The Kiwi's 1276

[sorekiwi 761]

This one is not a restoration - honest!!.

I picked this one up from Craigslist, about 8 miles from my home. I paid too much for it, but it came with a mid 90's vintage snowblower, a blade, wheel weights and a locked up mowing deck. Having moved to the snow capital of Ohio, I was looking for a blower and a big block, hydro tractor to push it. I shoulda looked for a 520 or similar, but there's just something about the 60's tractors that gets me every time...

The 1276 ran pretty well. It had some hub issues, the right rear hub was doing its best to machine its way through the transmission. The lift cable was broken, there was a huge amount of slop in the steering, and quite a few cracks in the tin ware. As I went over this tractor I found quite a few of the common little problems, and thought it might be of interest to the newbies that may have some of the same problems.

So this ones NOT a restoration - she'll get paint on any bare metal but thats it. Its just gonna be a bit of TLC and maintenance on a working tractor.

I didnt take any "before" pictures. The first pictures were taken at the bare frame stage:

The frame was pretty good. Someone has already repaired the transmission mount - its been removed entirely, and replaced by two pieces of 3x3x1/4" angle iron. It's ben done really nicely - nice welding, and when I checked the transmission mounting holes, they were spot on level to the rest of the frame

Another heavy duty repair that I cant take credit for is these patch's over some cracks in the hood stand.

I'm really impressed with the welding on these, its not easy to weld 1/4" steel to 1/16" steel without blowing holes in the thin stuff...

The little tab for the belt guard on the right of this picture was broken off, so I welded that back on (very common to see this).

The frame and the hoodstand got a quick coat of paint, this time I'm trying the Krylon Cherry red. No rubbing down, sanding etc, just a good clean, a coat of primer and 2 coats of top coat. A little ugly, but its a worker!

[JimD 3,347]

lookin really nice mike. i love that krylon cherry red, used it on the 753. dries fast and looks good. lookin forward to more pics!! :thumbs2: