MTD off-road build (Mobile Terrain Dominator) "2"

Skidplates are great. Always a comfort hearing rocks bounce off a piece of steel you don't care about rather than that expensive, brittle piece of cast aluminum.

CraftsmanQuad19 wrote:

Eh you’ve got a backup, it’ll be fine

Ummm, no. Hahaha.

mightyraze wrote:

RichieRichOverdrive wrote:

Lists are good to give yourself a sense of accomplishment lol.

I'm looking forward to the skidplates

I could not agree more!

Haha, yeah hopefully can make it work somehow.

RichieRichOverdrive wrote:

Skidplates are great. Always a comfort hearing rocks bounce off a piece of steel you don't care about rather than that expensive, brittle piece of cast aluminum.

Yeah I know that with my luck if I don't do it soon I'll probably bash a hole in the poor ol' 600, haha.

I went severe rock crawling with my Murray back when it had no front end suspension and a locked rear . Left a few dents in the case and bent a cooling fin or two. Lasted for quite awhile after that still .

Cooling fins on a gear drive trans?

Well I always thought of them looking like cooling fins, but they are the axle bracing fins

Oh, haha I know what you mean now. Yeah I think they're just gussets, but I guess they do sorta look like cooling fins.

Well not much work on it today. I did a lot of riding over the past two days and the pressure lube opposed it still running great/hasn't blown up, so I think we're good. Haha. I did have a bit of a scare when I thought my steering box was slipping, but it turned out the steering shaft universal was just slipping on the box input shaft. Haha, pretty relieved when I found that out. I just ran a longer bolt through it, out a nut on the end and tightened 'er down. Fixed it up no problem! Other than that I just put lock washers on the outer 3-link bars at the frame because the nuts kept coming loose, and I bent my fuel thank mount up so the fuel tank clears the steering U-joint now! That's one thing off the list I guess. Sorry for no pictures, didn't have my phone on me at the time and I figured it wasn't all that exciting. Nevertheless I figured I'd update!

Sounds good. I had one of the tie rod bolt nuts come off mutt yesterday, managed to bring it back with just the bolt sitting in the hole lol. Good reminder for me to start loctiting the nuts on my steering linkages again lol.

Another little thing, I made up a new tie rod today.
The other one had old heim joint that were a bit wore out and I didn't like the idea of having exposed ones like that getting dirty all the time.

Nice sealed ends!



They have grease fittings as well, which is nice.



It has kind of a funny bend in it and I did that so it would clear my steering arm at full lock to the right. Should still work fine.



It could be bigger roundstock I suppose but it's solid 3/8" so it should do alright. Worst case scenario if I break it I'll throw the old one back on, haha.

Those ends, they sway bar links?

I like the bend in it. It kinda looks cool to me. Nice job. These pictures also give me clues as to how your steering arm angles are set up.

Okay, something like that would never hold up to the abuse id put it through.

CraftsmanQuad19 wrote:

Those ends, they sway bar links?

Yessir! Haha, they're pretty handy for stuff sometimes.

Crazy_Carl wrote:

I like the bend in it.  It kinda looks cool to me.  Nice job.  These pictures also give me clues as to how your steering arm angles are set up.

Thanks Carl! I kinda thought it looked odd at first but I guess it's not too bad, haha.

biggasmowers wrote:

Okay, something like that would never hold up to the abuse id put it through.

Well the old one was 3/8" hollow and it never broke in all the holes I dropped the front in or all the stuff I've rammed up against. This one should do fine.

Looks good AK, I saw your pix and I think I have my issue with steering figured out. Thank you AK! I think you have kicked my mental roadblock out of my head.

Thanks mighty! Glad to know I could be of assistance, even if I didn't intend on doing it, hahaha. What exactly did you see that helped ya?

I think I am trying to over complicate things. I am dropping the bell crank, and adding a steering link arm off the spindle like you have on the MTD. I thought of that before but was struggling where to place it because of the shocks. I seen yours and i see yours is under the tie rod and I was thinking. I could do that. went out and held a piece of flat stock up and moved the spindle back and forth and nothing seemed to hit. Also it was not hanging too low.

Ooh, okay. I see. Yeah it's a pretty simple setup really, not much that can go wrong. Hopefully it works out for ya!

Quite a bit of snow here still so I've been blasting through snow drifts and stuff, which is super fun.





Gave the spindle knuckles and tie rod ends a shot of grease afterwards, figured it'd be a good idea.



Then hit some unexpected mud and got a bit stuck, haha.



Right I after I got out I broke my pitman arm though, so I'm gonna have to come up with a better design for that. Shouldn't be too hard so I'm not all that worried about it. I definitely had some fun today though up 'til that point! Haha.

If you broke something, you had a fun romp then!  Not saying you have to break anything to have fun but you know what I am saying!  Didn't you break that off once before?

Hahaha, I gotcha! Just slowly eliminating the weak links I guess you could say. Yeah I've broken it once or twice before this. Lotta stress there and I've never been able to come up with a strong and compact enough setup for it. I have a few ideas this time though! Haha.

Man that mud looks super goopy

Looks like some nasty mud in a nasty surprise!

I'd rather the pitman arm be the weak leak because wouldn't you rather break your pitman arm before your steering box?

CraftsmanQuad19 wrote:

Man that mud looks super goopy

Yeah, both tires were loaded in no time, haha.

muckmudd wrote:

Looks like some nasty mud in a nasty surprise!

Oh for sure, I was just crawling around in 1st gear and I felt the back end start to sink out of nowhere, hahaha.

Crazy_Carl wrote:

I'd rather the pitman arm be the weak leak because wouldn't you rather break your pitman arm before your steering box?

That is definitely a good point you have there Carl, haha.

In your other pictures, looks like it started sleeting or raining in one of the shots!