The Murray with Mow name.

Gday to all, so after 3 weeks of the flu and it almost killing me and another week and a half to catch up both physically and financially I'm back and ready to mod. Just have a quick question for those in the know, with a solid axle conversion would it be a bad move to use stainless steel for the axle itself as I have access to some in the right diameter but am not up to speed with what to use for axles etc. stainless does worry me a little hence the question. Cheers to all and have a great day.

Hey Mow! Any new updates!

GDAY TO ALL !!! so exactly 2 years to the day and I am back into this project, how time flies, I have been very busy lately, working on other projects and 3 jobs on the go does not leave much time for play, however things HAVE to change, the mower is now priority and WILL be finished, cheers to all that have shown interest in the build and I hope to continue to hear from you in the future,
I decided to try a 17.5HP clone motor from a company here ended up quite cheap so thought why not.

Wow, been a while Mow! Great to hear from you again! I noticed you online a few times in the last little while and I got to thinking about this tractor, haha.

Looking forward to seeing this awesome build progress further!

Awesome thread revival!  Great to hear from you!

Hey hey, whatawe have here!

LOL. AWESOME fab work on this thing! When you get it all finished up, throw some fresh paint on 'er and it will be factory! I'll be watching this one for sure.

That engine looks pretty sweet can't wait to hear how it runs out !

cheers guys, thanks for the warm re welcome shall I call it, The idea is to make the mods look as if they were factory and any accessories in a similar fashion, I have sourced a new seat and some ATV racks from a Yamaha grizzly I parted out, the engine is 622cc 17.5 hp, on paper it looked the goods and had decent reviews also, it comes with a full pressure oil system and vacuum fuel pump attached and for a hair over $650 aus I couldn't say no. I am working on the clutch and tension pulleys at the moment so I can measure for ordering a new belt.

with the idler pulley in place to keep the belt off the shifter shaft the belt measured in at 93 inches, which turns out to be a fairly common and well priced size, so it was ordered today.
With me needing some linkages and pivots etc to link the clutch to the pedal and build a shifter I started to strip out a White mower I have lying around for a future build and I actually struck what I class as rusty gold.

another piece of the puzzle arrived today



I cut away some of the grill to mount in tight as possible.

Got ya a pretty hefty winch there for the rig.  Very nice.

@MightyRaze wrote:

Got ya a pretty hefty winch there for the rig.  Very nice.

cheers, should do the job I reckon

My front tyres showed up at work today, so straight onto the freshly painted rims they went.
22x8x10 Kenda bearclaws.  

so I split the transaxle today as the shifter would not operate at all

as you can see corroded shaft is the issue, my guess is water has run down the shift input shaft and over time sitting it has led to this, I might have to get this off to my machinist friend and see what magic he can peform or try and chase a replacement which could turn out harder than it sounds.

Yep. That's a problem...

Don't look to bad. A wire wheel, file out the key ways, sand the shaft till the shift collar can slide on it. How do the keys look?

Little scuff and buff and you are in business!

@prancstaman wrote:

Don't look to bad. A wire wheel, file out the key ways, sand the shaft till the shift collar can slide on it. How do the keys look?

Cheers for the heads up, have basically done what you have said and it seems it will work fine for the moment, I will run it as is and see how I go, it slides smooth and the shift keys cleaned up fine also, so now the new axle is the next item on the list.