MTD - "Budgie"

Had to haul around some railroad ties today. I got a video, I'll put that up later. Lots of fun having the front wheels lift a lot.


Definitely don't get the hazard fraught ones. They need a lot of work before they're really usable.

I bet with those trailer tires in the back.

So today I added another pull start to budgie. The one on the booster fan is ok for when she's warm and there's still fuel in the line, but when she's cold and has to pull fuel all the way up from the tank it just doesn't spin fast enough to start. This one weirds me out because it's on the wrong side but i think I'll live lol.


I really need to make a guard to keep my foot out of the flywheel. I'll do that soon.

Swapped the back tires between the gt6k and budgie. I'm think they're better than the mudlites in some aspects but overall aren't much better.


The hood is always hot to the touch when she's been running a while. I should run through the carb again as well as finish the exhaust and some heat shielding. Running lean makes exhaust backfiring right? Or is that running fat? I've been told both, and fat makes more sense, but I don't know.

I think backfiring is running rich and running hot is lean. Hmmm maybe you have a mouse living in your engine shrouds

It could just be that I never finished welding the exhaust system and it's leaking a lot of hot gas around the engine. That just occurred to me lol.

Yea maybe lol

RichieRichOverdrive wrote:

Swapped the back tires between the gt6k and budgie. I'm think they're better than the mudlites in some aspects but overall aren't much better.


The hood is always hot to the touch when she's been running a while. I should run through the carb again as well as finish the exhaust and some heat shielding. Running lean makes exhaust backfiring right? Or is that running fat? I've been told both, and fat makes more sense, but I don't know.

Can be either lean or rich.

Lean can cause exhaust “pops” because a mixture thats too lean doesn’t burn completely. That mixture that doesn't burn gets pushed out into the pipe on the exhaust stroke and when the next exhaust cycle happens, super hot air (lean burns hotter than stoich or rich) it ignites the mixture in the exhaust and.....POP!

Lean can also “burp” back through the carb.

Exhaust pops on rich are similar reasons to lean. The rich mixture doesn’t burn completely and dumps viable fuel into the exhaust. Next exhaust cycle.....POP!

Typically, set to the oem recommendations (ie: 2.5 turns out, 3 turns out, etc) and then adjust from there. The oem setting gets you close and then you fine tune it to your particular engine.

If you have an EGA, you can tune it right in to stoich or wherever you want it. Not many people have one of thise rigs at home though....

Thanks for the input Tourmax, appreciate it. I think I'll run though the carb while I have it in the shop just to be sure.

Pulled her into the shop a bit ago. Wonder if it's time to replace these. I bet they're as old as the engine. They've not seemed to cause issues yet.


Revenge of the blue tape! Some of you might remember that the original shroud on this had some weird tall thing on the front of it. I never put that back on, just swapped on a spare vertical shroud. They're the same besides the holes that blow into the air box, verticals have two rectangular holes and horizontals have one circular one. Anyway, covering these should boost air flow over the fins.


It's too late to test run now, I'll do that tomorrow morning. After that I'll turn my attention to tightening up the heat control on the other side of the engine.

It occurred to me that i still had a pair of cheap Walmart LEDs from Mutt's early days. One of the sealed beams on Budgie is bad so I swapped in one of the LEDs. Had to put a little rubber trim in because it was the same size as the hole. Bit of wiring and it works good. A bit mismatched, but that's fine lol.


Oh and she runs good now. Maybe a bit better than before.

Finished the exhaust and bent up a heat shield. She runs noticably cooler with everything I've done.

Managed to roll Budgie today, first time I can remember. After rolling her back up the only thing that seemed affected was the seat bent back a bit. Fired back up fine after a few pulls

Reading back through this thread, I can't believe how much of a real build Budgie became. She was really just supposed to be the side project.

I had an issue with the motorcycle battery leaking and corroding the wires on my keyswitch, so i decided to get rid of it. I remembered again that i can't shove a lawn mower battery in the dash, as i mounted the engine pretty far back, as to keep the same size belt as with the 6hp. Luckily, this means there's lots of room in front of the engine...

Not sure what this piece of aluminum came from, but it's just the right size for a battery box. Drilled a few holes and it bolted in, plenty sturdy.


Besides mounting it, I only had to move the ground cable and find a longer positive cable. Works as well as a dead battery will permit... Needs a tie down too, I'll get to that soon.


It occurs to me there actually may be room here for two batteries. I don't really have a need, but it could be cool to do again.

Little nose weight never hurt

Funny you mentioned about running dual batteries, that's the first thing I thought when I saw the second picture, haha.

Nice! Dual batteries could give you some battery intensive capabilities! Not sure what off the top of my head.

If i had two batteries for a dual battery setup, they'd probably go on mutt lol.

Out for a ride in the woods, suddenly my front left tire goes flat. Manage to steer it back to the road and get a couple hundred feet to my pasture.


Set her up on the ammo box and hiked back to the shop with the flat tire. Turns out it just got a big hole poked in the tube, with no evidence of puncture on the inside of the tire. Odd.


She's all patched up and back together now!

At first before I read it all, I thought your wheel fell off too.  Glad ya got it fixed!

Something new has been added!

This is the front rack from the ATV that i got the rack for mutt from. I liked how it flared out similar to the fenders, but didn't like how narrow it was, so i chopped it right down the middle.




You can see in the pics i used ½ pipe drilled out to match(approximately) the OD of the tubing on the rack. Slide the pipe over the rack, get it about where i want it, tack it, so on so forth. The front side of the rack needed about ¾" standoffs to level it with the fenders.

I'm pretty satisfied with it. It solves the issue I have of the flimsiness of the fenders and gives me good handholds to manhandle her if need be. I honestly don't even intend to carry anything with it.

Off topic thing i noticed when drilling out the ends of the pipe:

This 25/32" drill bit i used has "USAAF" electro-pencilled into the side of it. The only thing i can think of that standing for is US Army Air Force, which would make sense, given I got this from my old trade school, which had a lot of old military surplus junk.


The thing that makes this extra interesting for me is that the Air Force separated from the Army in 1947, meaning that this drill bit is from sometime pre 1947. It's entirely possible this drill bit went to Europe and back during WWII.
/tangent. lol

Well I'm sad to report that this is the end of Budgie's thread. I listed it on marketplace a while ago, sold it tonight. Kid that bought it drove a good while for it too. Good kid. I think he'll take care of it.

It's been a fun ride... Still cool that it is still going to be fun for someone.

Looks cool! I don't have time right now to read through 15 pages of build thread so I've saved it in my favorites for a time when I have time to check it out! It'll live on and you'll always have the memories plus this thread to revisit!