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

Oh hahaha. Well nevertheless it gave me the idea!

Yep, haha. It should work out pretty good hopefully.

your battery rack proves my point of welding odd pieces of rod in weird angles is that allis style!!! lol

i have a big steel 5 gallon fuel tank i need to put on some mower, id never run out of fuel on an oppy!!

Uh, thanks I guess. Hahaha.

on the junk td i added like 3 pieces of 5/8 rod to the frame sides and it really beefed it up. Its nice to make simple mods that dont take much effort but really improve the machine.

Yeah haha, I figured since it wasn't out in the open it wouldn't be too much if an eye sore. I did give them a coat of black paint afterwards though just so it didn't look like too much of a rusty mess, haha.

I think it shows planning.

Hey , if it works, it doesn't have to look perfect.

biggasmowers wrote:

Hey , if it works, it doesn't have to look perfect.

Story of my life.

That's a good way to look at it bigg, hahaha.

Nothing really new with the MTD, still working good.

I did out a new pair of plugs in the engine today, figured she could use a new set.



Definitely seems to be running better, then it ran outta fuel. Go figure, haha.



Had some fun for a little while before she ran out though, haha, so I guess that's good.

Dude, you always seem to run out of fuel! LOL

Well usually I run out at the worst times, haha. I have a bad habit of not checking the fuel before I hop on and go, and then wonder why I get stranded in the middle of a field, hahaha.

How many acres is your grandparent's farm where you romp?

There are about 100 acres of pasture/woods and some fields. And the whole thing kinda runs along the Thames River, so it's pretty nice. Haha.

Now I understand your need for the reserve gas tank.

Yeah no kidding, hahaha. I gotta get on that soon too, I'd like to be able to use it

Well I got some gas in the ol' MTD again and ran 'er around a bit. Definitely running great with the new set of plugs so I'm pretty happy! Hahaha.

They do run nice with some hotter boom! LOL

Oh for sure, haha. I actually had a bad misfire on one side and I was worried it was something bad like an exhaust valve seat or what have you. The new set of plugs seems to have cured it though so all is well, hahaha.

Well been a while since this thing's been running. The misfire actually turned out to be a bad coil, but a new one finally got ordered and should be here in a couple weeks.

Meanwhile, I decided to drop the 3-link suspension in favour of a new setup. The plan was for a long arm/radius arm setup to take its place, something like this:



The idea was to scrap my center link and just modify my outer links to make them into radius arms.

Starting to dissassemble:



Skinned the front axle with some sheet metal to cover up all the stupid looking holes from the axle pivot and stuff.





Looks much better!

Then lots of figuring to get the axle located and make sure the geometry was gonna be right throughout the axle travel.

After I got everything where I liked it, I made new frame mounts for the radius arms, they're a bit further back and a bit lower that the old ones, which is good.



The braces don't look super nice but they're strudy which is what I wanted, haha.

Made some "upper" links and the brackets to mount them to the axle:



All welded up and the axle went back in!



Made the tabs to bolt the upper links to the lowers:



The final product!





Then a little bit of flex, haha.





Obviously I didn't drive it, but just bouncing the suspension and what not I noticed the axle doesn't rake back during up travel, that's something the 3-link setup did and I never really liked it. But it seems like a good setup so far! Probably gonna do a bit more bracing and also slide some pipe over the uppers and plug weld it on to beef them up a bit. Also woth this setup it's nice not having that center link in the way of stuff, hahaha. All in all I'm really happy with it so far. Let me know what ya think!

It does look like there's more room under it without the center link.

I like the rod bar gussets you used on your link mounts.  They're unique looking and strong.

Thanks Carl, yeah should make belt changes easier too not having the center link. Haha.

Very nice! Great job.

Thanks Mighty!

Looks good, I had a bit of trouble wrapping my head around how it articulates, but i like it!