Toro/Frankensteins' Greens aerator dumper

[sjoemie himself 3,232]

"Another topic!?" I hear you think.. yes.. this thing has been sitting in my yard for way to long. Now with the darker, colder and wetter weather coming up I would like to get it going.

 

The idea is to use it around the house and for the better half to use it to rid the paddocks of horse crêpe.. 

Bought it off my neighbour a few years ago where it had been sitting long enough a small tree grew through it. 

"It" in this case is what started it's life as a walk behind Toro Greens Aerator. Kind of a coring machine specifically for golf courses. Somewhere in it's previous life somebody deleted the aerating part of the machine and put a dumping bed on the frame along with a seat. What you see below remains.

Lots of stuff to do. Started to clean up the rims, ordered new tires, valve stems and a bit of paint yesterday.

Took the fueltank which was full of water off along with the improvised hydraulic oil tank which was also full of water. I'm hoping the pump has survived, if not I might have to order one for it.

Good news is that it has a Kohler 16hp engine which seems to be in good condition. Carbs' clean, airfilter Ok-ish, oil on the dipstick.

Only thing is the starter does turn when connected directly to a battery however does nog engage the flywheel gear thingamabob.. might be a solenoid issue??

 

Stripped down a bit for cleaning/inspecting

 

Other side. Note the hydraulic pump is driven off the flywheel side of the engine.

 

New rubbah..

 

Quite a wide load.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Greetings from the Netherlands, Mark 

[ri702bill 13,111]

Nice! The starter spinning but not engaging sounds like the starter drive Bendix is gummed up and sticking. It has nothing to do with the solenoid...

Clean the drive, do not use oil or grease. Dry lube only.

[oliver2-44 11,758]

3 hours ago, ri702bill said:

Nice! The starter spinning but not engaging sounds like the starter drive Bendix is gummed up and sticking. It has nothing to do with the solenoid...

Clean the drive, do not use oil or grease. Dry lube only.

[SylvanLakeWH 32,632]

Very cool!

 

That "seat" pedestal will keep you toasty warm!!! 

[squonk 48,177]

When I hear "Greens Aerator" I think of my HS days working on a golf course. We had a tow be-hind unit about 8 ft. wide with hundreds of knives, similar to the one pictured here.

 

 

It had slicer knives and also could be fitted with plug knives. They were held on with 3 bolts. When it rained, we had the job of switching the knives to the pluggers with nothing but 2 wrenches. One day we sent a guy to the clubhouse to get us some cans of pop. One of the guys wanted Grape soda. When he arrived with the pop he tossed the other guy the Grape and he juggled it and the can hit a knife and Grape soda spewed all over us and everything. All of the tools in the shop were sticky for weeks! 

[ebinmaine 80,793]

Neat machine! 

[sjoemie himself 3,232]

14 hours ago, ri702bill said:

starter drive Bendix is gummed up and sticking

Thanks! I hope to get a chance this weekend to take the starter of and clean it. I'll post an update ASAP.

 

1 hour ago, SylvanLakeWH said:

toasty

I think my SO will enjoy that quite nicely with the colder weather coming in. Point of concern might be that the leg/calf area will get a bit too toasty but there's only one way to find out. 

 

1 hour ago, squonk said:

Grape and he juggled it

No more grape-juice-juggling for that guy I'm sure 

 

 

[953 nut 69,622]

 

I am a bit puzzled by the chain and sprocket setup on the steering. It appears to have to have a small sprocket driving a larger sprocket mounted to a shaft that has a smaller sprocket driving a larger sprocket mounted to the first shaft. The two chains would bind each other unless there is some sort of clutch that allows you to shift from slow steering to quick steering. 

 

[sjoemie himself 3,232]

3 hours ago, 953 nut said:

puzzled

 

Good eye! I had the same confused look at first.

It works because it's not one continuous shaft but rather a multi piece shaft with bushings around it.

Turns out it's a (small) gear reduction to lighten te steering input a bit or make it less sensitive.

[sjoemie himself 3,232]

It's alive.. ALIIIVVEEE! 

 

 

Starter freed up on it's own.. or I might have had some wires switched around.. I guess we'll never know 

 

Took the oilpump, oiltank and gastank off, rinsed, cleaned them all thoroughly. Put them away to dry out for a few days.

Made a tiny test gastank and after some fiddling around I found out somebody had put the wrong sparkplug in the engine. It poked to far into the cilinder and made contact with the piston. Luckily nothing got badly damaged and I found a better sparkplug laying around so put that in.

Cleaned the carb and took out all kinds of gunk and nastyness from the floatbowl, freed up the float needle and hooked up my tiny test tank.

After a couple of tries the Kohler started to cough and flung debris everywhere. Succes!

