“Ol’ Red” 1979 Wheel Horse C-81

Bumper looks great Carl!


Edit:  When building the rear bumper.  Keep in mind ground clearance.  Watching the guys that go to haspin, those with rear bumpers low to the ground seem to get hung in ditches.

Front bumper looks great! Will keep the winch well protected.

Mighty brings up a good point about departure angle, I kept that in mind when I made the rear bumper on the MTD.

Looks friggin sweet Carl! Definitely a very rugged, aggressive looking bumper setup. The winch should be handy too for pulling out Sears tractors.

Looks AWESOME Carl! I will build 1 similar to this 1 you built for the MM4X4, cuz it has to get a Winch too!

Here’s a sneak peak at my combination rear rack and bumper to come!

I can’t wait to throw my chainsaw in the milk crate and do some needed trail maintenance with this rig.  I took some inspiration from @MightyRaze ‘s build off rig for this.  

Here’s a pro tip for when you need to drill two mirrored pieces of angle iron:

Clamp the two pieces back to back and put it on a thin parallel in a vise.  This saves layout and setup time and the hole paterns are exactly the same.  This method worked great for my winch mount.

Looking great there! Your work is very professional

I gang drill things as much as i can. Saves a whole lot of time, usually even if one or two parts come flying at you(or experience the helicopter effect, either way). Rack is looking nice too.

Looking good like where you are going with it.

I had a casualty today, but I made solid progress on the rear rack.  I’m tig welding this and the front bumper so the welding goes slow.  I realized I could use this for an optimized clutch spring mount to stretch the spring more and make it so it doesn’t rub on the brake linkage.  I also picked up some spare fuses, fuse holders, expanded metal and a new hitachi grinder ($39! on sale!).

Oof, that old Milwaukee belongs in the fail thread. Does it still work?

yes it does. this grinder always made funky noises from day one and it's my most expensive one (Milwuakee).  It started to make even more funny noises then I noticed this.  Likely due to the operator catching the cord with his foot and causing the grinder to drop on the floor, but still I'd expect more from a grinder.

Really Nice!!!

I got the front bumper with winch and the rear rack all installed and wired up.  I tested it in the woods today doing some trail maintenance.   handling is a little more difficult with the locked rear end but it’s great having all that traction.  

Looks fantastic Carl! Great work

Really Nice and Helpful Mods!!! Good Job!!

@AllisKidD21 Great job on this one bud! It made my day!

Glad you liked it!

your horse is looking damn good.

Well at the group ride with  @Creepycrawler, @donaldconand @redzz02 I really put this tractor through it's paces.  On day one I showed up right as the mow rons were the last to leave.  The guy at the front gate at Tecumseh Trails was amazed that I showed up by myself in a truck with New York plates to ride a garden tractor in the rain at their off road park.  He gave me a park map and gave an easy ridge trail to run.  I met the mow rons briefly.  I was warned about the difficulty of the trails especially going alone and shown a video of an unlocked wheel horse rolling over on a nasty hill descent.  However I had a locked rear end, a winch plus I was only going on the easy trail today to get a feel for how the tractor would perform.  What could go wrong?


The tractor was performing great even with the greasy mud.  I snapped the picture above, then unfortunately this happened...

The left rear wheel was wobbling all over the place.  Had I bent an axle? nope The holes in the wheel spacer are countersunk and are meant for bigger 1/2 wheel studs.  The 7/16-20 lugbolts I used were a sloppy fit in the countersunk holes and I could barely get on them with a socket to tighten them, so they weren't properly torqued at all.  I should not have trusted them.  However this is my tool kit's time to shine!  I love tools by the way.

I had  5/8 and 3/4 sockets and the extensions I needed to remove the wheel spacer and bolt the rim directly to the hub as the engineers intended.  I had a milk crate to set the tractor on but I'm not much of a weight lifter.  So after a long slippery muddy downhill walk of shame to the parking lot I found a family that was willing to give a ride on the back of one of their atvs and we threw my floor jack in the back of their side by side just in case.  We ended up lifting the tractor onto the milkcrate and got 4 of 5 mud covered lugbolts in.  Luckily the bolts were captured in between the rim and wheel spacer so I didn't lose them.  The old man of the family suggested that I use allen head bolts to hold the spacer on so I could get a wrench in there to torque them which is a great idea but the local hardware store only had grade 8 7/16-20 hex bolts but luckily a 5/8 socket fits nicely inside the counterbore so I could properly torque them.  The hardware store did have 4 bolts long enough to go far enough through the hub to put a jam nut on the back side to lock them in.  They had shorter lengths which I used for the other 6 holes and 3/8 grade 8 flat washers which fit in the counter bores nicely.  The lugbolts on the right side were only snug so I wanted to fix that too before day 2.  I ended up fixing it roadkill style in the parking lot of the local hardware store in the rain the night before the ride.

