Craftsman GT3000 "MUTT" Part II

Nice carnage. Just shows you were riding hard and having fun. Rack and Pinion will be nice. I don't think I can turn as sharp with mine. I have my geometry as close to the spindle as I can too. You going to use it as a push pull to the bell crank or across the axle?

Watched it last night.   You guys are closeish so I follow giverthebeans but some of it is too hardcore for me with some physical limitations i have.   Still enjoy it.

RichieRichOverdrive wrote:

Don't worry, I'm sure there are bypasses on some stuff, they like to video the more hardcore stuff cuz it's cool to watch!

A lot of the stuff is just trails and creek bed riding. All the super crazy stuff we do is optional. If you don’t feel good about something we’ll even spot you, we’ll line a whole hill with spotters. If you have a pulley swap and a reliable rig that doesn’t drop belts you’ll keep up no problem at all. We’ve had stock speed guys come out too, we don’t mind them so long as they tell us ahead of time.

RichieRichOverdrive wrote:

we don’t mind them so long as they tell us ahead of time.

BYOTR for the stock guys? Bring your own tow rope?

MightyRaze wrote:

Nice carnage. Just shows you were riding hard and having fun.  Rack and Pinion will be nice.  I don't think I can turn as sharp with mine.  I have my geometry as close to the spindle as I can too.  You going to use it as a push pull to the bell crank or across the axle?

Didn't see this message before. The rack and pinion will be as close to the left side of the frame as possible, just pushing a plain old drag link. I have universals to route the (new) steering shaft to it. From what I can see with my tape measuring, the rack should have enough travel

BairleaFarm wrote:

RichieRichOverdrive wrote:

we don’t mind them so long as they tell us ahead of time.

BYOTR for the stock guys?  Bring your own tow rope?

Tow rope and a good front and rear tow point is much appreciated! Remember, you might be fishing around in mud and water to hook your rope, so it's wise to make it easy to find

Fun fact, these club car racks seem to be designed for 7/16 or 12mm bolts. Or at least this one was, haha.


Here is the rear mount. Pretty simple, one bolt through the frame and one through the rack.


The forward mounting of the rack has two holes and one of them doesn’t land on the frame. The little bolted on plate will work for both front mount holes as it extends below the frame a bit. The rear mount was enough to position and hold the rack so I could transfer hole locations from the rack to the little plate.


Picked up the transferred holes and tapped them 8mm (not a metric guy but it’s just hardware on hand). Two more little standoffs, tapped 1/2-13 on one end and and 8mm on the other. They are joined to the plate for now by an 8mm set screw-the set screw positions the little standoffs for welding and will hopefully prevent them from pulling out of line when I weld them.


This is pretty much the final position of the rack.


I cut up and tapped the end of the old drag link just to get an idea of how things are going to work. I definitely need some more aggressive bends to clear the tie rod.


Bonus pic showing my wacky setup to drill and tap the end of the old drag link. Too tall for the mill and too bent for the lathe spindle. I stuck it in a boring bar holder and just put a drill in the lathe chuck. Worked great.

Not much done today. I had to enlarge the hole in the dash to fit a flange bearing, so I used a holesaw the size of the first hole as a pilot for the larger holesaw. This arbor has room to screw two saws on, some don’t though unfortunately.


From here I just had to drill the bolt holes for the bearing. This all wound up being pretty easy, I was worried I’d have to pull the dash off to cut it.

Very nice again.  MUTT is going to become a beefier tank once you are done!

Wow! That is a strong steering bushing, got to tell you! That'll out last the tractor.

If you ever get a chance to weigh this beast I'm really curious where it's at! With all the upgrades and reinforcements it's got to be around 700lbs I'd think

She’s definitely not 700, I’ve seen some 700lb wheel horses and Sears and mutt is definitely not that. She’s definitely below 650.

And that’s only the upper steering bearing, there will be another one bellow it.

Splined the end of the steering shaft at work. Could have done it at home but I didn’t have the indexer plate for it.


Intermediate shaft made up


Here you can see the lower bearing and everything all together.


