MTD - "Budgie"

Sebastian, if you call that abuse, I couldn't even imagine what your reaction to actual abuse is.

I didn't even hurt anything on it doing that. Hell, i couldn't hurt anything on it doing that. If your mower breaks doing what I was doing, you need to face the fact that it's a piece of sh*t and you need to fix it so it won't break at the slightest hint of real offroading.

Well frankly I don't see the point in building a tractor if you're just gonna baby it, haha.

Sweet crawling angles there Rich! Good to see the hood back on too.

RichieRichOverdrive wrote:

Sebastian, if you call that abuse, I couldn't even imagine what your reaction to actual abuse is.

I didn't even hurt anything on it doing that. Hell, i couldn't hurt anything on it doing that. If your mower breaks doing what I was doing, you need to face the fact that it's a piece of sh*t and you need to fix it so it won't break at the slightest hint of real offroading.

I will reinforce my mowers before driving them, that's why I collect them in the shop, and not ust pulley swap them and destroy the frame and transaxle from doing that.

Even if my mower is finished, I wouldn't do that with it.

AllisKidD21 wrote:

Well frankly I don't see the point in building a tractor if you're just gonna baby it, haha.

Sweet crawling angles there Rich! Good to see the hood back on too.

I will only baby the Mud Murray 4X4, cuz the AWS Transaxle is a rare part, I ca'nt get a 2nd time. The others will be driven as hard as I trust them, they will not break too fast. (MTD will break fast from offroading, the frame is kinda junk. )

Made a hood latch

I put one on Red. I call it the fingers saver.

Pulled plastic bushings outta the steering, gonna see about recreating them in steel or brass/bronze

I like the hood on there.

I thought the tractor handled that crawling pretty well.  Seemed to have just enough power for it.

Making bushings sounds like a nice lathe project.

What are you using for an air cleaner.

No air cleaner, yet. That's another project i gotta do at school. Dad had an air cleaner on this engine at one time, on a like 3ft long hose. I think it ended up getting put on an ATV lol.

Got one bushing mostly done, I'll upload a pic when i get home

Machining the flats on the dividing head. This is the easier of the two types of bushings, the other kind has 6 flats.

Handy attachment to have for just this reason.  Should make 6 flats a breeze.

Finally got some time to work on bushings again. Thought i was gonna make the steering shaft bushings outta aluminum but i found some steel the perfect size.

Nice job on the bushings! Much better than the plastic ones.

Thanks. Should be able to get them done tomorrow.

Occurred to me that i might just tack these steel bushings into place where they go in on the frame. Seems like a solid idea.

yeah it does.  Looks like a blast using that indexing head with a three jaw chuck on the bridgeport.

That's a Lagun mill. Just happened to be the one that was closest to where the dividing head was sitting when i went to put it on let me tell you, that thing's heavy!

Got two more cranked out today, will start making some more of the two sided ones on friday or after fall break.

Over fall break I might build a bumper and reinforce the frame. We'll see...

Finally got the bushings in. Steering is pretty tight now, all the slop is in the axle mount itself.

Working on reinforcing the frame. Not sure if you guys are gonna be impressed or are gonna say "yeah looks like a pretty RROD type job"

Hurr dee durrr

Weeeoooo




So that's like 2-1/2"x1-1/4"x1/4" channel steel, she's pretty stiff now. Still needs some support on the topside of the frame, I'm working on that now

shes gonna be stout for sure, to bad you live so far away, Id love to see this or your other tractor at a romp someday

I'm impressed with the reinforcement.  You're welding in some C channel right where they would go if this had a c channel frame in the first place.

Ooh we've tuned into the C Channel, my favorite!

Looks good Rich, should be an improvement for sure. Also those tabs right at the front of the C-channel look good for the front mounts of a skidplate.

Thanks everybody. I might head up to haspin one of these times.

Took a pretty simplistic approach to the belt guard; another piece of channel bolted to the frame and trans mount. Will probably be integrated into the skidplate later on.


Frame is really stiff. No problem with it bending now. Took her out for a ride and crawled around a bit, did nicely. Need better tires and some more weight on the front end, though.

Oh and Allis, those tabs are for the clutch pedal