Hello from Ithaca NY

[swbeebe]

Hello, let me take a minute to introduce myself. My name is Scott and I'm from Ithaca NY. I have been an electronics repair tech for the last 13 years. I also bartend 2 nights of the week. I have been a Heymow member since October of 2009. I have been collecting parts and mowers for a couple years now, and am currently working on building a racing mower. I bought myself a welder, and several other tools since then, and figured with one of my donation mowers, I could build a trail mower and pratice on some of my fabracating skills. I was totally inspired by the El' Toro, as the first mower I was going to transform into a racer was a rear engine mower, but everyone thinks they are unsafe to race. Took the 700 trans off, anything else I maight be able to use and basicly scrapped the rest. (Wish I kept it now) I have some logging trails around the property, so I think I will try to make something for riding around on them. I figure the skills I would gain in building an ATLM would help me in building a racer. I'm not a BYB, and believe in saftey first. Thank you.

[Chris]

Welcome to the forum!

I haven't done any work to my mowers in the last several years because all my spare time is still tied up into my truck. I will say though, when off-road I preferred the rear-engine Toro to my other front-engine machines. It got great traction but going uphill it always wanted to lift the front-end (which was easy enough to compensate for by leaning forward). I never rolled it, but it was MUCH easier to bail from the Toro and if it ever went end-over-end I wouldn't have a heavy engine to smack me in the face. I liked my front engine mowers too, but with only the weight of me over the rear wheels, the front end tended to sink in muck. I had the biggest problems with my Cub Cadet in that aspect with the cast front axle and Kohler engine. I couldn't be fat enough to offset that kind of weight!

[swbeebe]

I was debating on using a Ford LT75 for the project. It seems a bit narrow, but has some rugged parts for being stock. I was thinking smaller the better in case you had to move it by hand or get it stuck in something. The ford has had the engine replaced with a briggs OHV, but too small to use in racing an OHV class. My main question is how do you keep the belts dry? I will likely be using a peerless 600 series transaxle because I have 3 of them.

[Chris]

The belts were a large problem for me. You need the largest pulleys you can fit so they have the most surface area. On my Toro I purchased dual-groove pulleys, but never got around to installing them.