MTD off-road build (Mobile Terrain Dominator) "1"

Naw, the 600's are more of a lawn tractor transaxle, just a little more heavy duty. Vertical shaft 3-speed, I think the transaxles in the Craftsman GT's where horizontal input and had 3-speeds with two ranges.
Either way, they sure didn't put them in 90's MTD's hahaha!

@AllisKidD21 wrote:

Naw, the 600's are more of a lawn tractor transaxle, just a little more heavy duty. Vertical shaft 3-speed, I think the transaxles in the Craftsman GT's where horizontal input and had 3-speeds with two ranges.
Either way, they sure didn't put them in 90's MTD's hahaha!

The Craftsman GTs varied a lot. The 633 was in a lot of them. Some had hydros, 820s, etc...

I always get those mixed up! i remember now. the 600s are the ones that were under sears suburbans. heavy suckers. and yea cq, i cant believe we passed it up. it woulda been good for something, and it only went for 15 bucks

It was a Peerless 600 you guys saw at this auction?

no it was one of the dark gray (not the common light grey/silver) craftsman GT's and had a cast iron kohler opposed and an h-pattern shifter

Maybe a 122419X or 122420X transmission?

its those craftsmans that have the twisted belt. the gt's that is. thats what makes them more difficult to use. because i know a lot of them have the 3 speed high and low transmissions that the sears suburbans have, and those have a horizontal input shaft. The mower has a vertical shaft engine, the kohler magnum opposed. they are good tractors for general work, but ive heard they are a pain in the a$$ to change the belt on.

Yeah I wouldn't want a twisted belt on any of my tractors, seems like another thing to go wrong. Oh well, luckily since the 600 series are vertical input I won't have to twist the belt on the 'ol MTD.

Lol nearly 1 page of transaxle hahaha!

Yup! Welcome to ATLTF hahaha!

But anyway, I still plan on removing the engine and doing some frame bracing this weekend. I'm gonna try and get lots of pictures so stay tuned!

Well I just pulled the 'ol Briggs out, I didn't bother taking any pictures cuz it's too dark out. Luckily it's not the first time I've done it, so it didn't take long. I think the oil leak is due to the dipstick tube seal being broke lose, which won't be hard to fix, but tomorrow I hope to do some frame bracing stuff and I'll definitely take some pictures of that!

Ok, great day today! I'm really happy with today's progress. I reinforced the frame bit, braced the sway bar link mounts, mocked up a foot throttle, and other little stuff. I got lots of pictures as well:












The throttle pedal is just being mocked up until the motor goes back in. I'm gonna retain the hand throttle for longer trips and warming up the engine, so I'm gonna have dual throttle control.




And as a bonus I made one of the old spindles into a neat little draw pin!


Let me know what you think!

Looking really good! I like the foot throttle, you gotta take plenty of pics of the dual throttle setup because I'm interested in doing something like that.

Thanks! Yeah I'm planning on doing the same setup as RevDogg, but on a single cylinder.

Looking good buddy! are you worried about catching anything on the corners of the angle iron or are they high enough up?

Thanks man! I suppose it is a possibility, but they are just about flush with the frame. All I can do is hope nothing catches haha!

Maybe trim up the corners on the outer ones so you don't catch your hand or shin while working/walking around it. The inside ones are probably fine.

Yeah I probably will clean them up a bit, couldn't hurt.

Nice. I see quite a bit of oil on the frame there, must have got a big oil leak.

Yeah it's leaking, that's why I took the engine out, so I could fix it.

So I brought 'er home and she's sitting on my workbench. The oil leak is coming from the dipstick tube seal, but I think I cured that last night. Although I have yet to test it out to see if it leaks.




I also cleaned the flywheel magnet and coil pickup as they were quite rusty, I think this was causing the occasional hard starting



I got the idea that I wanted to try and advance the timing slightly. So I filed out the holes a little bit so the the coil can move side to side a couple thousands of an inch. Since the crank spins clockwise, I moved the coil to the left (if you're looking from the top of of engine) which should advance my spark slightly. We'll see how it goes, haha. Let me know what you think!

Yeah keep us posted on how that advanced timing works out. I might just have to try that.

Will do!

i never thought to slightly move the magneto. thats a pretty good idea. i might try that on my oppy in the king, whenever i get it back together

@TheGreenHornet wrote:

i never thought to slightly move the magneto. thats a pretty good idea. i might try that on my oppy in the king, whenever i get it back together

Thanks! Without points there's not really any other way to mess with timing, haha.

Well, back in the garage tonight.

Sanded the shrouding a bit in preparation for a new coat of paint.


I'm planning on cutting off the bottom part of the air cleaner and using it to make a custom setup like Redline's air cleaner, because it looks cool hahaha. First I figured I should plug the factory PCV inlet as I no longer use it due to my homemade PCV breather/catch can.