Craftsman Lt4000 mild off-roader

Ooh those look good, should protect your tranny pretty well.

Mounted it before school today. I will probably test it out this weekend.

Happy with the skid plate so far, Tranny making some squeali'n noises though. Next up is probably a foot throttle and a lower engine idle speed. Maybe a front skid plate and when I have the lt130 ready I can take my time and make a double pulley clutch. Yesterday and today I worked on these nice mud flaps made out of the old tread off of a treadmill. They just bolt onto a bar and the bar can be bolted onto any craftsman. I wanted to originally put it on the lt130 but the wheels are just too big. I also strengthened the bumper a bit since on the latest romp it was shaking about the whole time, now I just need to buy some bolts to mount it.

I like the front bumper.

Pretty beefy. Go run into a tree and see what last longer, the tree, or the bumper,. I vote tree will give in .

Yeah it wasn't solid at all without the braces at first. Now that the bumper is solid, the question is how will the mounting points be? This was the old one for the lt130 but I decided to make a really nice one. If you haven't seen it go check it out because that thing is a beast.

I checked it out, looks good.

Nice. I took it out to take banner pictures today and I like the mud flaps so far. I'm thinking I want to beef up the front end parts a little bit and make better stops. I also have decided that some time I want to do a pulley swap and a double pulley clutch.
Anyways here are the pictures.

Pretty! Wish I had remembered about the banner before I screwed my tranny up. There's a 5 foot pipe bridge that I can drive through and it's pretty cool looking for pictures

Yeah I just sent some entries in. I don't know when the deadline was though.

24th.

Thanks. The last pic there I had to take real fast even though it's my favorite because of the incline and low gas it was starting to bog down and was about to shut off LOL.

Cool! Mabye I can get the snap Dragin driving by then! Have a build off entry on the banner before the build off is over? Lol

Damn do I love spring break. What a start to it too. Today I cobbled together an exhaust out of some tube and an old bike exhaust I found at the junkyard. It sounds really aggressive when you take your foot of the clutch and put the engine under load. However thankfully it's not too loud above the level where it comes out so i'm happy for how. I also threw this steering wheel that I had laying around on but i'm not too sure if I like it all that much.

I like that exhaust, and that wheel too! If I ever go v-twin, I might just have to get me some bike exhaust and do dual sidepipes

Yeah and its chrome too. Too bad the chrome is half worn off.

Exhaust looks cool muck. That steering wheel is pretty neat too, what's it off of?

Its off of the ground at the dump lol. Picked it up, brought it home and repainted it. Pretty sure it was for a go kart or something.
If any of you have suggestions on how to beef up the front end. links and whatnot, I would appreciate it if you could give me a hand.

Mostly just curious on how people did their steering stops, apart from that I will just make everything heavy duty.

muckmudd wrote:

Its off of the ground at the dump lol. Picked it up, brought it home and repainted it. Pretty sure it was for a go kart or something.
If any of you have suggestions on how to beef up the front end. links and whatnot, I would appreciate it if you could give me a hand.

Maybe a better tie rod? I've seen quite a few pictures of bent tie rods on these Craftsmans so maybe a stronger one would be a good idea. Also I've seen some that just have a 90 degree bend where it goes into the steering arm with a cotter pin holding it in, so maybe some actual joints would be a good idea

Yeah I might order some more heim joints if i'm happy with the ones that I ordered when they get here. I will beef up the tie rod for sure, first thing tomorrow morning.

Here's a video on how to build some really simple front axle stops.



I'm a big fan of chrome exhausts.  Just wait to see what I have in store for Mud Rat.  Like @AllisKidD21 said most guys upgrade to a bigger diameter tie rod with rod ends or heim joints at the ends.  Guys do the same thing with their drag link(s).  My John Deere has nice rod ends where the drag links meet the steering arm at the spindle, but the other end of that drag link the rod is just bent and it sticks through a hole in a bracket on the steering gear.  I'd like to cut that off and upgrade to a rod end some day down the road.

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I know what you were trying to do Mr. JD Engineer.  You were trying to build a tractor that looked heavy duty enough to sell at a premium but used an inferior method up under the tractor where the average person buying a lawn mower at the dealership wouldn't look.

Oh I had a John Deere stx 46 with the same thing! So annoying to change belts and they had some slop in them that couldn't be fixed.

Well this is a craftsman and it is darn simple and that's why I love them. Beefed up the tie rod this afternoon and I want to make some stops next. Thanks for the video carl.

Ok so a week or so ago I romped this machine pretty hard. I was going through new to me mud, doing some trail riding and doing tree climbs lol. At the end of the day I started loosing traction but I didn't hear anything then I quickly realized that my locker had broken. I was simply just expecting one of my welds to have sheared clean because it didn't grind or make any noise for the time while I was driving it back. A week and a half later I got my mower back from my friends house so I decided to take it apart today.
I looked inside and noticed this. I was slightly surprised. The piece of metal broke and not my weld. It also sheared a tooth off the spider gear but that's no big problem I guess...

So then I decided to take apart a parts spicer to get the new spider gears. I welded them solid then I figured it wouldn't be a bad idea to weld them to the axle but I forgot to do it inside the case so it came out all warped.

Despite how angry I was I took the axles out of the parts transaxle and did it again. I used the old spider gears this time because that's all I had left. I Hope it holds up for a while now because this is like the 5th time I disassemble it and it is the second time I seal it.

I did the same thing on a spicer with breaking the spider rod. The second version should be stronger but!!!!! Don't leave it like that !!!! Put some small prices of steel over your welds and weld It up again, as I locked a spicer that way and the gears broke around the welds and blew the case up. If you continue to build it up on each side with more material it will be much stronger with more surface area on the welds and hopefully not break.