Craftsman GT 6000 Build

Found a pretty cool wheeling spot today and stuck the GT on it.





Crawling in ruts and stuff is my favorite, so I had some good fun for sure.

Then I came wicked close to tipping it over, haha.



Had to shut 'er down and I felt it try to tip as I was climbing off, so I had to kinda just get it outta there by hand. Wasn't too bad, just glad I didn't have to flip it back on to it's wheels at any point. Hahaha.



The leaf spring setup is taking the abuse in stride, all though I'd really like to find a rack and pinion because the play in the steering bothers me a lot, haha. Hopefully somteime soon I'll find a good one that'll work on the ol' GT.

Nice wheeling spot.  It looked like there's room for a rack and pinion in there somewhere.

Yeah I think so too, with a couple of universals I should be able to run a steering shaft to the rack right off the origninal pinion gear shaft.

Huh, got a package in the mail today:



Could it be for the GT?






Hahaha, yep. My rack and pinion showed up! Thinking about just extending my right hand steering arm and only running one end off the rack, like they do on golf carts. That way I don't have to shorten anything.

Progress to come soon hopefully!

Cool! Nice to see what you will come up with.

Thanks Bigg! Hopefully I can make 'er work, haha.

ok, now i am jealous...

So on a mono link setup can regular mower steering boxes be used?

LOL, Mighty.

Also, not to jack my own thread, but it depends on the steering setup, how you build your 1-link setup, how your steering arms are located etc. But, that's a discussion for another thread. Haha.

Not to jack the thread, but I am using stock steering arm from the steering gear for my monolink.

Yeah for that style steering setup it could work pretty good. However I wouldn't recommend using a setup with the steering arm on top on the spindle and the drag link along the frame like some other brands have, as that would most likely not work too good with articulation.

Made some progress on the rack and pinion swap yesterday:



Made some angle steel mounts to be welded to the axle:





A bit of bracing, don't want the mounts breaking off



The tip in the gun of the welder was sticking real bad here, so please excuse the bad welds, haha.

All mounted up and the rod end hooked to a steering arm I welded on to the original spindle:



That's as far as I got, I just have to rig up a steering shaft now. That may require a bit of thinking, but hopefully I'll get to that soon. Let me know what ya think!

So I kinda got an idea of how I'd like to run the steering shaft and joints. I think it will require adding a universal somewhere in the original steering shaft and angling it out forward ahead of the orignial setup. Kinda hard to explain but hopefully I'll start on it soon and it'll all make sense then, haha.

Does the rack travel far enough? How many turns is the wheel gonna have? Looks nice, I'm pretty jealous lol

Haha thanks Rich. Yeah I got it dialed in so it steers nice and sharp, and also equally. I can spin the input shaft with a pair of vice grips and it apears there will be just over 2 turns lock lock. Should be pretty much perfect, haha.

Got some way for the shaft to slip for front end flex up and down in that plan.

Yep, I have two automotive slider shafts to choose from for that. Should work well.

Another great use for angle iron laying around.  Hey looks thick enough to weld with the tombstone.

I was out of electrodes at the time, haha.

Finished the rack setup today!!

Got a couple different U-joints here to work with:



I got the factory steering gears and shaft out:



Had to shorten the steering shaft a fair bit to get it to work with this new setup:





Made a nice little lower steering shaft support bushing, as I didn't wanna just rely on the upper one.



Slot cut for an E-clip.



That just holds the steering shaft from dropping down.

Finally, the lower U-joint welded on to the shaft:



Then I just put it all together! Sorry for the crumby pictures, kinda hard to get in there good, haha.





Had to make a couple guides just ahead of the socket universal, then I checked to make sure it all worked okay.





Works great! Ratio is just a hair lower, no play, and no bumpsteer!







Frame touches the boot at full flex but not the actual rod:



Might add a couple bumpstops anyways just to be safe. I have a couple rubber things I could use that would work quite well.

But yeah, definitely loving the new setup.



Let me know what ya think!

This is frickin awesome.  Rubber bump stops are a good idea.  This tractor must handle like a dream now.

Super cool Allis! Excellent work!

Thanks a bunch fellas! Yeah it's definitely better driving it without the steering play, haha. Should hold up well I'm thinking.

Well I was out with the GT today, crawling over the dirt pile and what not, really flexing the front axle. Turns out the still wheels turn excellent during hard articulation being that there are no rods ends or linkages to bind up.





Put away after some wheeling and nothing has been bent or broke. Hopefully it stays that way, haha.

Okay then Mighty. Hahaha. But yeah I guess you could say mission accomplished, that is if the whole setup doesn't self destruct of course. Haha.

very cool man, one question, does your steering shaft have any "slip" in it? like as in when the axle goes up and down does the steering shaft have a way to lenghthen and shorten ? like a drive shaft in a car has a slip shaft so that it can change lengths as the suspension cycles, i think your steering shaft will need to be able to do the same thing or it will be pulling hard on your mounts, ujoints and rack and Id hate to see you tear up your nice new steering rack