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July 12, 1957, US Surgeon General Leroy Burney links smoking to lung cancer.

Also on the 161, there are some mixed reviews for this but I went ahead and installed some radial bearings on the spindles. Added 1/8" that I took off the top to allow access to the groove for the clip. In the process I'm reminded how much I dislike grease guns. Are any of them reliable for those of us that use them 3-4 times a year?

The Ugly Bruce tractor with a bonus chicken!

Not ours but a buddy of ours

This is a lot of work without a machine shop but I really needed to get these made before I install the ARK on the 161 (the old one on the bench is from the junk pile!).

My ACE Hardware has flanged bushings and E clips in the pull out drawers.

To answer your question, no. Lol Here’s a must watch.

Those will stay with you, I have one set that I built in 1989 and they are still tight, don't see any ware.

New to me 161 I picked up this week

https://www.facebook.com/reel/2052110235671184

The 1/2" E-ring will fit a 7/16" groove in a 1/2" shaft. The rings are stamped so one side has rounded edges and the other is sharp. Install the ring with the sharp side facing away from the bushing for more holding pressure. The sharp edges have less chance of being forced out of the groove. Correction - I had it backwards - fixed it.

I could use a bag of donuts, or at least one this morning. Onan parts are going to be very high priced and the labor cost for machining a two cylinder engine will more than likely be higher than the cost of a replacement engine. The big question is "what will you be doing with the 520?" If it is for general running around and light duty stuff a Predator Engine from Harbor Freight should do the trick. Also, will you be doing the work and do you have the tools and skill set to do an engine swap? You may want to consider the Honda V Twin from Repower Specialists. https://repowerspecialists.com/collections/wheel-horse/products/wheel-horse-520-with-onan?variant=6979132817431

Check out the mule drive pullies. Be sure they spin freely and are on the drive correctly. If you remove the nut (takes a 1 1/8" wrench or socket) you can check the order of the pullies. Between the guard and the flat pulley there is a spacer and another spacer between the two pullies. The shorter of the two spacers needs to be between the two pullies and the long one between the guard and the flat pulley.

Not around here!! The local Lowes fasteners section is an absolute joke. The drawers resemble a campsite after being raided by a bunch of feral rabid raccoons. And the local Home Depot "streamlined" their selection to about half the size it was 2 years ago.... marketing genius I guess.

I find no evidence they were genuine Wheel Horse. My guess is they were homemade. The WT-30 self propelled tillers were made in 1960 for the small engine tractors. Hanging all that weight on the rear of the small tractors was a poor idea. Wheel Horse did offer a front weight to balance the rear load. They also were connected to a speed reduction unit that was mounted under the tractor. It appears this mounting hardware on your tiller has been modified to use a slot hitch. In 1964 WH offered the better designed WT 244 self propelled tiller with the wheels and a better slot hitch tongue that was able to raise just the tines leaving the engine weight on the tiller wheels for transport.

It's a 1/2" ID x 5/8" OD brass flange bushing. If you have hardware or Lowes or Home Depot that keeps there parts draw up tp date. it should not be hard to find

Chasin' the train. I arrived in Cresson as it was leaving. Caught up with it in Derry. Pardon the narration. 20260711_140150.mp4

Every cap clamp I have ever used, going back to 1988, was an aluminum body with a stainless bolt.

For a size reference, this tractor is about the same size as a John Deere 2510, it's a 4 cylinder utility tractor. Also have another in progress, it's based on an International 284.

Recently Brought back from the dead.

I couldn’t help but take a few more “side shots.”

Cut some grass today.Cut better than I thought it would. Deck is a bit noisy but I’m guessing it is just the nature of these old gear driven decks. Hard to believe that the original tires still hold air after all this time

953 I believe it was It was the valves. They are new Kohler Valves. I think I did not lap them in enough. I had a slight rig on valve. Now there is nice full ring showing on the valve and seat. But I went thru every thing = points condenser and all wiring. So now very little popping. Now I need the throttle linkage past the governor. The one that came with this tractor was pretty well gone, so Walfish made me up something. It just doesn’t work well so I gotta do some research on all those part numbers. Thanks for the post.

Thank you all for the Feedback! If my Sten mechanical pump doesn't work out, I will cave and install one of the suggested Electric pumps.

@bradleydavidgood Check out Brian at K+B Wheel Horse Parts. @76c12091520h He is in our vendors section and should have a nice fender pan at a reasonable price for you. He sells quality parts, no junk at a fair price. Brian is my go to guy for two reasons, first he’s a really nice guy and second he’s extremely knowledgeable when it comes to these tractors.

I’m getting the 68 back together.I wired it up using a solenoid and a 103990 Ignition switch as suggested by @953 nut it was tight but I found a spot by the tower. I put on a new drive belt ,had to cobble together some fuel line wile I wait for replacement line. There is a outer bearing that should be replaced on the generator.It wines a bit even after greasing both bearings but is working fine. Today I’ll flush the trans and replace gear oil. The deck is ready I just have to sharpen the blades. I have to say the 68 commando has an interesting drive set up for the deck with the gears and belts but everything seems to be good.’ Shes running great with zero smoke . The intake valve is slightly out of speck and I’ll have to replace that too. But she’s running great let’s see if I can post a video IMG_2212.mov

Good add. Ground is paramount to proper DC circuits. I do realize you want to keep originality. Adding wires to create a full ground loop from engine block to frame to steering tower will save many future headaches.

