[Finalist] [24] RROD’s Sears Custom 6

50lb valve springs got here. Still dont have a spring compressor so i did the old compress the spring in a vise and hold it with zip ties thing. Glad i bought these extra strength black ones! It was still pretty miserable.


Threw the engine back together and filled her with oil. She lit right off! Seems like a super strong runner too!


Took a risk and drove around a bit without belt guides. Managed to get away with it without dropping or shredding the belt! It definitely will not stop in neutral like it should though.

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Made up a belt wrap for the front pulley. Im not sure a wrap is always the best choice but it seems to always be a good option.


Bad angle but you can kind of see it there.


Belt keeper for the lower idler that also keeps the belt from rubbing against itself in the middle

Bit of hammering on a stock wheel horse belt guard and it looks pretty good in there


Forgot to tighten the engine pulley back up and almost got whipped by a piece of key stock:lol!:


Slotting these tabs to hopefully save me some filing and fitting in the future


Top belt keeper done and a few other things added. More mower sheet metal. Notice the wings on the sides of all the belt rails to stop it from flopping over the side or catching around the side of the trans pulley and walking off.


Shortened that key and put a lock collar in just for some extra insurance


Oh, i also changed the hydraulic oil in the trans for some 80w140. It sounds much happier. I’ve found these trans usually get quieter as they run in, so long as the bearings stay good. The 3 speed in the lawn ranger has quieted down a lot from the hundreds of hours of riding lol.

I’ll get to a gas pedal next i swear!!

Tapped some holes


Tapped hole for cable sheath stop


Drilled more holes in this throttle arm. Moving the carb linkage in towards the pivot and hooking the cable further out to give the cable a longer length of pull


Whipped up a gas pedal


Cable pulling on carb side


Everything put together. Seems good, haven’t ran it yet, had to go see a marching band show


Picking up some 93 octane for it too, gonna see if the 301 likes it any better.

Put a heavier spring on the gas pedal. Little overkill but it feels perfect.


Went and remembered how stupid these clutch pedals are. Can’t wait to change that up.


Threw some tire chains on, these havent seen daylight since they were on mutt in 2016 or so


Noodled the tie rod not even doing anything lol


Took the wheel off so i could steer going back lol


Took the tie rod off and realized it’s hollow. Real goofy


Trying to go to a wheel horse kind of setup. Made a plate to bolt to the center arm and sort of give more area to work with. Bolts to the arm and then the hole’s for the tie rods are tapped through both the plate and arm.




Wound up getting the setup done, i guess it steers about as good as it did before. I have some more improvements in mind coming up.

@RichieRichOverdrive it's weird that that steering rod is Hollow. Also I don't think crashing into a big rock is nothing Lol

Im told they’re supposed to be solid. Must have been put on sometime in the past 50 years. Didnt even hit a rock, i think i just tried to cut the wheel and one wheel turned and one didnt

I don't know much about those 301's, had no idea they were a Hemi. Pretty neat! Looking sweet, man! Looking forward to watching you wheel the hell out of it lmao

CraftsmanQuad19 wrote:

I don't know much about those 301's, had no idea they were a Hemi. Pretty neat! Looking sweet, man! Looking forward to watching you wheel the hell out of it lmao

There is a hemi and non hemi version just like the 212. The non hemi is apparently preferred for the smaller combustion chamber that can make more compression than the hemi head, at least without welding. Or at least that seems like the deal with them. Idk, I’m super happy with how this engine turned out, even with stock carb and exhaust!

Ok, ran for a little while with the dual tie rod steering. Would still jam the steering at full lock. Could just limit the steering, but that doesn’t jive with me.

So i did some studying…


And looked to unravel the secrets of the best steering I’ve seen…


Broke out some twine so i could discover what the wheel horse secret is


After some backfiguring, i relayed the same formulas to the sears


Chop chop!


Fixtured them up kinda half ass


Welded both sides


Here’s the new setup! Notice the new pivot plate on the center arm.


So what i figured out with the wheel horse, the distance between the tie rod pivots is determined by the ackerman angles and the distance of the tie rods from the rotary axis of the center arm shaft. Basically, i took the angle of the stock tie rod arms, and transferred those angles to the plate in the center, leaving the tie rod arms themselves to just be straight.


With the tie rod arms 90* to the spindle, the arm and tie rod never cam over center and jam up at full lock.  


Steers great! It’s like a wheel horse that doesnt turn quite as tight, which makes sense, as wheel horse frames are narrower and allow you to turn sharper.

Bored out these 8” rims and drilled them up to 5 lug. Painted the beads so they might seal a bit better.


This should be good!

Got the tires mounted up on the rims


It was sitting about 38” wide, too much for my taste. So i took the hubs off and machined the backside so i could run them backwards.


Jeez what a mess in there. I had to even cut a notch so i could get the rim past the set screw. I may paint these in the future to cover up this mess


Down to about 34” wide. Much better suited to this tractor.


