Montgomery Wards(MTD) trail tractor(Now Murray Widebody LT)

Chunk: i decided to try a seat pan for my mutant MTD - seems actually comfortable , even w/o the foam - I just made sure the bolts dont go into the seat area- LOL

I'd still prefer a little padding for my arse off roading. especially as I think Im gonna lower my seat liek you did.

Ill be half leaning off the seat anyway doing left or right turns ....

Nice work! Black is the way to go!

This thing is gonna be alot of fun!

Yeah it will be fairly similar to your rig FearlessFront. I'm trying to figure out the belt and pulleys now. I watched your overview vid many times trying to recreate the two idler/tensioner pulleys that you added. Did you make a bracket attached to the frame to mount them or are they attached to the sheetmetal body? I may have to bite the bullet and just buy a new shorter belt. A new belt isn;t a bad idea anyway, whatever length.

Hey i gota seat like that but mine i used when i raced go karts it also has padding with air bags things to air the padding up to fit your body better but i took them out the ol air blaters wernt good any more

Man, I think that clown yellow seat must be the most interesting thing in this build thread, haha. This is how it started out.

hahaha nvm front veiw that would be 1 big ol racing seat but i like the creativity

Maybe with some paint or rubber coering to tone it down a little.

Jamus wrote:

Yeah it will be fairly similar to your rig FearlessFront. I'm trying to figure out the belt and pulleys now. I watched your overview vid many times trying to recreate the two idler/tensioner pulleys that you added. Did you make a bracket attached to the frame to mount them or are they attached to the sheetmetal body? I may have to bite the bullet and just buy a new shorter belt. A new belt isn;t a bad idea anyway, whatever length.

The adjusable one is hooked to the frame, the other one was connected to the sheet metal.... Not a good idea. I removed it a while back, but it didn't go as well through the water. Check out my newest vid because i changed it all around. It may give you some ideas?

Chunk wrote:

Maybe with some paint or rubber coering to tone it down a little.

Yeah, they sell the rhino liner stuff in aerosol cans. Thats a really good idea! I have an old plastic school chair that I stole long ago...(I'm sure i had my reasons). I may coat it and put it on the craftsman.

Just checked it out, looks like a great setup. When's part 2 going up? Also, did you use a stock length belt on your murray?

Did a little work tearing down the wards/mtd. Got the motor and all the parts I need pulled. I can't see any freebie solution for a front pulley so I grabbed a weld together 5" for the engine from tractor supply.

Yeah, im going to pick up a few of those pulleys/sprockets for my future projects.

I checked online first and they didn't have the 1-piece when I got to the store. That's when I remembered the weld together ones over in the tractor section. The collar and pulley were cheaper than the 1-piece that they didn't have anyway, haha.

Glad you got what you needed. Wish we had those over here in the UK

I've often wondered about outside the US and lawn mower parts. Seems like lawnmowers are the last SAE holdouts. Every car you buy in the US is assembled with metric hardware these days. Do you guys over the pond run into any English-metric problems on your mowers? I enjoy being able to use all SAE tools on something as the last few trucks I owned were a mix-n-match of SAE and metric. I'm also enyoying being able to pull motors with my bare hands and no hoist needed, haha.

Most stuff over here is metric. Although some tractors have been a total mis-match of metric, imperial and a few whitworth! Those were hell to get off.

Ran into all kinds of trouble this evening. First, the rims won't budge off the wards/mtd. I about destroyed my steering wheel puller trying. Moving on I tried to see how the 14hp opposed twin on the murray chassis. It's almost too wide for the hood, it's over 3" too tall, and the stock holes in the motor plate do not line up. Well the motor plate is no problem, drill some holes, simple. The width isn't much of a problem either, it does fit but it's snug. Before I start fabbing I am going to try the hood off my 97 murray, it's a little different design. If that doesn't work I'm left with not running a hood, or making a body lift of sorts. I could raise the hood mount and the sheetmetal that the steering shaft runs through about 3 1/2" without raising the center of gravity much. I was really hoping everything would just fit together properly though. One good thing is that it has plenty of room to mount the winch down on the frame under/behind the hood.

Worked on the murray some more. Got the chassis in good shape to add the motor and lay out the belt setup. I moved the motor back, had to redrill the motor plate anyway. Leaves plenty of room for a winch behind the hood and I may move the rear transaxle back a couple inches too. I took some pics so you guys can see the clearance issue I have with the motor and see the proposed idler pulley setup. The pulleys are just bolted to a deck idler bracket and c-clamped to the frame rail. Holds pretty good tension though and I don't think there will be any clearance issues.

yeah i had a hell of a time pulling the wheels from my 91 mild mod MTD - had to use 1/2 can of PB blaster, a large hammer and use a couple old sockets to get the things off - i bent the bolt in the puller just a lil bit tho.

To prevent further issues later on- i used a grinder and lightly ground the axles smoother and never seized the snarkies out of em- the wheels slipped on and off by hand, so i absolutely had to make sure the wheel bolts were tight.

Looks like murray didnt design those tractors to fit a opposed twin.... i used an old MTD hood on my murray.

You might want to make a clutch setup like Fearlessfront- i had mine set similar to yours and didnt work worth a crap.

I considered Fearless's clutch setup but want to get this thing running asap. If it doesn't work I'll change it. I don't know what I'll do for the hood. Only reason it even concerns me is that if I raise it, I also need to raise the dash, which probably needs to be decided before mounting the gas tank, and so on.

You can always out out the top of your hood to fit around the motor and either leave it open or fiberglass a big scoop on there or something. Or mount a scoop on the shroud that protrudes through the hood like a 'shaker' lol.

Shame the hood doesn't fit round that motor. Maybe if the engine was moutned further forward, but then you;d loose your winch space. Think you might just have to cut it

As for the chassis, might be a good idea to get some nice thick bed liner or something and coat it while you have everything off to stop it rusting anymore. Definatly getting closer now though!

I'll definitely strip all that rust off and paint the frame. Most of it is due to water getting in through the hole in the body for the battery. Also to blame for the pulley not coming off of the transaxle. I might try and put the wards/mtd hood on it, that would look strange.

Mine did at first, but i actually liked it after a while - the original murray hood ( had the plastic grille ) was all smashed- even epoxying it together didnt help.

Heres a pic of the old murray with the MTD hood n twin:


I had to cut the dash back a little bit to make it fit - also make a hood lock out of a bolt - so it didnt flop open on me.

I also had a spare bolens hood lying around- heres what that looked like:



Heres what it originally looked like- you can see all the cracks in the grille:

I love the looks of those wideboy hoods. Almost a shame to ditch it. Mind you I do like MTD hood too