Craftsman GT 6000 Build

Did a little tinkering with the GT today. Got an idea to add some steel plate to brace the bumper a little bit, so I used some nice 3/16" stuff for it:





Might not be neccessary, but you can never have too much steel! Haha. Also should help things slide out from behind the bumper instead of getting stuck when I'm backing up in a trail, I've had that happen a few times.

Also, while trying to carry a bucket of nails on the hood, I got the idea to try and make a simple, removeable hood rack for it! So I started tacking up a frame out of some 5/16" rod:



Washers welded to the front as you can see, then the wing nuts for the hood hold it down at the front.

And the middle bars welded in place:



Just had a single support bolt at the back, but that allowed for too much flex, so I ended up having one on either side. Worked much better.

Then I threw some paint at it! Had some grey lying around that actually sorta matched the original colour of the tractor:





Turned out pretty good! I imagine it'll come in quite handy, haha.

Let me know what ya think!

Looks excellent! The hood rack made me think of Mr. Modified's Simplicity.

Thanks MJ! Haha, yeah I was thinking of the rack Mr. Mod had too. It has already been pretty handy to have!

The rack looks so natural on that large square hood. I had thought about doing the same when I was planning on building my GT. I'm sure it will be very useful. I would recommend getting a set of short bungie cords to keep on it.

Looks very nice AK.  Great job!

Yeah I have a tarp strap on there now for holding stuff down, but a couple bungie cords would probably be a bit better.

Thanks Might! I'm pretty happy with it, haha.

Forgot to post this picture a little while ago:



Sometimes it's just to steep to drag the rear end the rest of the way up! Haha.

Also I think situations like this would be much better with a good heavy duty belt guard/skidpate underneath. Might have to look into making something like that soon!

Sure do have a nice set of rigs AK.  Glad to see them come along from, just got them to where they are now.  Lots of ingenuity put into them.  Also, you seem to build them for tasks, but still put the FUN in them too.  I think that belly plate would be a great improvement.  I may have to see what you do, and may copy you on my tractor.  LOL!

Well thanks a bunch Mighty! I appreciate the compliments!

Well the GT hasn't seen any off-road action for a bit now, so I thought I'd get 'er out and do some wheeling today!







Decided to venture down to the bottom of this hill and try to cross the real wet spot:





Where, of course, I got stuck:







Oh well, with a couple lengths of chain I was able to winch myself out and make it up the other hill no problem. At least now I know what I'm up against down there! I'll have to try 'er again sometime, haha.





Definitely had lots of fun!

Looks like you had a good time!

Sure did!

I actually had 'er out again for a while yesterday and snapped a couple pictures while I was at it:









Then back to the shed once again:



She's still working good!

Well the day has FINALLY come to turn the ol' GT back into a six-speed:



Yep, after a long hard search I finally got ahold of a replacement transaxle for this old girl a few days ago and got it swapped in today.

You can tell which one is the replacement, haha:



Had to swap the main shifter, range selector post, and check plug from the old trans to the new one, but it bolted right in otherwise.



Works good!





Sure is nice to have the road gear back, that was kind of inconvenient before I gotta say, haha. Also this trans seems to make a lot less noise than the other one did, so that's good too. All around I'm quite happy!

Good to see the ol' GT get that trans swap. Are you going to bust it open to see what happened?

Looking good allis! Maybe now you should make a skidplate and belt guard to protect the new trans

Are the hubs on the old trans keyed or splined?

@MightyRaze wrote:

Good to see the ol' GT get that trans swap.  Are you going to bust it open to see what happened?  

Thanks Mighty. Yeah I was thinking about maybe doing that sometime, sorta curious about what the deal was.

@RichieRichOverdrive wrote:

Looking good allis! Maybe now you should make a skidplate and belt guard to protect the new trans

Thanks Rich. Yeah those things are definitely on the list!

@mowerjunkie03 wrote:

Are the hubs on the old trans keyed or splined?

Both have splined axle shafts.

Had some fun with the GT Sunday evening, although I had a couple issues at one point. I was driving along and had a stick come up and pop my belt off an idler, which was easy enough to fix, but then I subsequently lost my steering due to the square ended connection point of the steering shaft popping out of the universal joint. Grr...

I got it back together and used three pieces of aluminum foil to shim up the clamp:



Holding good for now, but obviously it will need to be addressed soon. I have a couple ideas so hopefully I'll get something figured out.

After that I hit this real cool technical trail in a ditch running through a tree line. Had lots of fun! Although unfortunately she suffered some major damage after a close encounter with a rather solid tree:







So, couple things to do in the near future. Need to fix that universal joint clamp issue, and the lower universal needs to be shimmed up a bit. Next thing is a nice heavy duty belt guard/trans skidplate. I'm thinking at least 3/16" steel, so I can drag it over stuff without having to worry about bending or denting it.

Might take a stab at that stuff this weekend!

I'm a big skid plate fan, so I'll be on the look out for any skid plate pics. That should keep the sticks and things out of the belt. My high tech idea for my new build is to skin pretty much the whole bottom. If possible I want to figure out a way to not have bolts sticking out so that it's smooth for sliding over stuff. Might not be too easy to make it like that though. 3/16" steel would be pretty beefy.

Steering makes having a full skidplate hard.

Looks like fun allis. Maybe you can put in some set screws on that joint to keep it tight.

I like skid plates too, Im pretty sure mine had a big hand in me winning the mud bog at TTC this year, before I put mine on you could feel the trans mounting place dig in in the mud and if you backed all the way out you could see the small wall of mud it pushed, now I can work the tractor back and forth as it gets stuck and it usually keeps moving forward unless its super nasty. mines just out of 1/8 and Ive never bent it, even rock crawling, just my two cents.

Thanks fellas! Yeah 3/16" steel might be a bit overkill, but oh well. I'm a fan of overkill with certain stuff anyways, haha.

I actually got a pretty good start on the belt guard this evening, I was gonna make the skidplate and belt guard all one piece but decided to make them seperate just for ease of removal.

But anyways, here's the bones of the belt guard:





Used the 3/16" steel for that part so I could drag it over stuff without worrying about bending it. For the side protection I just cut out a piece of sheet steel and made it fit pretty nice:



Looks good, time to burn it in!



Kind of a pain with that real thin stuff, but it's on there pretty good. Tomorrow I'll try and finish it up, gotta make a leading edge for the front so it won't hang up on stuff as well as trim the mounts flush, and weld some braces for the back side of the sheet steel so it won't bend inwards.

Should work nice!

Nice job! Should help with protecting the belt.

Thanks Mighty! I sure hope it does.

Looks great man

Thanks Tom!

I ended up getting the braces welded in and the front mount trimmed off this morning:



I forgot to make a leading edge for the front, but I can do that anytime.



Should work quite nicely! Gonna have to hit the trails and try 'er out now, haha.