21. You are getting better with the molten metal.

Thanks mighty!

Well here's what happens when your stock muffler finally rots off the pipe:









I actually like the way it looks! It sounds cool too, not too loud either because it's pointing down. It still barks when you get on it quick though hahaha. I think I'll keep this setup cuz I'm liking it quite a bit. Let me know what ya think!

Looks good I think.

Does your tire hit it on a good flex and a left turn?

Thanks Beal!

I dont think it'll hit, but I'm not possitive haha. If so I might try to cut and re-shape it a bit.

Bout time you straight piped it. Now join us and pulley swap it

Yeah no kidding, I've been meaning to do it for a while but I guess the stock setup had to fall apart for me to actually do it hahaha.

Looks good! Straight pipe is the way to go!

CraftsmanQuad19 wrote:

Bout time you straight piped it. Now join us and pulley swap it

^^^^

Thanks Rich. I wasnt sure I wanted a straight pipe like that, but I actually really like the way she sounds now.

Looks good. When I built my kids mini bike, I steered clear of the straight pipe because it would have been loud for the Cops to find him, so I made him a muffler. Turned out it was louder then the straight pipe, LOL. I could hear him riding the thing 2 blocks away with the muffler. I had to make an addition to the muffler to quiet it down. Now I only hear him when he is in front of the house, LOL.

Thanks prancstaman. Haha, yeah luckily mine's not too too loud although I'm thinking about making a quick attach muffler setup that sits under the foot board so I could have it quiet or loud. That might be kinda cool

As youre driving if you reach forward and pull the governor arm to FULL throttle I bet itll give a good bark. The CQ kinda sounds like a quad or a motorcycle when I do, though not as good as a vtwin...

Yeah shes snaps pretty loud if you rev 'er up fast. I gotta finish my foot throttle though now that I've done the exhaust, stilll wanna have dual controls. Also I might try and richen my high throttle mixture a bit cuz I do get a small backfire every once in a while with the new pipe.

Did redline rig up some sort of butterfly in the exhaust on his?

Yeah he used one from a snowmobile carb to have a cable activated cutout. Pretty cool, I think RainbowBoxer had a similar setup before that but I'm not sure how he did his.

We've been getting quite a bit of rain in the last few days so I've been playing around with ol' Dominator in the muck.





Nothing crazy obviously but still enough of a mess to have fun! Haha. I also changed the oil in the transaxle today, had quite a few flakes in it but I guess that's not really surprising. Last but not least I put a slighty larger engine pulley on it like I've been planning to do, nothing wild but just enough to hopefully beat Carter's stoopid Yard Machines. Hahaha.

Thats how it starts.... the itch.  I'll just put a slightly larger pulley on.  Next thing you know you have a 9 inch on the engine and you are flying around!  LOL

Yeah hahaha, I doubt it. I did find out I can smoke the Yard Machines and that's what I wanted for speed, so all is good again haha. Having a bit of slippage though but maybe a different clutch spring setup will fix that. We'll have to see I guess!

Well not much new here, but I washed all the mud off of the ol' girl recently.





It was pretty dirty hahaha.



I can see 'er again!

Did a bit of a steering re-vamp recently. I did away with the drag link crossing over underneath the tractor thing, also I re-did the pitman arm with some nicer looking braces.



The old cruddy looking setup.







Then I re-did my pitman arm with a lap weld so it was a bit stronger that a butt weld.



Then I finally painted my steering box!





Basically I forgot to take pictures along the way, but I was planning on running a short drag link off the pitman arm to a bell crank type thing mounted on the axle to steer the wheels. Sorta like how my GT6000 is setup but with another short drag link running to the right hand wheel instead of two tie rods.










Works great! I pretty much kept the same ratio but my wheels turn a bit sharper then before. The bump steer is at a minimum as well, even at speed, which is good. But mostly I'm glad to not have the drag link cross under the tractor like it used to, this setup should be much better with my flexy front end.

Also, dont worry...



I braced the bell-crank mount hahaha. Anyway I'm pretty happy with how this turned out, let me know what ya think!