Craftsman GT3000 "MUTT" Part I

mightyraze wrote:

Sweet!  27!  Really digging the snapper hood!

I think the Snapper hood is great! I've already abused it some and it's holding up great! I saw one thread on the forum here-I think the guys name was Derbyman103- he used a Snapper hood on his craftsman and rolled it over at speed and the hood took it just fine. We'll just have to see how mine fares lol

On a completely unrelated thought, I may be starting another project that involves a Snapper in the next few weeks...

Got the battery cutoff in. On the ground side of the battery. Also I slathered the right cylinder spark plug boot with silicone, haven't had a miss yet!



This has been like this for about 7 months lol, taking bets on how long she'll last.



Hit the mud a total of two times, got stuck both times lol. Prretty much high centered every time




The aftermath of the second hit...



Time for another rim lol. This was the one that wasn't to bad so I welded it. Other side was already replaced.

Is that second picture a crack in your transaxle??

AllisKidD21 wrote:

Is that second picture a crack in your transaxle??

Yessir. I remember it being there since around when I first pulley swapped it. Pretty much have ignored it as it hasn't grown any

Knock on wood eh? Hahaha, probably happend during one of those scheduled roll-overs.

That sucks about the rim man. Got a spare?

AllisKidD21 wrote:

Knock on wood eh? Hahaha, probably happend during one of those scheduled roll-overs.

Hey!!! Watchit!!!

MatthewD wrote:

That sucks about the rim man. Got a spare?

Oh yeah lol. I actually have the whole rim conundrum fixed now. I'm getting faster at mounting/dismounting tires now that I've done it so much. I'm gonna have to find another axle key though, this one is split in a few pieces lol. Think I have one in the bottom of my toolbox...

My rim issue is fixed! Ran her around some today and got a cover photo quality (coughdougcough) picture



Got something new yesterday for her, here's a little hint........



Also here's a to-do list of all the stuff I should/might do to her:

Not much of a hint there bud. Pic of a pressure lube oppy, saying "46ci pressure lube oppy swap" in your do do list, not super hidden lol. What did the pressure lube engine come off of and whats the rated power? Year? 3 screw or 4 screw carb? Details bro details

Oooh, a pressure lube engine eh?? Noice! What are you gonna do for steering?

CraftsmanQuad19 wrote:

Not much of a hint there bud. Pic of a pressure lube oppy, saying "46ci pressure lube oppy swap" in your do do list, not super hidden lol. What did the pressure lube engine come off of and whats the rated power? Year? 3 screw or 4 screw carb? Details bro details

You got me....20hp, made 3/25/99. 3 screw carb. Dunno what it came offa. Has a heat shield on the back I've never seen before. Needs a sump gasket bad, luckily I have a spare from when I did the 18hp's gov removal. Gonne remove the gov on this one while I'm at it lol. I also got another 18hp oppy I may use the internals to fix my horizontal 16hp with. I love oppys

AllisKidD21 wrote:

Oooh, a pressure lube engine eh?? Noice! What are you gonna do for steering?

I don't really know lol, a golf cart rack and pinion setup would be nice. The setup I have right now is pretty short ratio, like a turn and a half max. If I could find something out of a older garden tractor that'd be excellent.

The cub 1440 that we tore apart had a really nice steering box, and an adjustable tilt wheel. Thats what I would look for, but thats just me lol

Yeah some of the old garden tractors had actual steering boxes in them from the factory. That'd be a pretty rugged setup.

- Also what are you thinking for front tires Rich?

AllisKidD21 wrote:

Yeah some of the old garden tractors had actual steering boxes in them from the factory. That'd be a pretty rugged setup.

- Also what are you thinking for front tires Rich?

I'd like a set of 21x7-8s, tall but narrow enough to not cause clearance issues

Also I'm gonna get some pics of what I've been doing to the new engine later tonight. Been pretty busy today

When i got this engine, I knew it needed a sump gasket and probably a carb clean. I didn't know at the time that it had a mount bolt broken off. I myself also managed to snap one of the 1/4" exhaust bolts clean off in the block. Also I found the starter locked up but I managed to break it loose, spins fine now





Later, I had dad drill both of them out (I didn't trust myself ) and I tapped them. The exhaust hole turned out fine, the mount was a little off center so the tap didn't really get into the bolt. I'll just use a longer bolt on that side and put a nycap on top.





I took a lot of external pieces off just to clean out some of the mud wasp nests and such and kinda neaten some stuff up. Flywheel, all tins, intake, coil etc etc.




After cleaning off some of the sludge from the bad sump gasket I took off the sump. It's cool seeing how the oil pump was set up and how the galleys get oil to everything.

You can see there is a slot in the end of the cam that appears to drive a little vane pump in the sump. Just a note for anyone, don't ever pull that shaft out!!! Its a real bugger to get the impeller aligned with the shaft again, caused me a lot of grief!





Cut the governor fan off, same thing I did with the 42. C clip that holds the shaft in gave me a bit more trouble this time, but it wasn't too bad



Now for the reassembling...

I had to make intake gaskets for it, the dang thing didn't have any! Was a metal to metal fit! The 16hp Horizontal Opposed I took apart had them. Weird.



This is as far as I got as of last night. I plan to switch the coil from the 42 onto this one, just because I know the one on the 42 works well and has spark plug boots. Also I'm gonna cut a new hose for the pulse pump, this one was a bit cracked.

Nice! I've neved worked on a pressure lubrication small engine internally, but I've always wanted to see how they looked inside.

nice man nevar seen sumting so kewl my GT3000 had a dented up hood to but i never rolled it, i just punched it a lot because it never ran right.