Day 2 was a challenging 5 hours straight of riding on steep trails with greasy mud.  The end of it was in the rain.  The tool kit came in handy a few times tightening down someone's motor mounting bolts, making a hoseclamp for creepycrawler's air filter from mechanic's wire, and fixing a broken recoil on a predator motor. You guys are going to see some great romp footage from this ride on youtube very soon so stay tuned.  Most of the ride I used 2nd gear in high range.  I used 3rd gear for flatter easier terrain and 1st for crawling.  3rd gear is a little too much for the 8hp K181 on the hill climbs unfortunately.

I did end up using the winch.  I was stuck halfway up a long greasy hillclimb.  The other guys up front were busy helping guys at the top so instead of waiting for help I decided to wrap my winch cable around a tree and pull myself up.  I'm kinda jealous of the guys with remotes.  That makes it a lot easier to properly spool the cable back on the winch drum.

Onto the small issues my tractor had.

My belt did slip in some water and some very steep hills, but I can upgrade the clutch spring or add an idler in the future.  Somehow in a deep nasty rut I managed to lock the wheel to the right going in a rut that turned to the left.  Maybe I hit a root that made it turn like that.  I heard a pop and knew something went wrong with my right front tire.  I was only running 3 psi, maybe I'll run 5 psi next ride.  I popped the outer bead slightly on it and CreepyCrawler knew the sound of a steering gear skipping a tooth which it did, but it put the steering wheel in an easier position to grip the spokes on the steering wheel.  The ring was too slippery to grip when it was muddy and wet.  Luckily Andy who was riding with us had a bike pump.  So I pumped the tire full of air while CreepyCrawler stomped on the bead to seat it and I was good to go.  At one point later in the ride I lost all power going the ignition switch.  I quickly wiggled a loose connection on my ammeter and got going again.

***One issue I'm looking for advice on is the motor idles great and runs great at full throttle, but when I would quickly let off the gas pedal the motor would stall.  This was a real pain when trying to walk the tractor up a really steep section.  One downfall of Wheel Horses is that the parking brake sucks so starting a tractor on an incline, standing next to it with one foot on the ground, the other foot on the brake, one hand on the key and the other on the gas pedal is not easy.  One time I just slammed it into gear.  My best guess is that I'm running a little rich.  So when I quickly close the throttle butterfly is closes off all of the air it needs to burn that extra fuel and it stalls out.

Man look at all the mud on this thing


If you think the left rear is a little further in than it should be the hub came lose and moved in on the shaft.  I noticed this just after loading up the tractor.  Thank god that I didn't lose the wheel (again).

So here's my latest to-do list for the tractor:

-fix loose ammeter connections, maybe replace or delete ammeter, this one has a broken off needle
-properly dismount and clean right front tire and reseat the bead
-properly affix rear hubs to axle, they just have one 3/8 setscrew over the woodruff key as of now
-my tool kit should include some means of tire inflation and a small nut and bolt assortment,  this might be a small 12v compressor so I'll have to add a 12v socket on the dash somewhere
-I'm still interested in a dual throttle, maybe I'll run a cable from the PTO lever to the gas pedal I made,  I'm still brainstorming
-beef up the trans mounting with some braces
-pull start
-stronger clutch spring or add idler, clutch is right at the end of its travel

Hopefully soon after I get the final pieces I will post a cool video about the trip too.  It's going to have some of the greatest footage of Ol' Red in action!

well im jellous, i have never been on a trail ride with people unless its a friend and i supply every one with something to ride. i wish getting a licence was not so difficult, only 1 mud trail i can hit without a car. and by tractor its a 25-45min drive depending on witch one i take.

Sounds like it was a great time. I was very disappointed that I was not able to make it to this trip.
Im Looking forward to your video and seeing Ol Red in action.

Ohhhh! Sounds like very good Times!!

and here's the video

Nice Video.....

So it still came off still with red lock tight?  Now you got me nervous with the blue lock tight.

Edit:  Oh, just locktight in the hub no jam nut.  Phew... I have bolt through with a locktight jam nut. Just think if you could get some more wheel speed to clean out those threads!

if you got video recorded in the wrong aspect ratio cold you zoom in so the width fits and center it opon the important part? its a good video but 9x16 in 16x9 makes for a small video with alot of black to watch. if you ever need help with a windows based video editor let me know.

Ah I see what you’re saying. I need to hold my phone sideways when taking video so the aspect ratio is right. Thanks for the pro tip.