Craftsman GT3000 "MUTT" Part I

Finally got another 820! Well, I got a tractor with an 820 lol. Murray widebody GT with 21hp 46ci splash lube oppy. 5spd 820-037 with the long axles, and a long input shaft turned down to 5/8. Gonna swap this input shaft for the 3/4 one from the blown 820-016. Also gonna swap whatever gears i have to to get this one to 6 speed. Had it running and driving a bit but I'm already tired of it so I'm disassembling it already.

Came with two decks and the high back seat, might put together one deck and sell it


Oppy just turned 17 yesterday!


Put a different starter on her and she started right up, surged though. Cleaned the carb once, it ran fine then. Tank's still dirty though, so she started surging again...gr


This thing had been ran into something a few times(hood reflects that theory too) Wheels are toed out because the axle was bent and has negative caster. If murray didnt have such a stupid steering setup it would have just pointed the wheels to the left. Oh, it has 7/8" spindles too.


Battery that came with it is junk. I didnt even know they made 150cca batterys.


Dropped the trans last night. tried the wax trick and a hammer, didnt work. Hoping the brake fluid I'm letting it soak in does the trick, or else I'm cutting it off.


Youtube video of me driving it around will be up in a few hours.

Nice job Rich! S'about time you got another trans for this thing! Hahaha.

This damn pulley took a day soaking in brake fluid, a day in atf, a lot of heat, and a big hammer to finally get her to bust apart.




Before I even got her open, this happened. Eventually got it to twist out with vice grips. I'm very lucky.


Finally got her open, at the cost of two bolt heads...




On both of these I welded a nut to the top of them, heated up the entire area to where the bolt was starting to glow, and doused it with a magic ice cream salt/water/ice solution. With some channellocks they turned out easy then.


First thing I did was swap in the correct input shaft, I'm not dealing with murray's 5/8" bullsh*t


After that I discovered that since the transaxle was offset in the murray frame, the murray right axle was longer than the craftsman right axle. So I just swapped the good bearings from the murray axles onto the craftsman axle that's already locked. ALso the only difference between the 5 and 6 speed transaxles is that the 5 speed is missing the 6 speed's 2nd gear. The exact gear that I blew a tooth off of. So I guess I'm keeping it as a 5 speed. Grr. This is how she sits now.


I can't put it together now because of the stupid long shifter that all murrays had(left) is slightly different than the short craftsman shifter. I'm either going to have to bend the short shifter like the long one or cut the long one down to size. Not sure which one is going to be worse, lol.


So I guess now I'm gonna work out my shifter issues and work on cleaning up the mating surfaces for silicone. Don't know what oil I'm putting in her as of now, I'll have to figure that out too.

Ended up cutting down the murray shifter down to the right size. Didnt get pics cuz I'm stupid and forget to take pics. Rest of the trans went back together easily, filled it with mostly 10w-30, some used 15w-40, and then some lithium grease just because.

The pulley I had before had no keyway and just had a set screw rammed into the keyseat, so i decided to file one in. Roughed it out with a chainsaw file(yeah yeah I know, not what it's for but it cut the fastest and had a constant diameter) then I squared it up with the bastard, knife, and half round file. Turned out a lot better than i thought, no more snapping off set screws!






Threw the trans back in, put the skidplate on, and put the battery back in(stole it for the parts murray). She started right up so I romped her a bit. Luckily I didnt break the steering hub this time, lol. Unfortunately, the input bearing and gear is no quieter than the last ones. Whatcha gonna do I guess.

Took some pics when i stuck it on some rocks








I think now I'll work on making a new pitman arm hub, I have the materials to do it at home I think. I'll brace up the steering box mount also.

Good to see MUTT tearing it up again. Nice work Rich!

Looks good, nice to see MUTT out in the field again!

Thanks everybody!

So I've been working on the steering lately. Made the steering hub and now I'm working on stiffening up the steering box mount.

Snazzy scaleish drawing


Clamping bolt hole #2


Whoops lol. This chuck is JUNK. Was drilling pilot for center hole and caught coming out the bottom


After drilling the pilot for the center hole, I shimmed the halves apart about .040"


Used a fancy 3/4" 4 flute bit my dad cut down for the Mag drill. This bit has no point, it's specifically for oversizing a pilot hole(kind of). Had no trouble with it in the chuck.


It cut really fast, and made some small chips. Cool.


