“Beast” - Craftsman II Utility Build

Alright, I’m just stumped at this point. I’ve tried just about every belt size from 80 to 87. I’ve been to tractor supply to exchange belts so many times they probably know me by my name. It’s either so tight that I can’t slip it over the pulley, or it’s so loose that the clutch comes back and completely collapses on the belt. I think at this point I’m gonna have to do away with this clutch system and build a new one in the middle/front of the tractor. If anyone could give me some really simple designs I’m ready to run with it. I’d like to keep materials that I have to buy at a minimum.


Swapped to a 4” pulley, hoping it would improve belt fitment.


Example of how the clutch pinches the belt between shifting link and belt keeper. I thought that if I got a short enough belt this wouldn’t happen, but a ‘short enough’ belt wouldn’t even go on the pulleys.

Should be 1".

Should have a 1/4" keyway too. You'll need a piece of keystock the same length as the keyway in the hub to do the pulley swap too.

May need to fab you an idler from the other side to pull the belt off your shifter.  Here is an example of mine below.  The highlighted pulley in the picture below is used on my tractor to keep it off the shifter.



It can even be made to be an adjustment pulley.

Your belt running into the shifting rod is another reason why 95% of us suggest not going so small on the transaxle pulley, it may be easier for you to just put a larger pulley in the rear and bump that front one up bigger

Got the intake back today, put some high heat JB weld putty on the areas that weren’t welded. Seems to be sealed well enough. I had him weld it with the bolt in the flange as you can see, because the 90 in the tube wouldn’t let me insert it any other way. That’s the main reason that area couldn’t be welded.

Will install and update tomorrow.

As usual, this machine has me really frustrated and confused. Last night, we installed carb for a test run. Turned choke on, turned key and it started. It ran pretty high rpm and blew smoke like crazy. We couldn’t get motor to slow down so we decided to shut it down. Key off, motor kept running. Apparently I’ve accidentally removed the ground wire for coil. Had to pull the spark plug boot off, which felt awesome as you could imagine. The boot was off the plug completely, sitting 1/4” away from it and still arcing to the plug.

Now that we had all that sorted, I put the carb back on and gave it some fuel. We are now having trouble to keep this thing running for more than 5 seconds. It will only even think about firing at full choke, and when it does it’s an extremely low idle. If you turn it over with full choke, and slowly just give it a hair of throttle, it will run for a few seconds, and die. We’ve had the mix screw all over the place. Nearly turned all the way out, all the way in, and about everywhere in between. I’ve moved C-clip on needle from the middle slot to the lowest slot, It just will not run.



Hose going into the bottle is for the breather tube. That thing spit oil everywhere when it did run last night. Not letting that happen again.

Also, apparently there have been several posts made on this thread that I haven’t seen until just now.

I kinda took a break from the belt/pulley situation to try and get the motor sorted out. I guess I’ll swap to a larger rear pulley, larger front pulley and then see what/where idlers need to be made.

My guess is your intake is the reason for your issues, I bet there is a pin hole letting air in and making your air mixture off

Also, not sure if you got your high RPM stuff sorted out yet, but your governor is in the wide open position in that pic. Not sure if you pushed that down when it ran the first time. If it goes wide open again, try pushing it down. If the RPMs don't go down, well, you got a problem.

Murraymountain wrote:

Also, not sure if you got your high RPM stuff sorted out yet, but your governor is in the wide open position in that pic. Not sure if you pushed that down when it ran the first time. If it goes wide open again, try pushing it down. If the RPMs don't go down, well, you got a problem.

Governor's not doing much with that slide carb on there.

I would be concerned about the breather hose blowing oil like you mentioned. Usually serious blow by or a blown head gasket causes that to happen. If you get enough blow by pressurizing the crankcase it will run all sorts of crazy.

If there's an air leak like Sean mentioned it could also be the cause of the high RPM's upon startup.

AllisKidD21 wrote:

Murraymountain wrote:

Also, not sure if you got your high RPM stuff sorted out yet, but your governor is in the wide open position in that pic. Not sure if you pushed that down when it ran the first time. If it goes wide open again, try pushing it down. If the RPMs don't go down, well, you got a problem.

Governor's not doing much with that slide carb on there.

I must be tired...

Sounds like your intake mating faces warped when you welded it. It didn't exactly look precision ground in the first place. Double up on (or silicone) the gaskets or take it back to whoever welded it and maybe have him hit the faces on a belt sander or something. If that doesn't fix it, check your putty job. Maybe go to silicone instead. Or maybe gas tank putty?

