western auto 7hp "Wizard" rider and old new member

does anyone here have one? this was the mower that started it all for me.. and my brother. i started out on this at age 10 , worked my way up to fixing other mowers and then cutting grass in the summer, fixing vehicles then working at a mower shop full time, graduated high school and became a 63B (wheeled vehicle mechanic ) in the Army. so my time is up, when i ever i get home me and my little brother are a gonna relive the child hood fun and start messing around with these things !



(not the actual mower i had, but the same exact one!)
it had a 7hp pull start briggs, i remember it said "magnatron" on the blower housing. i did research and i could only find that it was made by western auto.i never could figure out the year. it started as me and brother wanting to build a go kart.. we tried building one out of wood, it didnt work so well.
in illinois we had these things called "gabby day" its spring cleaning and people throw out junk on the curb.. we was rummaging through mower parts and i found the "wizzard" my brother helped me drag it out, parent said we could have it.. it looked great for a go kart platform. it didnt run,but it was complete.messed around with the carb not knowing what i was doing ,then my foster mom had it fixed at the mower shop when she had her mowing maching fixed. cost $50 to fix it , turned out to be no spark and gummed up carb. we used it to mow grass for a few weeks, at the time i had no seat ,i had to use a piece of wood found a seat at the junk yard for $25. on my birthday i was allowed to pull the deck off and off road it .. then i figured out what the linkage stuff did, i was revving it and revving .. after a day it shot the rod out the side of the block. never did get it running after that. being 11 years not having any experience all i managed to do was pulled the blown motor off and put in another briggs that didnt run.
in between time me and my brother got a Dynamark and a huffy mower from the junk yard ,, the we never got the huffy to run, it had a blown motor as well, the dynamark we ended up riding it through the creek and mudding it. all the fun came to a hault when our jerk foster mom got mad and had the junk man clear out our little mower shed. a few years later life improved when we moved to florida, thats when i got the job at a mower shop. we cut grass for money. tinkered around on V twins and opposed twins. had a murray lawn cheif rear engine rider we got for free, it had a blown 8hp briggs, we put in a 17hp opposed briggs . our grass cutting mower was a newer yard machines rider with a 14.5 techumshe? ohv enduro motor.we got it for $25.. told the owner of the mower shop it was for a high school project .. he said he didnt know what was wrong with it, and said give him wat ever i had in my pocket.. which was $25 i think all we did was install a battery and replace the fuel line and tires and it ran,, i think.
i joined the army and my brother took over the mower stuff.. parents became jerks again and all kinds of stupid stuff happened, lil brother got locked up and blah blah blah.. foster parent wants her kids to come back ( lol she can support her self, she quits getting checks from state once we hit 18!!)

im done with the army, my brother is getting out of jail or juvinille place next week, i plan to move back home by xmas time. so this is what we'll be doing , im 22 he's 19.. i doubt we're too old for this !!

wow, didnt mean for this to turn in a biography

this mower is similar to the "huffy" mower we had .. but ours had a little tool box thing in the back,it had a 7 or 8hp briggs, air up tires , and it had a 2 piece steering set up. the steering wheel was mounted in to the dash part, then another metal piece bolted to the shaft of the steering wheel, went across the motor and then bolted to a vertical rod that went down under the chassis. that metal part ( idk what youd call it , linkage? ever since i was a kid i called it the "strip of metal" )
that linkage part was 17in across. when we got that mower it was missing that piece and the hood. so the steering never worked. never could get the part cut , i measured it when i was a kid but never had the tools to cut it and make the steering work ... ughh the frusterations.

that mower we had was either some huffy , or a wizzard brand mower. ive seen a few on youtube that were exactly the same as the one we had, but no one ever replied back to tell what they were.

im sure these old mowers are getting hard to find ? i like the older style murrays and the older dynamarks ,montgomery wards, MTD ect..
i realy dont care for the newer rounded style plastic stuff.

also from what ive noticed, a lot of parts are intechangable too , transmissions, frames and decks, dashes , hoods.. i also noticed that some craftsman mowers are realy murrays !

Alot of tractor racers grab those huffy's - mod and build em for the racing circuit- im sure with some amount of searching youll find one - cost might be the thing tho- im sure ones that havent been modded are restored and would cost a pretty penny.

I have a 'mini' tractor - a 70 toro with a 5 HP briggs- eventually ill get around to redoing it :


The front wheels on it in this pic are actually the original rear wheels - the rear wheels are off a tractor my neighbor gave me. This is the one that started the 'collecting' bug for me - its also one ill never sell.

yeah if i could find another wizzard mower,huffy, dynamark ,murray that we had.. id restore them to original condition just because those were the ones we had whene we was kids.

i actually think i might be able to find my old wizzard if the junk man is still alive and didnt junk it. he was one of them guys who would collect stuff and let it sit outside and rot away before doing anything with it .. if i was ever able to find it , the mower itself wouldnt have a motor and the side panels would be off, the deck would be off and the deck mounts missing. id be happy just to find the mower itself !

ughh... buts it been 12 years i think , its a 50/50 chance

that mower you got is pretty nice.id like to collect a few old relics just for restoration purposes.