Done(will be painted when I paint a bunch of the other stuff, so probably never lol)


Filed a keyway


Went in the tractor nicely! Sweet!. I don't think this one is going to break.


Didn't get pics of my start on the mount support. I'll do that tomorrow, and maybe finish this crap. I wanna drive her this weekend!

Super nice! Excellent work!

Nice job Rich! Should hold up well for sure.

Rich appears to be crossing a hurdle now he has some good working equipment. No more shadetree booger fabs. That looks pretty pro.

mightyraze wrote:

Rich appears to be crossing a hurdle now he has some good working equipment.  No more shadetree booger fabs.  That looks pretty pro.

Ehhhhh, I'll probably still do those shadetree booger fabs lol. Thanks tho

On to what I did Thursday night:

Pulled engine to gain access to stuff


Didnt get a pic of it clamped in place in the tractor, but this goes across the top of the mount I made, in between the dash column. In these pics I just had it tacked.




Back in the tractor after welding


When I was welding it I added this piece if like 3/8" round stock to stiffen up the top side of the channel steel.


Threw it back together that night, and romped it Friday after school. Steering is plenty better now, a lot less flex! Also, I gotta say, this MIG welding class I'm taking is paying off. All the work I'm doing with the spoolgun has made me a lot better with pushing the weld. I used to pull it, but since the spoolgun forces me to push it, I'm used to that now. The welds I was doing on this mount on the inside of the channel steel were in a bit of a tight spot, so i had to push them. A few months ago that would've turned out bad, lol. After all my practice, they turned out alright.

Looks good Rich! Gonna paint it though?

Probably when I paint everything else.

List of things I need to paint:
-Front axle
-Pulleys
-Clutch and clutch crossmember
-Steering box, mount, and drag link
-The bumper(again, lol, really needs powdercoat)
-Hitch thingy I made(off right now)
-Seat mount(actually thinking about buying one off the guy I got the fenders and rims from)
-Exhaust, needs high temp paint
-Battery tray

I think that's it, theres probably more tho

Look good Rich! that is quite a list you have for the MUTT...

Thanks lol. Since I plan on doing those all at once, I'll probably set up the spray can for the compressor and use some tractor paint. Might do the back half of the frame too, just because.

Aaaaaannnyways, I went for a long romp today. Got a lot of mediocre video, 4k looks ok but the framerate, it seems, isn't good for fast movements and bright lights. Think I'll go back to 1080px60fps.

A few pics I snapped with my phone when i buried it in the stump pile. She held up good, steering was alright. Lost the cotter pin for the front skidplate mount, stole the one off my brake lever, then put the keyring from the keychain on the brake lever. And one of the spark plug wires came off for whatever reason lol. Videos will be uploaded over the next few days

Put her rear on the ground did ya?

I don't think so. There was a log buried right behind my right rear there, she wouldn't come up over it. Had to pick up the front end and turn the whole thing to get er to walk out of that. Man, those executioners dig.

And dig fast by what I understand.

Yeah they do!

Some kool edits done by my bud @ConfederaSears













(Original pic)


WHY THE neener DO THEY COME UP AS DIFFERENT SIZES

Looking at the source on the image properties, the smaller ones are coming up 480x270 and the bigger 800x450.

Wonder if servimg changed the resolution?

Might've. I use an messenger group I removed everyone besides me in to transfer all my photos to my laptop from my phone(and vice versa). Maybe that did it. Dunno

Some news on my spare 820 diff carrier, yesterday I brought it to school and took it apart. Interestingly, one of the snapring eyes/ears on the snaprings holding the axles in had snapped off. More proof someone has already been in there. As if the not bentonite grease was enough evidence, lol. Today I chucked them up in a lathe and drilled them out to 31/32" then reamed the one side out to 1". Got to drilling the other side but didnt finish reaming it out 1" because the bell rung. Not sure how I'm gonna secure it to the axle as of now.

That’s awesome that you have a school that can really teach you how to build things with your hands and not just sit at a desk or computer all day

1” axles are pretty easy to come by if you have the money.

Finally started out on my cutout, only to find that the MIG was out of gas. Grrrr



Options...


Cut what I have down, actually sounds really nice but is loud af


This is where I ran out of gas, kinda finished it without it. Gonna grind it down and cover it up when we get some more gas

Run it straight to the back without a muffler. Increase the pipe size 100% down the way and it will have a nice sweet low tone. Still a bit loud but sweet and not blowing at you.

What? No flux core reserve wire?