John Deere 110 Project

AllisKidD21 wrote:

Huh, your hood is cracking too.  I guess that's just a JD GT thing.

Nice job on the pulley swap!

Thanks! Haha, yeah this hood is pretty rough, especially at the front. At some point someome put a little strip of aluminum underneath at the front to try and hold in all together.

I think my friend has a 110, some of the hood is fiberglass and it was kinda broken. Dont think it's uncommon lol

Yeah, haha. Most JD garden tractor hoods back then were fibreglass, the cracking seems to be fairly common for sure.

Yeah. I think working with fiberglass and resin and such should be a more common skill, I'd like to try it.

For sure, it'd be cool to be able to repair fibreglass stuff like hoods, fenders, etc.

Could make a million having those sears guys pay ya to repair their nose cones, lol

RichieRichOverdrive wrote:

Could make a million having those sears guys pay ya to repair their nose cones, lol

I ran metal inside mine and then bondo' s over them. LOL

So I got a belt and clutch setup rigged up on this 110 with the new giant engine pulley:



Definitely not working right. The belt won't disengage and it voilently throws the belt off the transaxle pulley. I have belt retainers on everything and it doesn't seem too help. The pulley aligment isn't too bad but due to the large diameter of the engine pulley it can't be brought in any closer to the engine or it'll hit a portion of the frame.

Basically what I'm getting at is I don't think this pulley is gonna work, haha. I did have it in third gear at one point for a short bit and man it is fast, probably too fast for my little cousin. The plan is to put the 4" engine pulley back on that I had on there before when it was driving and see if that'll work again. If so a 5" or 6" pulley can go on in the future just to speed it up a bit more. Gonna try and tackle it tomorrow so hopefully that goes well, haha.

When you pulley swap, you go serious!  LOL.  Can you massage the engine in there a bit to help line it up? Also, you will need some kind of belt keepers for the engine to help disengage the belt on clutching.

No kidding, haha. I suppose the engine could be moved over, but I really don't feel like going through all that mess, haha. Putting the other pulley back on should get things lined up much better.

When I put the big pulley on my simplicity I couldn't get the thing to change gears because the engine pulley was spinning so fast it would occasionally move the transaxle pulley even with the clutch in.

Ol Red would throw the belt off the engine pulley until I put keepers on the motor.  I have zero keepers on the trans.  However, my 6" engine pulley exposed the tapped holes in the block in the perfect locations for keepers.

Yeah that makes sense about the big pulley causing the clutching issue, lotta surface area there. Either the answer was to go back to the 4" engine pulley I had on previously.

So I did that, put a different belt on, adjusted and re-worked everything, and she drives again!



Obviously not very much of a speed rig, but that's not a big deal as far as I'm concerned. Probably upgrade to a 6" or so engine pulley in to near future though.

Also got a new air cleaner and made a neat looking front cover for it since we never had the original cover.





Should work nice, pretty protected up in there so I'm not worried about not having the cover on it. Let me know what ya think!

Sweet aluminum racing air cleaner cover!  Should add 2-5hp.

Thanks! I figured it'd be quite a performance gain.

Minor update here, just been finishing up a few small things with the ol' 110.

Finally remembered how the heat shield for the muffler went on, so I reinstalled it:





Kinda ruins the cool look of the engine, but it's obviously more of a function thing so it's not a big deal. Haha.

Also got the choke cable attached to the butterfly lever on the carb:



Got a little tired of opening the hood to choke it

Then lastly, I took that awful looking homemade bumper riggins off the front:



Looks way better now. Gotta get a better bumper made up for it sometime soon maybe.

So yeah, not much new with it really. Still hasn't seen any hours off-road, unfortunately. My Uncle's a very busy guy though so they never have time to do stuff with tractors and what not. But hopefully she'll see some off-road terrain soon and we'll see how she performs.

One thing I love about the Kohlers is how much air the cooling fan is capable of moving.  In the colder months I use the warm air coming out of the side of the tractor to warm up my hands it feels good.

Looks like that heat shield is suppose to direct the hot air out the side of the tractor and not under the hood.  Does it direct air over the exhaust?  I agree it definitely looks better without it.  

I'm excited to see a homemade front bumper.

Yeah my Case has a similar sheild on the back of the engine to sorta direct the heat out from under the hood and away from the battery. Also yeah, the heat shooting out the side is definitely nice on the hands in the winter time.

Got to do a little more tinkering today with the ol' 110 since we were stuck waiting for parts.

The ground cable was clearly messed with at one point and looked like a pretty sketchy setup, so I junked it and re-configured that part.

People and their damn duct tape, haha.



Bolted the new cable right to the side of the engine block:



Hooks into a little loop under the solenoid to keep it in place:



Much better!



The smaller wire is a chassis ground

Next thing was to finally get a reg/rec installed since it was missing one when we got it.



Checked a few spots with the ol' multimeter and she's charging good! The amp gauge even works, which is pretty cool. Haha.



She should be pretty much good to go now.

Got this thing down to the farm after what seemed like forever, so I'm finally gonna be able to 'er in some off-road action!

First thing to do was swap on some GT sized front wheels because the little ones I had on looked pretty goofy, hahaha.



Used the stock fronts from the ol' GT 6000, I just had them laying around.



Oh yeah!





Looks much better don't it?

Tackled the bigger engine pulley next. I had a deck drive pulley from something but it had no keyway, so I used a couple files to make my own:





Turned out pretty nice! The clutch still works great too, I only had to move an idler a hair to get a bit more slack for it to clutch properly. Also I'm gonna weld up the clutch arm as it's only held together with bolts so I could adjust it for the new pulley. Once I do that I'd like to put a stronger spring on to get a bit more belt tension.

I did drive it around in the muck a bit though.



Dat rear...





Pretty darn fun to drive around now I gotta say, haha. Tomorrow I'll probably weld up that clutch arm and play with some spring and what not, then find some off-road challenges for the ol' girl to hit. I'll probably get some pictures as well.

Anyways, quite happy with the progress today, she's looking pretty good now. Let me know what ya think!

Looks nice AK. Larger tires look more beefy on there.

You definitely get the patience award for filing your own keyway and not complaining about doing that. That takes time.  Good job!

Is the vari-drive still in the rig?

Looks nice, that hood is in great shape

Thanks a lot fellas. I definitely like the look with the new fronts. The hood isn't too bad, got some big cracks in it (typical), but it's fairly solid.

Also the variable speed was missing completely when we got this thing, so it has a standard clutch system under it now that I made. It works quite well but I can't quite hold 4th in the muck so I should probably add another spring.

Anywho I did some clutch work to get some more belt tension for it, which helped for sure but it needs just a bit more.

Some off-road fun:







Quite a blast to off-road with now. The steering is quite nice with the little Ross steering box.

I ended up making a shifter extension though because I don't like how short the old one was.



Turned out kinda rat rod looking, which I like! Haha.

You can see the neat old school 5-speed knob that's on it too. Not sure exactly what is came from, most likely an old tractor





Definitely happy with the performance of this ol' tractor. Let me know what ya think.

Well I got the ol' JD outside today. Hasnt been run in close to a month but the ol' K Series started up pretty good and ran just as smooth as always. Then once she was good and warmed up it was time to hit some snow!



Pretty fun to drift 'er around on the ice! Haha.



She's still working fine, nothing really new with it either. Although the starter spins over kinda slow and makes a lotta noise so sometime soon I think I'd like to tear it apart to clean it and lube up the bushings. That's probably all for now, she's a pretty fun ride!