Craftsman GT3000 "MUTT" Part II

Pulled the old oppy out of her tonight. Hell of a step in the bore. Seeing almost .005” of wear in the bore of the cylinders at the worst points. When you spin the engine over you can hear a bunch of air sucking past the rings.


It’s a wonder I never fouled a plug


Steering looks nice in there! I can still identify some flex in the setup and I may address it in the future if the current mods don’t stop it from skipping.


I also lowballed the hell out of a fella on eBay selling a new one of these sector gears and somehow he accepted my offer, so now I’ll have a nice brand new gear as a spare

“Tree fiddy for that!”

Maybe one day…



I borrowed a valve spring compressor and picked up some copper gasket spray yesterday. Looks like I’ll be doing some fun stuff to the ports, heads, and valves on the new oppy

Nobody mention the pitting in the bore of the lower cyl lol


Trimmed back the intake valves to use the retainers and springs from exhaust valves

-Back cut the valves
-Used exhaust valve springs and keepers all the way around
-Ported it
-Lapped valves
-Shaved eyebrows  
-Used the flywheel teeth and sharpie marks to index a roughly 6* ignition advance
-Reset valve clearances
-Transferred basically everything external of the block from the old engine to the new one. I didn’t actually get tins with the engine. The new engine also got the old flywheel and stator
-Fixed my carb mount so the carb won’t come loose

Looks like an engine!


Found something fun in the old engine! It’s a wonder she even ran!

The new oppy is HOT! A mild clutch dump stands her up on end. The bighorns also grab pretty good.

Man those oppys always remind of vws. Boxer engine I suppose.

RichieRichOverdrive wrote:

The new oppy is HOT! A mild clutch dump stands her up on end. The bighorns also grab pretty good.

Very nice, the ol' Snapper nose Craftsman is sounding sweet!  I'm guessing that 1 tooth advancement was a win?  Not to mention pistons that don't wobble.

I imagine it helped. It seemed to like everything I’ve done to it. I’d say that good flowing ports made most of the difference.

I need to get an oil filter relocate kit so I can add an oil cooler

I actually realized I could put my drag link even further to the left. It’s now on the opposite side of the steering arm than I had intended it to be on. The red arm on the far right is where I had originally mounted the drag link before these steering mods. I could have cut that part off but didn’t really see a need to


You can see how both ends of the drag link are much closer to being in line. This solves some of my problem of not being able to turn as far right as I can left, due to the leverage issues I had before from the drag link pulling from almost the center of the tractor.

Bighorns really are meaty looking


Hit a new top speed today. 34mph, compared to the old 27mph.


Since I don’t have my tach mounted yet I did a little math. Assuming the tires are actually 26” like they say, I’m turning around 5500rpm. With the old top speed(old oppy) I was turning more like 4300rpm. Now, if you actually measure the rear tires, they’re more like 25”, which puts the rpm up to 5700

My NOS snapper steering gear came in the mail today.


I put some red paint on it so if I ever do put it on it’ll be ready.


My clutch isn’t working perfectly with the new belt. It was flawless with the old one. I suppose I’ll add more keepers close to the pulleys

Have this on the way.


Oh, and I bought a little new plastic steering shaft support bushing. Crazy thinking that there’s still a factory part or two left on this rig

Very nice! You talking about that sleeve from the dash to the steering wheel? I have one of those coming in Thurs for the tractor I am building now.

I think I remember the part you’re talking about but if it’s that then it was thrown out either when I put in the snapper steering or when I went to the flat dash. It’s the support bushing that’s under the dash lol


Took hood off so I could paint the nose cone. For future reference, majic tractor paint SUCKS But hey, the rest of the hood doesn’t look much better


I also got new idler pulleys in the mail for both the clutch and winch clutch, and I think my oil filter relocate kit should be here tomorrow. Oh yeah, and one little belt keeper solved my clutch issue.

Different part.  Mine doesn't have that.  Isn't majic oil based?  If I remember it takes a "couple days" to dry and nearly a week to dry fully. When it does, it's pretty tough!

I sprayed majic with hardener on my horizontal milling machine. It sprayed like crap but boy is it some tough paint. I dunno what kind of paint it is. Was the only can of MF red I could find, the other red I used on the steering was a bit too bright but good enough considering it wasn’t close to the other red of the hood.

It sounds great man!

Thanks @Brianator I think it sounds pretty mean now myself

Oil filter relocate kit got here today. It’ll have to wait a while to be installed though.


Paint turned out terribly but the red nose cone was definitely needed.


I finally installed the tiny tach and got a number on my max rpm. YOWZA!


After the 6000rpm run i realized that she puked a horrendous amount of oil out of the PCV hose (no filter on it). I suppose a catch can is in order.

I finally got up this hill! Back when I took this picture I would never have thought it was possible.

She definitely rips!

SMH…lol


It’s happening again!!

I don't know if I want to know. LOL

Mowrons ain’t gonna know what hit em! I do need to get some front tires as well.

I have a fun list of ideas and to-dos for mutt I figured I could share.

Retiring the old front skid plate


Found a nice piece of 1/4” plate for a new one


Before I got anything done on the new skid plate I got the itch to go for a ride


Oops!


My poor flathead sticker!


She’s fine, started right back up, my air filter is covered in oil again though

Ah, it's somewhat good that some things never change.