 

After that I tested the transmission which worked perfectly fine. It's a bit quirky though. It's got one high and one low forward gear and one reverse. The drive is opposite of what you would expect, the drive engages when you step on the clutch pedal and disengages when you let go. For the intended purpose this might be rather handy cause when cleaning the paddocks it's a lot of stop and go/on and off the machine. With this setup there's no need to put the machine in and out of gear everytime you get off the machine. We'll see though, only time will tell.

 

Edited October 11 by sjoemie himself
Made vid work

[sjoemie himself 3,232]

Hi guys, not much of an update, hopefully more tomorrow since I've ordered a bunch of parts.

 

Quick question about parts, do you know where I can find a gascap for a Kohler M16 fueltank that doesn't cost a fortune? 

I found a few but they're $40-50 

[ebinmaine 80,793]

45 minutes ago, sjoemie himself said:

gascap

 

What's it look like and measure?

[sjoemie himself 3,232]

This is what tank and gascap (should) look like @ebinmaine and others

 

Some pics of my actual tank.

 

 

 

It measures about 44.6mm that's close to 1-3/4"

 

Edited October 14 by sjoemie himself

[ebinmaine 80,793]

12 minutes ago, sjoemie himself said:

gascap

 

@sjoemie himself

 

Interesting timing! 

 

Just a couple weeks ago I made a thread on a Kohler Magnum 8 HP cap. 

 

The Ariens part number in the thread should be available on the market for a lot less than the Kohler and you'll have a guage! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[sjoemie himself 3,232]

Thanks @ebinmaine I'll snoop around a bit. First results I'm seeing ship from the US of A and if I add up import fees, shipping and what not that amounts to a total of about $75,- 

 

I might try my local lawn and garden shop this weekend.. maybe they'll have something laying around.

[953 nut 69,622]

On 10/11/2026 at 2:43 PM, sjoemie himself said:

The drive is opposite of what you would expect, the drive engages when you step on the clutch pedal and disengages when you let go

That is a great idea. My first home built go-cart was somewhat like that. That way if I fell of or had a "stupid kid" moment and got off with the engine running it would stop.

[sjoemie himself 3,232]

Update time. Went to the local mower shop and figured surely they should have something laying around. Well that was a no go. In an entire building filled with mowerparts not one cap that would fit my Kohler gastank 

I tried looking up several numbers on the Interwebs as suggested by @ebinmaine and others mentioned in several topics but all those caps once delivered to my doorstep cost $50 and upwards.

 

Anyhow, enough with that. Here are some things that did work out.

Made a new support structure for the seat. The PO welded pieces of shelving to the headstuds to place a seat. I could not bring myself to leave that as it was so made something else. 

Installed a new seat that flips up to access the fueltank, engine dipstick and newly fabricated and installed oiltank.

 

New seat installed.

 

Seat flips up to reveal the gastank, dipstick and oil reservoir. Even made a 'hold-the-seat-up-stick' to make life a bit easier.

One thing I have to adress here is the way the exhaust ends. It's a bit too close for comfort to the right leg. Thinking about adding a (bit of) elbow to the tip to point it away from the drivers leg or adding somekind of mesh, maybe both.

 

Oil tank made from a reservoir that's normally used for hand operated pumps on (car) trailers.

Added a filler neck and cap, breather and a large fitting with barb to hook up the feed-line to the oilpump. New tank holds about 2L or ~0.5 gal.

 

Made a elbow thingy that adapts to the original tiny oil-reservoir to the larger tank.

 

Greetings from the Netherlands, Mark 

[ebinmaine 80,793]

1 hour ago, sjoemie himself said:

One thing I have to adress here is the way the exhaust ends. It's a bit too close for comfort to the right leg. Thinking about adding a (bit of) elbow to the tip to point it away from the drivers leg or adding somekind of mesh, maybe both.

 

 

Normally I try to remember to delete the pics from a "quote" but I left this one on purpose.  

 

Two things:

 

1. Was it me, I'd be prone to cut off most of that exhaust pipe and aim the heat oit sideways if possible. 

I do NOT know what other components are in that heat path/direction/zone. 

 

2. Do you have the engine top cover? The sheet metal that goes over the cylinder head is pretty important for the cooling system as a whole.  

 

 

 

 

[sjoemie himself 3,232]

36 minutes ago, ebinmaine said:

engine top cover

Yes, I have all the sheetmetal including the exhaust cover/protection part. That kinda fits kinda doesn't.. the 'restoration me' wants to keep it in one piece/original but then it won't sit quite right. The 'getting things done' me says cut it and make it fit. Not 100% sure on that one..

 

Same thing about cutting the exhaust, it's in good condition and another one is 'Unobtanium' around here..

 

Third option for a shroud like cover would be to make something from scratch.. I do have some perforated sheet laying around.