I made a new tie rod to replace the rusty one and then just lengthened the other one i made.


Made a little jig to drill the tie rod hole a bit further in for faster steering. Fun fact, something that guides or locates the cutting tool is a jig, while something that guides or locates the part being cut is a fixture.


These tires are badass! They really put the power to the ground, seemingly on any terrain. I can see why  @redzz02 likes them so much on the mud dynamark.

I was curious about those tires.  @Redzz02 always seems to put them on when he races.

He ran them when he came down to giverthebean’s a little while back, they did super good in the mixed terrain over in eastern KY. Don’t recall if he had them on at the last GER ride. Either way, the more i run these the more I’m liking them.

Got up to no good with the angle grinder today


What could this be for?


Its about a 50/50 chance i get a decent result out of this bender


A pedal! The stub that slips over the shaft is actually a piece of trailer spindle i cut off of the trailer spindles on Mutt. The vertical piece is some kind of deck lift hardware from the 414.


The clutch pedal is secured on the shaft with a roll pin and some set screws to keep things tight. The moto footpeg type design seems really grippy and shouldn’t have a problem with getting packed with mud. I like it!

Check this cool tread out!


Pizza cutters! These are 5.70-8 Kenda concrete buggy tires. Kind of hard, but about the only think you can find in a 5.70-8 that isnt a trailer tire


Sears performed excellent at canmer today! These tires are great all around!




Unfortunately i busted another front valve stem today so that sort of cut the testing short. I’ll have that fixed up soon though.

Oh yeah, lost a bit of turn radius with the new front tires. May move the tie rods again to slow the steering back down.

Went on a couple mile cruise today. You can cover some ground pretty quick at 22mph.








Added an hourmeter/tachometer. Wish i would have put one on the lawn ranger when i first started riding it all the time. Its got a ton of hours on it.

I love the small rim big tire combo. Reminds me of the old mud trucks from way back in the day.

A ton of sidewall is just the way to go. Just soaks up everything you drive over and rides much softr, especially at low psi. I have these at 1.5-psi now i think, and will be trying lower soon

Those 50lb valve springs really let this thing sing!

So while the pan seat is sprung well for my weight and the pan seat is very supportive, it is unfortunately very tall and too wide to drop between the fenders. So i picked up this universal seat from amazon. Its similar to one you can find at tractor supply, but for half the price.


I was debating on using the stock seat mount off of the 414 but I decided to just make my own and maybe make something a bit more slick and hopefully lighter.


Two pieces with holes and slots, mirror image of each other


Some cross bracing. Angle iron is 1-1/4”x3/16” and the cross pieces are just 1/8x1


While i had the wheels off i went ahead and cut off that pesky hitch plate. Always gets caught on stuff.


I used a pair of crapsman seat springs on standoffs in the frame, and just made some front mounts out of 3/16x2 angle iron.


This seat makes all the difference! Super comfy and supportive and also about 2” lower than the original, and i can easily shift my ass over the fender to keep the tractor planted on steep sidehills. Can’t wait to ride it some more!

Getting ready for a ride down in TN this weekend. Pulled the hubs off and cleaned the bores and axles down to bare metal and slathered them in loctite and shoved the hubs back on. They hadnt come loose yet with just the set screw holding them, but i dont wanna take any chances lol.

Broke off one of the set screws for the hubs. Luckily i was able to lock two nuts together and get it out and replaced with a new one. Put a new one on the other side too for good measure.


The center steering arm hangs awfully low and has already been bent back a bit. I hammered it straight and welded a brace plate to it.




I discovered a skinny ammo can fits perfectly in the battery box


Got to thinking on how i could improve these tires. Sort of laid it out with different color chalk so i could visualize it better.


Went at them with a thin milling cutter on the angle grinder (basically a little saw blade). I think i spent about 3 hours cutting both tires, though the second one probably only took an hour, once i had the motions down.


What a mess! I was covered in rubber and so was everything around me. I had to wear a hat and safety glasses and a mask around my mouth and have a fan blowing on me just so i could tolerate the job


I think they’ll do much better! I still want to break up the tread blocks in the middle a little bit, but i think I’ll do it outside next time

I wound up cutting the tires some more


This is the murder weapon i did it with


Then i went and got clotheslined by a grapevine. Also found a super gnarly rocky trail right on the edge of the property. So that was fun. My brand new seat did get bent when i flipped backwards lol.

Your final tread looks great.

Sears did great down at coalmont today


Behind me in this spot I accidentally showed up some jeeps that were recording a youtube vid and blasted through all the rocks they were fighting with


Most of what you can see from this view is part of the offroad park. Place is huge!


One small problem i guess, after being slammed on its side several times (the tractor is hard to roll backwards, it goes backwards and then falls to the left), it seems i busted the roll pin that stops the front wheel from sliding in on the spindle. Can’t really complain if that’s the only problem from hard riding for 6 hours straight!


More evidence of abuse lol. The steering wheel is a bit bent up too.