This is the mower that started the off-road trend on MowBetter, which lead to the MUCH safer Toro; which lead to this place....
Note: This thing was freaking dangerous. Thanks to MowBetter I've since made it MUCH safer, and started a completely new build (the toro) and put this one on the back burner for a little while...I finally added the pics. This thing is a *fiddle*ing riot to drive around. I take it down the 4 Wheeler and snowmobile trails around here, and it does really good. I took it into the pit behind the house, and it did pretty good in the sand. It can definitely use some more aggressive tires because it spins allot (obviously) with those turf tires. I'll throw on some extra ATV tires that I have kicking around when I'm not as lazy. The pics below are of the pulley mods and some of
the mowah of d00m at the mud bog (that's currently all grass) and the pit. I duct taped some American flags on the front to show my hardcore patriotism
Here is the story:
I got bored a few days ago, and my girlfriend's father has had this lawnmower sitting for about a year now. He couldn't get it to start, so he just went out and bought a new one. I went outside started tinkering on it and realized the starter relay went bad. Replaced it and she fired right up. Drove it around a bit to test it out and it was pretty quick for a mower. It has an 18HP Briggs & Stratton twin cylinder engine in it, so that's always sweet.
Well I decided that I'm not going to mow any lawns any time soon, so I took off the deck. I adjusted the carb so it would run a little smoother, and brought the idle waaaaaaay down. It sounds like a *fiddle*ing Harley now, its badass with such a rough idle.
Well today I went to the local lawnmower shop and talked to the guy for about 45 minutes. I walked away with a new set of pulleys and a smile on my face. It was either going to be *fiddle*ing awesome or I was going to be in the hospital for a few weeks....
Well, got the new pulleys on, adjusted the clutch and transmission and took her out for a spin. My god did it scare the *fiddle*ing *poopie* out of me! Lawnmowers were DEFINITELY not designed to go fast!!!! I let out the clutch a little too fast because I didn't think it got any touchier than it use to be. Boy was I wrong!!! Just idling, the front jumped in the air and threw me back, almost off the *fiddle*ing mower. I could slam the clutch fast enough to bring the front down... I learned my lesson quick!!!
Needless to say, I slowly let out the clutch and off I was. Just idling it was doing about 10MPH in 5th gear. I put the throttle half way and the thing shot forward, I was pretty impressed. I opened it up to full throttle and shot into a nearby field. It must have caught like 2' of air on the dirt mound because it landed so *fiddle*ing hard that the gas cap went flying off and gas went everywhere!
It gets sideways and does burnouts VERY easily! I need to do SOMETHING about the front suspension though. I took a corner on the actual road, and it went up on two wheels and scared the *fiddle*ing hell out of me. It took me about 100' to get it back on all four wheels because it didn't want to go back down. It was like the Dukes of Hazzard lawnmower!
I'm thinking of putting some old shock/spring combos on the front off of one of my old dirt bikes. So the suspension still works, but it's not a free travel suspension like it's designed to be. That's definitely too dangerous at speed! I'm probably going to put in a throttle pedal or handlebars or SOMETHING because it's too hard to reach down and cut the throttle down to idle when you?re on two wheels thinking "Ok, I can flip it or I can hit the car I'm heading towards.." It was
not fun! ....ok, ok I was LMAO afterwards, but it scared the *fiddle* out of me at the time.
I'll take some videos of it and I'm going to have my girlfriend clock the top speed of it too probably. I might mod it further and get a bunch more speed out of it, because there is allot more to be had from it. The front pulley is stock, so I could definitely go larger and get about 2-5X the speed it has now.
I haven't even gotten into engine mods yet, although I'm probably going to leave the engine stock. The governor might come off though. It only lets the blades in the carb open about 8% at full throttle. There is ALLOT more RPM to be had!!! I need to research that particular engine and see what's the max RPM it will handle for extended periods of time, and for short bursts... Then I'll throw on a small tach, one of those electric bicycle speedos, and recalibrate the governor and see how fast she'll go then.
I'm thinking of making a hood scoop for it, because the engine sucks air to cool it off in an area where there isn't much fresh air. It has this ghetto ram air function too. It uses some of the air that it sucks from the top of the engine, and rams it into the carb. SO adding some sort of hoodscoop or vent on the top would both benefit cooling and performance.
Anyways, I think I'm officially a redneck now; but this thing is entertaining nonetheless! I'm going to try and take it to my parent's house next week. They have 22 acres of field for me to fly through.
Well, I went on an expedition today after changing the oil... I left the house at 2pm and didn?t get back until a little after 5pm. didn?t think I was gone for that long, but apparently I was. I played around in the gulley for a little while out behind the house (and found out the hard way that I was in a swamp! Didn't get stuck, but she spun the tires real good when I stopped to take the pic of the tall grass. Covered me in *fiddle*ing mud!!) Well, I got bored after that and drive around the fairgrounds for a bit (accessible VIA the gulley) and then went up a logging trail until I got hung up on a stump and turned around. I thought of this trail that I've been meaning to check out a few miles up the road by a substation. So off to it I was! I drove up to the trial (on the road obviously
) and drove around on it. It was pretty kickass! I found this bigass field that must have been a cattle field up on a mountain that I climbed and found all these trails and *poopie*. I also found a dirt track that I played on until I smoked my belt to the point where it was 1st gear or not moving... lol. I was at it for about 45 minutes wide open in 3rd gear (it's a 5 speed) before that happened though, so it lasted longer then I expected! The crappy part was I didn't think about setting up the cam untill after the belt was smoking. So in the video you can see a blue trail of somke behind the mower... Yeah, that's the belt slipping!
Well anyways, here are some pics of the trip and a few more of the ugly machine...
