BAJA SEARS BUILD

Welded in the pick up tube, vent tube, and filler neck from a 1990 or so buick century. I'm going to coat the inside with gas tank sealer to prevent rust. Maybe I should have cut the flange off of the filler neck, but I thought it would look or once It's painted. I guess we'll see.


Fairly small alternator from the same buick. This is about where it would go.


I need to put a v-belt pulley on the alternator. The pulley will sit out over the frame just a little, but I can put a guard to keep your foot from getting worn off.


Commandeered some headlights from a 60's plow jeep (Our own plow jeep). They look like sealed beams. Don't know if they work, didn't try them yet. If they are burned out, I'll have to see what it costs to get the sealed beams. It might be just as cheap to just buy some of the lights like I used on my simplicity. These lights are a little bigger. I would probably use these two in the middle, with two smaller ones on the outside of those. I guess I might as well put the alternator on. It's not really that heavy compared to everything else, and then I can use as many lights as I want without worrying.

Lookin great so-far. I like the alternator!   

Thanks. I made the battery hold down, coated the inside of the gas tank with sealer, and tested those headlights. Turns out the headlights work, so that will save a couple bucks at least. Too bad the lenses are a little different, someone must have replaced one at some point.

This thing is SICK in an ALL Business sorta way. Love the attention to detail and the thought evident behind your mods.

Thanks, I used a couple pieces of the original gas tank bracket from the engine for the battery hold down. Came out pretty good. Now I need to find a slotted bracket to hold the alternator so I can adjust the belt for it. I don't have a good way to cut slots in steel. I'm not sure it would come out too good with the torch.

find an old chevy alternator bracket. I think I have a few here if ya cant find one

Well thanks, I'll keep it in mind. But the other day I was thinking, the bottom wider bracket/bolt hole is mostly what holds the alternator straight. What if I just used an eyelet welded on the end of a threaded rod for adjustment instead of a slotted piece of metal. Sort of like what some of you guys make for clutch adjusters. (See nifty drawing below). What do you guys think? Either way, we have a couple junk cars here and there that I might be able to get something off of. I didn't look too hard yet. Also, the excess gas tank sealer was still slowly dripping out of the tank as of this morning (it's got a few years on it). Should be good by this weekend.

That looks fine to me. I'd replace the wing nut with a normal but then put one on the other side to act as a jam nut.

Thats so funny about that rotax motor I was like wow look at that. Because i racing the vintage single cylinder snowmobiles!!   

That'll work just fine.  You're correct: The bottom mount is what aligns the alternator and locates it correctly, and it's a hinge.  So as long as that's in the right place you can just use the top mount to set tension.  OTOH, you may want to jack the top mount away from the engine instead of pull towards the frame.  In case the frame flexes and does wierd things to the belt tension.  You can grab a turnbuckle from the local hardware store or TSC.   

Hey Bigal, I love those motors. HMU if you want to talk porting mods. Also look up MacDizzy's two Stroke forum. A few guys over there are getting amazing power from the 60's / 70's rotaxes.

mr.modified wrote:

Got the engine running. Doesn't smoke. Needs a little adjusting, but it runs.

That engine sounds just like my 12hp kohler you rev it up pop pop pop Flames out the exhaust.

Yea ditto to what red said replace that wing nut with a normal one. if you leave it the vibrating may make it fall off. If you use normal ones it will lock them together. the only down side is if you are on a trail or whatever and need to adjust it you need a wrench to adjust it.

Thanks for the ideas. I'll weld some stuff together this weekend and we'll see how it turns out.

Tank puts a lot of weight on the rear.... Hill climbing

TroyBilt Pony wrote:

Tank puts a lot of weight on the rear.... Hill climbing

From a previous project using a similar sized tank, I think this tank holds around 3 1/2 gallons. Gasoline weighs around 6.2 lbs per gallon give or take depending on temperature. So with the tank completely filled, that's about 21.7 lbs. But, also from the same previous project I also found out that these mower batteries weigh around 15 lbs. Since the battery is at the farthest possible point forward on the frame, that leaves us with an extra 6.7 lbs more weight on the rear of the tractor than we had before. But don't forget the added weight of the shock tower, shocks, associated brackets, master cyl and bracket (pretty light), and the soon to be welded on extra rugged front bumper and skid plate. I imagine that it will end up being heavier (if only a little) at the front axle than at the rear. Maybe I'll get some scales and check it when It's done. Of course I also added the brake caliper, but this is forward of the rear axle and low to the ground. Either way, I don't really care that much. I'm kind of afraid to have this thing tip over on me, so I probably won't be trying too many steep hills. I plan on banging through some streams and stuff with it though, so there's still a good chance that some things will get busted up. Your right though, it is a fairly good size tank compared to a stock mower tank, I'll probably just run it part way filled most of the time.

a skid plate on the bottom of that tank carrier would have a Wheelie bar effect and help keep it from climbing too much in a hill.

you should put some sheet metal around the tank to close it off give it a more finished look

It's supposed to get a number plate behind the tank and a small skid plate on the bottom.

That's be awesome... I wouldn't close it in as someone suggested, it'll fill with mud and water... they call THAT a bucket...

I don't think I'll close it in completely. I welded on the alternator bracket. V-belt pulley from the original starter/generator fits pretty good.


Clutch spring installed. I was going to make an adjustable deal, but decided to give this a try first. Not a whole lot of room to put an adjuster while leaving enough space to weld on the brackets for the transmission skid plate. I didn't get a belt yet. I was thinking I'll get the brakes going before a test ride since all I have to do is hook up the lines and true up the rotor.


Painted the gas tank.

That tank looks great man... like something stock

Thank you. Got bored of working on everything else, so today I started on the exhaust. I'm using the flange and some bends from a briggs vertical shaft engine. I was going to go around the top of the engine and then down through the frame. Now I've decided to go down under the carb and then head down the left side of the frame. On the side of the frame It'll go to a 2 inch pipe and then...


Into this super nifty nascar style megaphone which will exit as a side pipe from under the running board. Later (After the build off trial run videos) if I need to quiet it down, I thought I could just pack the megaphone with steel wool or something. I'm guessing It'll be pretty loud.

I'm guessing you are right. Instead of packing the meg, roll some metal window screen into a tube and stuff it down the 2 inch pipe... betcha that makes it tollerable

If I had made my initial cuts a little more carefully, I might have saved some work cutting out all these small pieces.


With everything else sealed up, I welded in a brace at the center then cut the end at roughly the angle I wanted.


This is about where it will end up. The rub rails/nerf bars need to stick out past the tip so it doesn't catch a tree. I'm not sure where i'll put in the packing so that I can remove it. I'll need a flange somewhere just ahead of this piece, but it was going to be in the smaller pipe size before it goes to 2". That would make it tough to slide in an insert. Maybe I'll just make a whole separate exhaust from the flange down for quiet running and leave this one open. Might be neat to design another system later anyway.


Looks a little better with the edges cleaned up. What do you guys think for the paint? White or black? Of course there are other high temp exhaust paint colors available, like orange, but that might be wierd with the bright colors that the rest of the tractor is going to be. I also cut off the old seat brackets that I had previously welded onto the frame and cleaned up some edges here and there.

Very nice fab work. I vote flat black on the exhaust.

Looking great. I'm with stretch on the fab work, and paint color