Mule "kind-of thing" build

[beanie]

Hi,

I have been working on this thing for about 20 hrs and well it is starting to look a little like something. The donor was a Sears riding mower with a 18ish hp B&S vertical shaft engine. I paid 50.00 for it and was promised it ran at one time, no mower deck.

I hauled the beast home and put a battery in it. Bought some fuel line and put some gas in the carb. Checked the oil and hooked the battery up. Well I should have looked but some Einstine had hooked the ignition kill wire to the hot side of the battery. Blue smoke.

I took the lid off the engine and found the smoke had come from the now destroyed ignition, so off to the parts store to get a replacement. Put that one, checked ALL of the wiring and hooked the battery up. No smoke this time. Held my breath and fired it up, it started up pretty good and ran ok except for sugring.

So after a new plug, new filter and a carb kit it runs ok, but still wants to hunt too much for me. I rode it around and around to see if the hydrostatic transmission was going to hold up and if the engine was too. It didn't smoke and the transmission pulls great so I guess all things said I did ok for 50.00.

My goal was to copy one of the mules or FUV's. I was going to build the frame from scratch but after looking at the transmission I saw it was going to be a major PITA to mount the engine behind the trans because of a hump on the back of the trans. I could have but the engine drive belt would have had to be offset about 30 degree.

So with that being more than I wanted to tackle, I went back to plan A which was to cut the frame into fourths. The first was the back 1/4 about 12 inches long that held the trans, and drive selector shaft and front trans supports. The next long 4th was not used. The next 4th was the engine mount and a tension pully shaft. The last fourth was another 12" peice which had the front wheels and the bay for the front axel to piviot in.

Then I laid it all out and welded 11 guage 1x1 along the bottom of the old frame parts. The back peice is 8" tall and the others are 3" tall, but they all share the same ground line. When I got it welded up it looked good as was straight and true, but after rethinking it it was to frigging short!

So out with the saw and chopped my new frame into, and I added a 14" extension and using a old RC airplane trick, used a string to true the front end to a point 1/2 the width of the rear end.

Today I got the steering back in by rotating the steering mech 180 and driving the front end from the front instead of the rear. Got the drive, fwd, rev welded together. Got the break/clutch pedal on and welded, still need to make the new linkage.

I took some photos but it was already dark, I'll take some more tomorrow.

 

[beanie]

small photos, wee tiny little dirty things!

 

[kibble]

Looks like you got a lot going on there! Welcome to the site, but you can't have a 1x1 pixel image. It would just be a dot!

 

[kibble]

Oh you edited it.

 

[beanie]

Yes I did edit it.

Thanks for the welcome!

I did some more work and have it almost framed up. I added the cargo bed, got some missing parts added. I will take some more photos tomorrow and plan on doing the last bit of framing, might even get a test run if it isn't raining too hard.

 

[RobertD]

super cool. Keep the photos coming!

 

[ryf]

be careful over driving the hydrostatic transaxles alot, the pumps can get damaged from the excessive spin-up. if you run your axle like a jackshaft off the output as I did with mine you can gear it up with chains and the tranny will last alot longer. looks cool, I used alot of the same ideas with mine, it worked well..
if you need a belt tensioner, for 15-20 bucks you can get a chevy serpentine idler that made mine zero slip and I've hooked it up to use as a proper clutch.

looks great though, keep it coming.

 

[beanie]

Thank you ryf, you were my inspiration for doing it this way!

more photos:

The thing is running fine and hauls two people and I am guessing about 200lb of cargo. You can see it is happily carrying 150lb of mulch. I used it to carry off the left over parts of the donor mower today.

It is not fast, but fast enough without any suspension other than the tires. My goal was a work mini truck for light duty around the farm. By using all the parts from the original mower, all I have in it is the steel for the frame.

I have the bed, seat, and floorboard mounted (Still undecided about cutting the floorboard to fit the frame or leave it square). Today I ran a new throttle cable and extended the ignition switch to its final location.

I like the fact that by raising the bed I have total access to the transmission and engine. Next project is to get it primed and painted.

Operation is very easy. Sit in the seat, push down the clutch/brake pedal, choke the engine( throttle is located under the seat drivers side) turn the key ( located on drivers side just behind the seat) and then when it is ready I either pull the knob for foward, or push it for rev. The more the knob moves the faster it goes. ( located under and about midway of the seat )

A couple of highlights of the build: Turning the steering mech 180 and steering from the front of the front axel line and using some part of the mower deck hanger mech to make a new shift arm for the transmission and changing it to the left side.

Overall it has been a blast building it!

 

[2or3wheels]

looks great, how much fuel does it use? tank looks small for a big motor like that.

 

[beanie]

good catch! It don't use a lots but it don't take too long to need a re-supply since the engine is running at govornored speed all the time and the speed is controlled via the hydrostatic. I don't know why Sears used such a small tank, most new mowers have giant tanks with about the same hp. In it's orginal configuration driving the heavy built mower and cutting grass I bet it was a fairly often event.

I read somewhere about copperplate paint, I think I'll use that to paint it.

Dan

 

[2or3wheels]

Looks fantastic, i took a rear engine moer that has a seperate gear box took all that off and rigged a 5hp ghorizontal shaft on it. I need to bring it home here because at the cabin is way to sandy for the skinny tires, next time ill take a few pics.

 

[beanie]

Great!

There a lot of value in a mower with no deck. This one has 20X12X8 rear tires and 15x8x6 fronts.

If I had had to buy the engine, transmission/transaxel, rims, and tires even at surplus prices would have cost maybe close to 1000.00.

Like they say, if you bought a car one part at a time a 15k$ car would cost 45K or more.

 

[beanie]

This has been a fun, learning experince for me. The vech. will get many years use on the farm and is a joy to drive.

I am guessing the speed tops out less than 10mph and has carried everything I have ask of it yet. I may add a parking brake but other than some unexpected event it is about done.

I thought it would involve countless hours of tedious tinkering to get the belts to line up ect, but it was basically a no-brainer when built this way.


photos after a little paint, showing rear lid hinges.

 

[ryf]

nice simple farm tool.. I like it. I went the other way but this covers the need, good work.

 

[beanie]

Thanks

 

[2or3wheels]

Question for you guys, do you think the seperate gear box on my POS mower will hold up to high speeds? Im sure it wont have probs with too much torque but just spped, you think the bearring will die?

 

[ironman]

big ride like that needs to be tuned into a mini monster truck.