Everyone’s favorite tractor!

Yup, everyone’s favorite tractor is:

Free!





Nothing special really, cheaply built little thing. But it’s free!

Allow me to explain:

A few years ago the father in law passed away. Since mom in law didn’t want to leave her home, the rest of the family pooled some cash and bought her a small lawn tractor (she’s in her 70’s).

She tried it a couple times but just didn’t like it (yard has hills). The bro in-law mowed a couple times but it just wasn’t working for him (smart in business, not so much everywhere else). MIL always had a devil of a time getting it to start and hated the thought of maintaining it in any way.

So the MIL ended up buying herself a self propelled lawn mower and the tractor just sat. Not even 10 hrs total run time on the engine.

Fast forward to now and she told my wife she wanted it gone out of her garage, one way or another. She was tired of looking at it and it getting in her way all the time.

So...a couple hours drive and now it’s sitting in my garage. Got the genius battery charger on it and waiting to see if the battery comes back.  It’s not likely to recover though, it’s been sitting discharged for years now. Likely sulfated to death. Oh well, 60 bucks will fix that up like new.

Plans?

Well, it’s essentially right off the showroom floor and it’s a pretty “light duty” model. I’ll most likely give it a good cleaning and going over, maybe pull the carb down and drop it in the ultrasonic on spec and then put it to work cutting our lawn. I’ve got a service that comes in once a week to mow and trim (paid for by my disability benefits), but sometimes the lawn could use a mid week trim, just to keep it neat looking.

If I find it’s just taking up space for no reason, I’ll sell it and give whatever $$$ I get for it back to the MIL.


Did I mention it was free?

you have a rural king nearby? it's where i get my batteries and i only pay $20 with core

darkside0914 wrote:

you have a rural king nearby? it's where i get my batteries and i only pay $20 with core

Nope. Nothing like that around here:

So I’ve had the battery on the smart charger overnight. The noco genius 3500 has what’s called a “repair mode”. In a nutshell, it uses “pulses” to try and blow away sulfation on the plates and bring the battery back.

The date code on the battery puts it as a 2008 manufacture, which jibes with the “recharge Jun 2009” sticker on top of the battery. So the battery is at least 10 years old and severely negkected.

However, when I checked it this morning, the charger is still running in repair mode but the charge level is showing 75%.

I’m still skeptical this abused little battery will come back from the dead, but there’s a little sliver of hope it can be saved (and save me 60-100 bucks!).

Shoukd know later today if it’s going to make it out of ICU or not....lol!

I’m also going to look at moving the rear bagger from The MUT to the new lawn tractor. I have a deck for The MUT, but it will require a lot of work to rebuild it and fit it to The MUT. This way, I just have to do a little work fitting the bagger and The MUT becomes just a utility tractor to haul dirt in the bucket in the summer and plow snow in winter.

TourMax wrote:

So I’ve had the battery on the smart charger overnight. The noco genius 3500 has what’s called a “repair mode”. In a nutshell, it uses “pulses” to try and blow away sulfation on the plates and bring the battery back.

The date code on the battery puts it as a 2008 manufacture, which jibes with the “recharge Jun 2009” sticker on top of the battery. So the battery is at least 10 years old and severely negkected.

However, when I checked it this morning, the charger is still running in repair mode but the charge level is showing 75%.

I’m still skeptical this abused little battery will come back from the dead, but there’s a little sliver of hope it can be saved (and save me 60-100 bucks!).

Shoukd know later today if it’s going to make it out of ICU or not....lol!

I’m also going to look at moving the rear bagger from The MUT to the new lawn tractor. I have a deck for The MUT, but it will require a lot of work to rebuild it and fit it to The MUT. This way, I just have to do a little work fitting the bagger and The MUT becomes just a utility tractor to haul dirt in the bucket in the summer and plow snow in winter.

It'll never be the same, but it can work again - in theory. I had a battery I literally found in my back yard many moons ago and put it on my smart charger with the same function. I'd like to say it was 1995 date code on the battery. I put it in the equivalent setting on my charger, took a day or 2, but came back to life. I still have it years later, it doesn't really like starting engines but works as a 'booster'

Battery is toast. I could get the volts back up, but it won't hold on the load tester.

So, 85 bucks and in goes a new one. I wanted an AGM one (I put AGm in everything I have), but all that I could find was the conventional lawn tractor batteries. Not that big of a deal, just need a little more care to keep it fully charged and winter storage routine.

Tore the carb done and gave it an hour in the ultrasonic. Needed it for sure, what was once gas left in the carb was now (essentially) varnish. Good ol' ultrasonic cleaned it right back to factory new.

Put the carb back on, dropped in the new battery (after bringing it up to full charge), hit the key and....BAROOM!

Big puff of black fuel smoke as the intake tract and cylinder cleared itself out and then settled down into a nice even idle.

Mowed the front and rear yard, not a hiccup. It's nice and stingy on fuel usage, which is a nice plus.

I hung the rear bagger, but the grass is wet and the chute was just tied in place so it didn't work very well. I need to reshape the chute where it meets the deck and do some more fine tuning on the whole rig.

At the end of the day, it's still just a small and cheap ride on mower, most likely the cheapest one you could buy. But it's not too a bad deal for 85 bucks and an hour or two of "lazy time" labor!