[c] [24] RROD’S 414-8 BUILD

#Buildoff2024

Welp folks, looks like it’s time for my long awaited(lol) return to the buildoff! Here we can see my next victim, an only slightly abused Wheel Horse 414-8! Complete with the boat anchor kohler and even a nice mowing deck on purchase, all of that shall be ripped off, and it will be turned into a lean, mean, offroad machine! When completed, us here at the RROD design facilities hope for this tractor to sport a spicy Briggs oppy, uniquely locked differential, a brand new pair of 26x11-12 Maxxis Bighorns, and a John Deere 1” spindle front axle, and maybe even some flavor of PTO winch!

I forgot the date and had to squeeze it in there lol


Here we can see one of the future heart transplants of the tractor!


Approved Mightyraze 3/4/24

[adm]Welcome to the 2024 Build-Off!
[/adm]

Working on getting this thing disassembled somewhat. Man these are built weird!

Yes they are! Pretty simple too for the most part.

I'm excited to see the build on this I don't know much about those wheel horses other than they started making them in 1986 after Toro bought the company

ranch king pro 08 wrote:

I'm excited to see the build on this I don't know much about those wheel horses other than they started making them in 1986 after Toro bought the company

Then you might know more than I do! Hahaha

Got the thing tore apart, removing all the actual mowing parts and whatnot. The deck lift lever in particular was pretty challenging. Wound up cutting it. I think the only thing left that needs to be amputated is the PTO lever.


This will be my first excursion into 8 speeds. Aught to be fun.

The graphic design team here at RROD design facilities have devised a possible future livery to attract future sponsors. All feedback will be carefully considered and possibly factored into future graphic updates.


oh and the parts cannon is getting loaded up

@RichieRichOverdrive Here at the RKP_CUSTOMS lukewarm editing facility, We have came up with possible tactical advantages of your design

Made a puller for the hubs


It worked pretty good


Cleaned the outside a bit


Got the case open. Had a little water in it but no serious corrosion. Will determine the state of the bearings soon.


Next, to disassemble and reverse engineer the diff.

Just let it get covered in mud, and call it a Taco Bell paint job.

Doing some reverse engineering. I thought the 820 stuff I measured was weird, this stuff is about half crazy! Super odd pitch gears. Like 2.195 module 24 degree pressure angle stuff. I don’t actually need the profile all that close, but man it was weird getting it close enough.


Thinking I’ll just mill the gear profile out, leaving some extra clearance at the crests of the teeth to account for end mill radius. I think I’ll wind up doing a YouTube video on this locker build

Got the gear profile kind of finalized last night and had enough time to mill one plate out


Everything seems to fit good! I will have to grind the corners of the plates down with a flapdisk just a little to get them to fit in the carrier, but that will only take a second.

So this should be fine and dandy for a locker I think. You can kinda see the pins in there that replace the stock pinions. I turned those out of some 4140, though more because it was a convenient size rather than actually needing to be tool steel.




I’m thinking that four bolts really aren't enough to hold this carrier together.


So I went and fixed that up real quick. Sort of just plunged out the cast in slots around the outside so I could pass bolts through them.  


Gave them a nice spotface for the washer to sit, even.


I think this might do ok! Gotta get some more new grade 8 bolts, even though the stock ones are actually grade 8 already I just want them all to match lol.

Man, the quality of your machining is impeccable. Great job.

That sucker is probably the strongest point on the whole tractor! Nice work there bud!

Thanks lol, we’ll see. Yknow it’s gonna be fun seeing what a full fresh build from me turns out like. This is my first new build since the GT6k in 2018(?), I’m pretty sure.

Got some more bolts for the diff carrier. Found some heavy duty washers in my bin to span the slots and not bend so much.


Didn’t even have to cut the bolts down, they clear everything in the case!


All sealed up! Peep the 2x4 and c clamp workstation lol


I think I’ll use one of these for a shifter boot. These are honestly super useful for a lot of stuff.


I think after dinner I’ll do the holey pulley mod on my cast pulleys, Loctite the hubs on, and maybe pick an oppy to clean up and put in this thing. I have two pressure lube horizontals but I’m gonna go with a splasher just to get the tractor ready for GER in uhh…2 weeks…

RichieRichOverdrive wrote:

Thanks lol, we’ll see.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The only difference between Zip Ties n Bias Plies and Richie is that I don’t think Richie has a peg leg he can take a chainsaw to. lol.

Full sends until she bends!

You're really pulling out all the stops over there eh?! Great stuff man!

Brianator wrote:

You're really pulling out all the stops over there eh?! Great stuff man!

Well it’s actually a rush build at the moment. If I had more time I would be making my own chrome moly axles and wheel hubs. There’ll be time for that later I suppose hahaha.

After I got the hubs on (slathered in green loctite of course) I went to put the spacers on and realized my stock lug bolts weren’t going to work. They were about long enough, but the heads were far too small to work, just hitting the hole in the spacers on the corners of the hex. I found some 7/16-20 bolts in the bin that were longer, and then whipped 10 of these pieces out on the lathe real quick.


They just sort of convert a regular bolt into a lug bolt.


3/4” diameter with a 60 degree bevel fits the spacers perfect.


Depending on the rims I use, these spacers should push the wheels out to a 40-42” width. With the executioners on the tractor was like 36” across the back.


Threw the spare 3 jaw chuck up on the mill, picked up center, and walked off a bolt hole pattern for the holey pulley mod. Did 17 3/16 holes on the big pulley and 11 on the small one.




It’s raining outside and there’s a truck parked in the shop so that unfortunately makes working on the tractor a bit challenging. Though maybe I should get some sleep, I’ve been going on about 4 hours of sleep a night all week as I’ve been working on this thing.

Those wheel stud converters could be something worth selling. Nice work!

I found this to be the most convenient way to mount that heavy ass transaxle.


I added these two brace plates to hopefully mitigate cracking of the transmission mount that is typical to these wheel horses.


Threw these mudlites on just to get it in the shop.


Considered a snapper fender. It does look good but would have to be mounted super high to clear 26” bighorns. The stock fenders kind of have a bucket that lowers the seat while increasing tire clearance.


Somewhere in here I got distracted and put some fancy things on top of some shift knobs I have.


1” lift on the wheel horse fenders to clear the bighorns. Stole those off of mutt since I don’t have my new set mounted yet.




Now I’m working on mounting the John Deere front axle.

John Deere axle had a 1” pivot, I bushed it down to 3/4” so I don’t have to drill out pivot holes in the frame.


This thing is gonna need some bumpstops! Articulation is bad!


I’m waiting on some tie rod ends to come in so I just reused the stock tie rods for now and make this extension plate. It screws the steering geometry up a bit I think but it’ll get me around.


So I’ve got some 25mm bore rims to fit this axle, but they need to be liberated from some foam filled tires. I had no idea how to do this and I thought a chainsaw was a little overkill so I opted for the good old sawzall.


What a mess! If you pressurize the tires a bit beforehand with the air hose I think it helps peel some of the foam from the tire


Once you get the outside of the tire off you can kinda split the foam in one spot with a knife and peel the whole thing off clean.


Surprisingly the rims are clean!

Got the bearings repacked and mounted the front tires today.

It's shaping up nicely!