I don't know why your weld guy couldn't have welded that all around. Anyone who's reasonably good with a TIG could weld that up both inside and out. Unless he was using a spoolgun, which then I would understand him not welding it all the way.

Good luck. In my opinion you should just go back to the stock carb, but that's just my K.I.S.S. ideology.

Well, she’s alive. I sat down with it for probably 30 minutes trying to get the mix screw right (stupid thing is on the INSIDE of carb facing engine), and finally found that sweet spot. There is no intake leak that I am aware of, the flanges are not warped at all, no type of holes in the weld, and my JB weld job turned out fine. It’s now running really nice with an impressively low idle. Just a little black smoke from exhaust when you rev it up that I still need to sort out.

I have a video of it running, but can’t get it uploaded to Google Drive. May try again in a little bit.

The idle this thing can run at is crazy to me. My 17.5 OHV could never even come close. Of course it’s not really practical, but we were able to drop it to the point it almost sounded like it was gonna die, but just kept on going. It also will not run without the air filter installed, and doesn’t particularly like to run without the muffler on. I found this interesting but I’m sure it has to do with the air/fuel mix.

As for the oil coming from breather tube, not a drop of oil has come from it since the one time. I believe excess oil was purged out, as it was probably overfilled. Now, it just gently puffs out air while engine is running, which I presume is what it’s supposed to do.

Anyways, got a throttle set up, welding tube to the floorboard tomorrow to have somewhere to mount a bike brake handle to. Everything engine wise is coming together nicely.

Thanks everyone for the help and suggestions so far.

Welded the tube to the floor, painted it and got the pedal mounted. Pretty happy with it. Having trouble posting vids of it running, but it runs about as good as I could ask it to.

Don't idle it too low for too long. Besides being impractical, less oil gets around at low RPM and might damage your engine.

Good point. I don’t have it set TOO low right now.

Finally! A 6” pulley was exactly what I needed to make the clutch work. 91” belt works but keeps getting thrown off, but I’m taking it back anyways once I find a 6” pulley for the front. She tops out at 7mph right now, but I didn’t expect much with 4/6 pulley setup. I’m just happy to finally be able to get it out of the shop and see it function!

Just 7?  That 6 up front and 4 on rear?

Stock 4 on front, 6 on rear. TSC didn’t have a 6” with 1” bore. Soon as I track one down I’ll be installing it on front. I believe 6 is about as big as I can fit up there.

Everything in the front end is extremely wobbly, the spindle on one side is just flopping around in its hole on the axle. Axle itself has a ton of front to back play, steering is really loose. It almost felt sketchy just at 7! Probably gonna weld front axle solid, not sure what I need to do with that spindle.

Alright folks, decided it’s time to get this axle out from under it and get it welded. I just finished flushing out the inside of the axle, as it was entirely packed with grass and dirt. Getting dark on me now so I’m gonna let these pieces dry tonight and then prep/weld tomorrow. There’s a couple hairline cracks around the axle, and one around the tube that the spindle sits inside of. I actually got a TIG machine for Christmas so I’ll be tigging those cracks up, 7018 stick welding the big stuff. Will post pics once done.

Nice job on that gas pedal! Looks real professional.

I would completely rebuild the front end if I were you. Those stamped frame front ends are just trash. I'm not gonna rebuild mine because it's just a backup rig, but if you want it built right, the front end probably needs to go.

As for your pulley, I'd just check around online... That's where I get mine. They're about $25 from Phoenix Pulleys.

Murraymountain wrote:

Nice job on that gas pedal! Looks real professional.

I would completely rebuild the front end if I were you. Those stamped frame front ends are just trash. I'm not gonna rebuild mine because it's just a backup rig, but if you want it built right, the front end probably needs to go.

As for your pulley, I'd just check around online... That's where I get mine. They're about $25 from Phoenix Pulleys.

Thanks!

I’ve kinda been hung up because I accidentally welded the plates backwards on the axle. So I had the spindle with the attachment for steering arm on the wrong side. Said spindle was welded onto the axle, so I had to cut it to swap them. The spindle bushings were destroyed, so I’ve gotta get some before I reassemble. Been working on other projects so it kinda got swept under the rug. I’ll look into the pulley.

What’s the biggest pulley I can run on front? Hopefully at least 6. Being that the smallest pulley I could make work on the back was 6, I’m hoping to at least get 1:1 ratio if not higher.