ConfederaSears wrote:

nice man nevar seen sumting so kewl my GT3000 had a dented up hood to but i never rolled it, i just punched it a lot because it never ran right.

cuz ur bad kek prolly the "performance" exhaust killed it lol


Got quite a bit done today.

Took the oil pump cover off to straighten it out(remember how I said to not pull that shaft out? yeah lol whoops) and see about getting a new gasket. Well, turns out it uses an O ring so I just straightened it out and said f**k it, I'll just send it. Hasn't leaked yet, woohoo! Also turns out the oil pump isn't a vane pump but rather some sort of rotor pump thingy that i don't know the name of. Pretty cool.





Had to file out this little hole to be able to pop in a kill wire post. Weird



I got this in that load of stuff I got from that guy, first one I've had that worked decent in a good while. Threw it in mutt since it's hard to read the fuel level from the filler neck on this rear tank.



Sad to see ol' faithful go. She's never failed me in all of the rollovers (including the one in that creek when she took in water), clutch dumps, any of the times going wide open down the road, any of the abuse I've beat her through. The rods should have flown out the side of the block a long time ago. She'll live on in another project, I assure it.



Well, out with the old and reliable and in with the new and unproven. Got her running, kinda, She runs perfectly smooth at full choke...lol. At least the starter sounds a lot nicer than the last one. Haven't taken her for a ride with the new choocher yet. Also, if you've been paying attention you'll notice something else different in this picture.

Looks good Rich! Cant wait to see 'er tearing up the place once again haha. Did you swap your whole steering setup or just the wheel?

New steering wheel I see! Pressure lube is pretty cool, more fancy things to go wrong though.

AllisKidD21 wrote:

Looks good Rich! Cant wait to see 'er tearing up the place once again haha. Did you swap your whole steering setup or just the wheel?

Just the wheel lol. It's a bit sturdier than the original, but i like more that it's a little bit wider, so more leverage on the wheels.

MatthewD wrote:

New steering wheel I see! Pressure lube is pretty cool, more fancy things to go wrong though.

It's pretty much the same engine but with an oil pump and oil galleys. I'd expect an oil slinger to fly apart before this oil pump. mr.moo actually cut his oil slinger down to take some of the force off it from high rpms. Also this engine doesn't have the weird whining noise th other had at high rpm that i presume was from the oil slinger.

Well I solved my carb problem. I just ended up switching the 20hp jets into the 18hp carb. Just didn't feel like screwing with that carb anymore, never had one screw with my head this much. The 18hp jet really gave me a fight. It ended up stripping so I just drilled it and used an easy-out to get it out.




Makeshift clutch latch since I took out the stock one for some reason I can't remember. Think the brake pedal was in the way? I dunno. Lol



She's all running now, I intend to have a video up within the next few days with MUTT in action with her new engine! She definetly feels a bit torquier with the new engine. Sounds a little different too, not really louder but with a bit deeper tone and it has more of that bluuuuhhh on deceleration. I like it.

So recently i've just been fighting really novel stuff. I broke my seat mount again (I only weigh 150, what gives?) so I made a super ugly probaby indestructible mount. Forgive my welds, stick welding small stuff like this just turs into puddles that somehow hold stuff together. I'll prolly paint it when I paint the rest of the tractor(either never or in a long while)





An attempt to do brakes...

Used a longer brake arm off of a mst (i think.) had to move the cable stop to the inside of the frame. Actually worked nicely (as in, i could notice the brakes existed as opposed to no brakes) till I stomped too hard on the pedal and the cable pulled out of the makeshift clamp I made. Prolly gonna switch the direction the cable pulls from soon.







Kinda unrelated but here's a trick I figured out on starters to hold the brushes in so you can put them back together. Bend 2 pieces of wire and stick them in the slots in the cap while the brushes are compressed and they will hold there nicely. Just slide the cap on the starter and pull the wires out and you're good to go.

Having brakes is nice eh? I should probably install brakes on the MTD soon like I've meaning to do haha. That wire trick is the same thing I did when I tore apart the starter on the MTD, its alot easier than trying to hold all four of them with you fingers!

I saved 2 box staples to do the same thing.

So a day or two I found out that these transaxle brake arms are VERY hardened. Like to the point they are almost like cast...



Well, at that point I was so fed up with this brake setup that I tore the pedal out and was done with that brake setup. At least with the pedal out I can put my stock clutch latch back in.

I ended up making another brake arm out of stainless because I figured it wouldn't wear so much as normal mild steel. I then cut a little hole in the bottom corner of the fender and bent a linkage for the brake out of the old brake arm I had on the stock form of MUTT. I'm done with cable brakes. I then made the lever out of an old tie rod and fome flatstock. I guess my dad was trying to make a decent shift knob for his John Deere 50 back a few years ago and the 50 just happened to have the same thread on the shifter as the thread on the end of the tie rod. 3/8-24 or something like that. UNF stuff.



I even made a latch for a parking brake!



YES I KNOW MY WELDS LOOK LIKE HELL I WAS WELDING AT 90* BECAUSE I'M TOO LAZY TO TAKE THE PIECE OFF THE MACHINE TO WELD IT!!!!!!!!!!!!! THEY WON'T BREAK SO I DON'T CARE!!!!!!!



Just a pic of the linkage and the return spring:



I went on a bit of a romp today to test my brakes and they work excellent! I can actually lock up my wheels if i want! Here's a peak at the video I'm uploading right now:

I like the way that looks Rich, having a bunch of levers always looks cool haha. Its not in the way of your leg?