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I made a custom chrome shield for an RJ. Took an Auto Zone chrome tail pipe,cut it in half length wise and then tig welded the ends to get the proper length

I got this dump trailer last Saturday at an auction for $25. The hitch fits my 953 slot hitch perfectly. I've seen photos of the regular older dump trailer, but if this one is modified, then it was done with amazing skill a very long time ago. The strengtheners and pedistal are factory looking and they all have traces of red. Is there ANY chance this could be original? The dump mechanism looks too good and well thought out to be normal home brewed.

Well its been sixteen years and over 200,000 in my last new truck. So I broke down and bought a new truck. I think this will pull just about any trailer filled with horses. I am already planning a trip est to the big show. I will have to see what kind of trailer I end up with but I really don't think I will have to worry. Let me know what you think of the new ride.

welding cast iron can be tricky, but its not that difficult. im only a self taught welder and ive had good results welding different cast items on these tractors. you need to 'v' out the parting lines of the crack first. ive found that getting heat in the iron before really laying the weld is your best friend. ive had good results with starting off with very small tacking then slowly as the piece gets hotter you can weld into it longer. just let it get used to the heat. my best final welds are done over just ground down initial tacking and small beads, i find it can handle the heat a lot more if you dont try to get into the 'virgin' cast iron too much. im not sure if this makes sense, but it seems to work for me, and i havent had any cracking so far. i just let it slowly cool afterwards. most of my stuff has been done with my gasless mig at home, but just recently had to weld some steering stuff for my sons 875 and i used the gas mig at work and had even better results. once again, i dont want to give the opinion that im any sort of 'professional' welder, because im far from that, just passing on my experience with what has worked for me..... if you can weld at all, or know someone who can, its worth a try to fix, what have you got to loose?

And people wonder why the frame cracks where the transmission bolts up to it. :banghead:

Lazy damn Aussie.. Sounds like your oil ring is a one piece ring? If so I would suspect that .060"+ gap is not helping things, although there is no number specced for it in the manual. (Yes I did look it up!! ) I've never seen a 1 piece oil ring in a replacement ring set, all the ones I've seen are 3 piece, and they seem to work well at controlling oil (although they do provide a horrible amount of friction). Actually you had better take a glance at the manual - there are a couple of interesting points - max ring gap for a K181 is quoted as .032 in the front of the manual, but on the ring page it states .027" for styles of piston A and B. Also there is a short paragraph on only a couple of oversizes of oil rings being available, resulting in bigger than normal oil ring gaps (Page 11.10). Not sure if this will apply to you or not, are you going with genuine Kohler rings or aftermarket? On 3 piece rings I dont usually worry too much about end gap. To be honest I dont think I've ever measured it - I usually just eyeball it to see what it looks like. Another major cause of oil burning is ring side clearance in the groove. The manual quotes .006" max. Too much side clearance allows the rings to pump oil past them, and it seems to be something that people often forget to check. In the old days we used to machine the grooves wider and then put a thin spacer ring above the actual piston ring to get the gap back down to spec, but on one of these it would be cheaper to get a new piston (or possibly a thicker ring).

Heres some pictures of the progress I've made after school today. The hood, fender, belt guard, and the piece directly in front of the dash are all blasted and about ready for primer. I am going to use some Bondo autobody filler to fill some pitting on the fender and belt guard tomorrow. The head of my blaster and my arms and clothes were such a lovely shade of red!

They can be welded but it would be best to take it to a good welding shop that knows what they are doing. I have welded cast with a nickel rod. If you get cast to hot welding you can cause it to crack some other place. One way is to heat the transmission half up weld it and let it cool slowly.

The chemist in me talking here -- I want to make it very clear to everyone that methyl ethyl ketone and acetone are NOT the same compound -- They would be close to each other (acetone could be called methyl methyl ketone) but that small difference could have significant differences in physical properties -- We all have had experience with acetone; it is a real common household solvent (i.e. fingernail polish remover) -- MEK has a slightly higer boiling point and is a stronger solvent (think it will penetrate your skin faster than acetone) -- Acetone is totally water soluble where as MEK has limited water solubility (although it is a significant amount) -- All in all I would be a little bit more leary of MEK than I would be of acetone BOTH WILL GO BOOM really quickly around an ignition source!!!!

A couple more photos. The tube frame is wierd, but the welds are very nicely finished. It just doesn't look homemade to me. I did notice the bed sides top lip taper to the rear, where they are the same width all the way back on the regular trailer photo I see on the net. It came with two flat wheelbarrow tires and some conduit spacers, I found a couple of wheels & tires from who knows where that fit the axle right.

im almost finished restoring my 551, i need to order my stickers and finish rebuilding the motor. im using my honda motor till i can finish the rebuild then ill swap the hood stand with the one i have that hasnt been cut. ill also need to find or fabricate a few items heat sheild, belt gaurd, plow mounting bracket, key switch and choke & throttle. anyway all in good time i guess. Hope you all like it.

Before anyone gets too carried away with making these things, you can buy one from your Toro dealer for about $18. A couple of my tractors have homemade pins in them, but I think they probably cost me that much to make them if you take into account the cost of the lathe , the bandsaw, the welder, the 3/4" round bar, the 3/16" falt bar, the argon for the welder and the electricity to run the machines. You'll pay more than that for a drive belt. I actually dont think its a very good arrangement either, the forward-most hole in the frame that the pin locates in is almost always flogged out to some degree, so the pin flexes as you drive your tractor around causing the plate to break on the back of the pin. The earlier system (pre 1963) with the 5/8" bolt seems to be a much better idea to me, at least you can tighten the thing up a little. On my 1276 that I'm playing around at the moment I am using a 3/4" shoulder bolt as an axle pivot. I'm hoping to find an arrangement I like better than the OEM set-up.

Looks like a decent tractor....even if it is a Joo, Joooohn...Deeeeee....John Deere! There, I said it!

well if anyone needs one to move dirt I have a few beater dirt blowers for sale B)