Good job as always getting those motors running. If John and Keven are there guaranteed it would run. running.

Raining here so snapped pic in basement of C160 waiting to go out side and play

Looks like a good project. Do NOT use that seat bracket unless it can lock down. Ask me how I know......

I know I am a day late but I know I will forget to post these next weekend so here ya go!

Amazing how many young guys I see on base taking up smoking…with the info that’s out.

Bout the time I started smoking.

Hi all, So I know this might not be everyones' cup of tea but here we are. Since we moved houses and went from 700m2 (7500 sq/ft) to 10.000+m2 (~2.5 acre) we were in desperate need of some more serious mowing capacity. Since me ol' 512D is not in running order and/or even has a mowing deck I was on the lookout for something else. Since the budget is tight because we're renovating I set my goals on a sub 1000 bucks mower. Also it had to be a frontmower rather than a tractor for ease of use and the mowing deck had to be in good shape. After a looong time I found this 'beauty': Stiga Villa classic with 3 year old mowing deck for €400,-/~$450,-. Knowing that a new bare mowing deck alone costs about 300,- I did not hesitate. Not much to look at but does the job. Easy acces and simple construction. Simple gearbox and chaindrive, 1 reverse, 5 forward gears. Good ol' B&S 12,5 HP (Quiet I CANNOT agree with) Since buying it I changed the oil, sparkplug aircleaner(s) and added a new seat. After mowing two times it threw a belt so I replaced that aswell. Funny story about the front wheels and axle on the mowing deck.. they are almost always worn out, as were these. Although the wheels being plastic they had ground down the 16mm (5/8") shaft to about 10mm (~3/8"). So bought a set of new wheels which cost about $15 each and thought of buying a new axle. I mean how much could a piece of 5/8" x 3,5ft round bar possibly cost, right? Well, Stiga wanted $110,- for it Luckily our local 'tractor supply' sells C45 axle steel or 'silver steel' round stock by the metre which cost a whopping $6,50! Bought that, cut it to length, drilled and tapped an M8 hole on each end and re-assembled everything. Back to mowing again! Note: this was the before situation. Don't know why the wheels were'nt installed symmetrical here.

I just re-configured a 32” 64-65 Lawn Ranger gear drive to use on my 401 to replace the one i had been running for the last 10+ years that was pretty beat. I was amazed how quiet it is. I thought the belt was seriously slipping when i first engaged the pedal, but it was just that quiet. I use the red “tacky” grease on the gears. Check the cross shaft for axial play. It should be minimal. Maybe .020”- .025”. On my 702, when i bought it and finally got it to the point i could mow with it, i noticed it wasn’t cutting well on the one side. I found that the one cross shaft gear had a sheared woodruff key. Once i replaced the woodruff, the cross shaft wouldn’t turn. I found that the gear spinning freely on the shaft had smeared the shoulder of the shaft where the gear butts up against, so when the nut was tightened, it was pinching the bearing towers between the two gears. The shaft is 3/4” and the bore in the gear is 5/8”, so basically the gear rests up against a 1/16” shoulder on the shaft, so don’t over-tighten the nut or it can damage the shaft. I ended up making a .020” shim with a 5/8” i.d. to fit behind the gear. In hindsight, i could have made it .030”-.035” and shimmed out a bit more of the backlash at the gears also. I think there is a service bulletin on thicker thrust bearing washers for the blade shafts to minimize gear noise on some models also, but if you have excessive axial or radial play in the cross shaft bearings, i’d start there. If the gear nuts were over-torqued at some point, or a smeared woodruff, the shoulders on the cross shaft may be damaged, resulting in excessive axial play of the shaft which results in excessive backlash at the gears. Cross shaft tower bearings 1630-2RS Blade shaft needle bearings B1212 The threads in the aluminum(?) bearing towers on my old deck were in rough shape from numerous belt changes. I swapped out the bolts with longer ones and whatever combination of washers needed to grab ALL of the threads possible in the towers. Maybe inspect the cast housing closely for cracks also. I’ve cracked 3 of them over the last 28 years. They get really noisy when that happens. They break across these same two holes. I added some bolts that kept this one mowing for a few more years. The Lawn Ranger donor before, and after the Suburban linkage transplant.

Thanks for all the helpful input gentlemen! I kept scratching my head at how on earth that fill plug being as low as it was would allow 2 quarts. It didn’t look like the dip stick would be getting down to that level at the full mark. I got it all finished up, I filled as much as I could in the fill plug on the lower left. I may have gotten about a quart in that way. I then went in with the rest through the dip stick hole. Would be such a breeze if I had the typical quart gear oil bottles, but I have a 5 gallon bucket of gear oil with a pump lid on it. Using that setup and having to be careful not to put too much in too fast was very time consuming. Pumping very slowly while allowing air to escape out the same was aggravating but not difficult. The oil that came out was not milky at all and pretty dang clean so I skipped the flush process.