[23] "Death Wish" 4x4 lawn tractor

#Buildoff2023

Finally got around to getting the project back into gear so here i am reentering. As for plans go for this time around im still hopping up the engine same as before, but now ill be keeping the transaxles and am going to turn the frame into a willow-lock swivel frame. Also around August/September i plan to start finalizing it with custom body panels (fenders, footrests, and hood) and red and black pain job. At the time of posting I'm in the process of changing the dash to the older square style as i plan to give the mower a more vintage look with a square (custom) hood that will most likely look like the sears gt 16 hood with round lights and a grill. Other fun tidbits I have planed I wont quite tell yet but you'll be able to see them when i post them



Approved - Apr 4, 2023 MightyRaze

[adm]Welcome to the Build-Off![/adm]

finally got my fueling problems fixed now (as i removed the vacuum fuel pump)
Later in the day I'm going to keep working on refining my rewiring a bit more and cleaning it up, oh and I'm going to get rid of all of the in line fuses and wire it back into the fuse panel. I also got the side panels swaped over to the "square style" for the older style dash.

Got the "new" square style of dash all painted up, next is to cut out some aluminum Dimond plate to go over it and other sections of dash. All the little spots are just wood chips that fell onto of it after it dried.

Picked up some back tires for the mower yesterday, now I gota make some hubs. (edit): Just went out to move the mower, started it went to go throw it into gear and guess what, it was doing the one wheel peel, witch isn't good considering it has been locked. anyways guess i gota tear that open now and see what's up. I've said this before but ill probably eventually doc lock it as the sketchy way i did it definitely isn't holding.

Sorry I haven't posted in a while but i can definitely say I've been working on this, so far i have cut out both gearboxes on the plasma table and got them both welded up, got my spider gears from a dana 44 and the main shaft (which i haven't bought yet, waiting on tax money) will be 1-3/8" so hopefully with the way i built this it will never break. and at the moment
have everything all mocked up bearings included, and i chose to use tapered roller bearings as everything will kinda be sandwiched together by the main shaft.

This is a really neat concept I look forward to seeing it in action! Must've been tricky welding welding inside the boxes eh?

Brianator wrote:

This is a really neat concept I look forward to seeing it in action! Must've been tricky welding welding inside the boxes eh?

Oh my gosh yes. I had to hold the welder in all sorts of weird angles to get it to weld, and on top of that I ran out of my .030 wire part way through and had to finish it with .025 but all in all I think it turned out great.

Finally did some overdue exhaust work, now it has drag pipes, anyways this thing sounds wicked now, sounds like the old school Harleys did. And yep im aware i wont be able to steer it at the moment. The reason being when i add the swivel frame i plan to add 4in of lift to the transaxles, so hopefully it will clear after that, if not back to the drawing board.

Sorry its been a while i kinda forgot to post these images when i took em 2 weeks ago, anyways the progress goes as is, got the main shaft (which is 1-3/8in in diameter) purchased and welded one end onto it, pressed the bearings into place, welded the smaller spider gears to 3/4in shaft have them fitted, and here is where im about stumped and need some advice. The larger spider gears i need to remove the splines so they can fit properly over the shaft so i took em to my local machinist because i dont own a lathe and they told me the steel was to hard to be cut with there lathe as it would damage their cutting tips, so next i tried abrasive multitool tips, ended up blowing through 12 of those and made little progress, so then tried a cobalt step bit that was 1-3/8 and it started to PEEL the cobalt, after that i went to a carbide barb, this seemed to work better as i wasn’t blowing through tips anymore but i cant tell you how much time i spent trying to knock these splines down with it and ive only knocked out 1/4 of the meat on the splines, (the splines where sharp) and this only applies to one of the gears i haven’t even started on the other one yet. Anyways if anyone knows a faster or better method of doing this it would greatly be appreciated if you could share it, thanks.

Looking great man!

The only thing I can think of is to remove the hardening, do your thing then have them rehardened. Easy said than done I know but it's either that or you just have to soldier on for many hours on end by the sounds of it...

Brianator wrote:

Looking great man!

The only thing I can think of is to remove the hardening, do your thing then have them rehardened. Easy said than done I know but it's either that or you just have to soldier on for many hours on end by the sounds of it...

Yea looking at it that is very Well what i might have to do and then just pray to god it don’t crack when i go to reharden it. And at this point i dont know how many more multitool disks i can go through and my barb isnt looking to hot either.

Do you have a 1/4” die grinder or just like a little dremel? In your position I would probably be whittling on it with one of those pink stones in a die grinder.

Why not have the shaft turned to press into the minor diameter of the splines and then be welded in place or something like that?

My thought with annealing is that the gear is likely case hardened and may or may not lose too much carbon to be properly re-hardened. Then again, you may be able to live with a softer gear than most applications. Annealing is also best done with a heat treat oven, or at least a forge where it can be heated up and left to cool slowly.

Sorry its been a while, its hay season up here and I'm workin for a farmer so updates might be pretty far apart, anyways here's what I got this time around, wiring has been completely cleaned up and is now in one solid loom, cut up some aluminum Dimond plate for the dash (with the swivel frame in mind) finalized the exhaust mounts and remounted the kill tether to a better location. I think that im going to make a fuel tank out of and old jerry can as it is much cheaper than a aluminum tank and in my opinion would look cooler when finished. and i plan to mount it directly above the hitch of the mower right behind the seat, and the new fenders i plan to make here come September - October ish will allow me to do so. Progress on the gearboxes will probably be on hold as the main gears still wont let me cut their splines out, so I may have to send them off to some specialty company as i want to maintain the hardness of the steel for the amount of speed that these will have to endure.

Unfortunately i am posting my withdrawal from the buildoff. Due to events going on in my life I've decided that I need more stability financial wise and have started an apprenticeship to become and electrician, with everything going on I'm going to set this on the far back burner as it is currently in the corner of my shop in pieces. I did however at one point very briefly have it driving with both axles running. However, the rear peerless 930 transaxle went splat when I robed it out for my race mower so eventually when I come back to it I'll have to find a "new" one. Im probably not going to be very active on the site until I get my feet back underneath me and I have extra funds to screw around with.

JittyJat wrote:

Due to events going on in my life I've decided that I need more stability financial wise and have started an apprenticeship to become and electrician,

Nothing wrong with dropping out for a better job opportunity. Good luck.

I feel ya man, as hard as it was to do I withdrew in June to free up some time because I had too much on the go.

Best of luck in your new endeavors and don't be a stranger!

Too bad, I do wish you the best in the new career moves!  As @Brianator mentioned, don't be a stranger!

Gotta do what u gotta do! Hope to see more in the future!

@JittyJat good luck man we're rooting for ya