Clamped up the skid plate where I wanted it and welded on four tabs behind it. I then drilled through both skid plate and mounts with a 5/16” drill, and tapped the mounts 3/8-16 and drilled the holes in the skid plate up to clear a 3/8” bolt. Good way to make bolt holes and tapped holes line up, without any transfer punches or whatever nonsense.
New bearing in one idler and a fresh idler on the other side. Super quiet belt system now!
Running to the bottom of the hill because I didn’t know if the tractor was coming down after me
Oopsie. Folded my seat like an omelette
Straightened my seat and hood some and she started right back up and i went and hit the hill I was on my way to.
The softness of the bighorns is sort of getting the best of me. It’s easy to get the tractor on a side hill and have the lower tire suck under you. Perhaps I should just put more air in them.
Considering the price of new idler pulleys these days I think that's an excellent solution! I'm going to give that a go on an old pulley myself! I didn't notice before but that's a Roper/AYP steering wheel ya? Looks identical to the one on the Trailblazer but the logo looks slightly different.
Heck, seats aren't cheap these days either so maybe it's time to build a roll bar for it!
I actually found a good deal on some idler pulleys on eBay. It’s harder to replace the bearings in the smaller idlers. 3-1/2” V idler
And yes, it’s an AYP steering wheel, it’s actually original to the tractor. As for the seat, it’s one of the ones with a nice rubber cover that I could switch to a different seat pan if I needed to
Most people have never even seen one of the snapper riders that the hood came off of, they are somewhat scarce. I get a lot of people saying “I’ve never seen a snapper like that before!” And yes, Mutt is a world away from what it was back in the day.
Hopefully I can get the hood and grille straightened out some so I can build an engine cage to preserve everything. Much more abuse and I think the lower corners of my grille will just snap.
This other oil cooler I bought is also obscenely large. I can fit it on the frame behind the engine but I may still shorten it some.
I can definitely mount it vertically, but I’m not sure if having the oil cooler up high would create a problem with low oil pressure at startup from the cooler draining out with the engine off.
Realized I bent my dash mount lol. I think I’ll make my own dash mounts out of something heavier. Im not sure why I even used the stock mounts
Also today my pod filter showed up, and I went to H&H and bought some material for an engine cage and dash mounts, as well as finally paying for the material for the front axle I made like a month ago
They’re not sealed but I don’t see those rollers exploding anytime soon.
Big tires back on.
The pod filter is on but I forgot to take a pic of that.
Finally got the guts to cut this oil cooler down
Why the heck is there a spring in there?!? Something to improve oil flow to distribute heat better??
Cut the fins down the middle and they sort of twist right off.
Much more appropriately sized oil cooler. I had sort of roughed up the ends for the hose to grab but mr.modified gave me the idea to just flare it. I forgot my brake flaring tool went up that big lol. So after I took this pic i flared the ends out a bit with that and now the hose shouldn’t ever slip off.
Haspin in just a few days! I don’t know that I’ll have an engine cage done in time but I definitely need this oil cooler and a catch can.
I’m not sure. Maybe something about heat distribution.
I probably won’t kick this thing off. I usually rest my foot on the end of the pedal where the big washer is.
Oil cooler kinda in there
I really need to go down to 3/8” hoses and add elbows at the engine side but this is what I have for now. It’s not as close to the exhaust as it looks.
Then I had to tear stuff back apart because I didn’t tape one of the fittings well enough. Oh well. It doesn’t leak now.
My mild steel rotor seems that it may have glazed over. I put mutt up on the jack and pulled the right wheel off, then ground the rotor with a flap disk while the tractor was idling in 6th gear. We’ll have to see about this one lol
Quick and dirty PVC catch can that may or may not even work
Well unfortunately I am here to report that mutt did not survive Haspin As soon as I unloaded her off the truck the drag link literally fell apart, which was pretty incredible considering what it’s been through over…idk…5 years?
After I got that fixed I got a bit of riding in
Bernie in the back left there, the mowron’s spare rig. I had a lot of fun on bernie after Mutt broke
After riding with the Mowrons I went out to explore on my own and then seemed to have spun the locker hub off of the axle in the trans.
Tow of shame by stretch’s jeep
I have fresh outer axle bearings and a new input bearing on the way. I think I’m just gonna go back and weld the crap out of the locker, and then NOT turn everything back flush.
I actually managed to cut the welds out and get it off
I chamfered the everloving crap out of the hub and put like 5 rods of 1/8” 6013 @ 120a on either side, and only trimmed off enough for the carrier sides to close on the bull gear.
This warped the heck out of the axle. I had to set up and straighten it.
Straight enough! It rolls in the case!
My inspection setup lol
I cut my brake shaft off and replaced the bearing with a closed end one.
Naturally one of the mount holes stripped so I had to go up to 3/8”
Subject: 
May 27th 2023, 10:10 pm
And yes, Mutt is a world away from what it was back in the day. 