Drag link.


I got her running last night, think the float was stuck up was why she wouldn’t run. Working on an engine cage now.

You have another snapper hood lying around for that Craftsman?  Nice.  Interested in your engine cage.

I have two spares, this one with glass headlights and one with (missing) plastic headlights. I’m gonna use this glass headlight grille with the old hood, I just needed something straight to build the cage to.

I hate warped weldements so much that I set up my material on a mill table and clamp it down lol.


About how it sits in the hood.


Here’s what it looks like sans hood and grille.


Hood and grille mounted. You can actually go without either the grille or hood, everything kind of mounts independently to the cage now.


So now to be ready for GER I guess I just have to stick the headlights in and get my belt system working right.

Aye! Love to see what happened in that doc locker! GER FB footage.

Well sadly (or not lol) I didn’t get to try the engine cage out at GER…she stayed pretty horizontal besides one time where she got sleepy and layed over

She was performing flawlessly until I was trying to pop the front wheels over a rock in cripple creek…one minute the left rear was spinning, then a little pop, and then I was one wheel peel. Oops! I guess I twisted off the left side of the straight axle. I wasn’t really doing anything crazy at the moment, but definitely had been hopping the front end all weekend with some serious clutch work


Rode the GT6k the rest of the weekend, but here’s some shots from when mutt was still in action.






This was right where I twisted off the axle, had to winch up out of the creek.






Bighorns love rocks! Even big flat ones with nothing to grip on!


She’s hiding in the back there


So, turns out that piece of stainless keyed shaft just wasn’t up to snuff for an axle. Think I’ll get a piece of 4140 pre hardened stock to cut keyways in and make a new axle. Lots of engineering coming up!

Dang that's some hard riding! The thought to try and go over some of the stuff you all do wouldn't even cross my mind if I came across that kind of stuff when I'm riding lol. Of course, I don't have anything quite capable enough for that yet.

I'll be waiting to see that transaxle carnage too! I just dealt with a similar issue with Alfredo.

So here’s the diff assembly that came out of the 820 in mutt. It already had chopped axles so I chopped them some more for free material lol. I think the diff carrier currently in mutt is from the original 820? Eh, oh well lol.


Whole assembly is 4” overall length…this means my locker hub needs to be 4” long


Little bit of measuring later…

Oh.... nice!

Meant to put this with the last post but ran out of time. Here’s the locker hub itself.


I will have to start a thread on the subject with all the technical details.

That's a sweet design man, get er done and it could be added to the list of different ways to lock diffs thread too!

I didn’t even know there was a thread for that, haha. Someone would need a pretty good machine shop to lock a diff like this. I can make them to sell as well, but I’m kind of the only market for something like that, almost nobody putting an 820 through this much abuse. I’m making the big keys and side plates from scratch as well as the center hubs. Well, I may reuse the side plates but bore them up, I’ll have to look them over.

I picked up material for an axle, 1” 4140 prehard TGP (turned, ground, and polished). Im not sure if it will hold up, may be a bit too hard. We shall see. The locker should at least be pretty bulletproof. Will be using some kind of tougher steel for the hub key too.

First side done on the hub


Second side just before finish turning


Shiny. The bore is still .003” under, I bored it half from either side so I didn’t have to fight with chatter on a long bore(like I did on the hubs), I will take it to work and hone it up to size before I cut the 1/4” keyway in it.


Had to true up this boss on the side plates before I could chuck on the boss to indicate the step in the side plates true so I can true up the OD of the plates so I can chuck on the OD to cut the bore of the plate *gasps for air*


One side plate done. It’s bedtime for now, I’m not quite the young whippersnapper I was in 2017 posting the nights work at 4am

RichieRichOverdrive wrote:

First side done on the hub


Second side just before finish turning


Shiny. The bore is still .003” under, I bored it half from either side so I didn’t have to fight with chatter on a long bore(like I did on the hubs), I will take it to wor and hone it up to size before I cut the 1/4” keyway in it.


Had to true up this boss on the side plates before I could chuck on the boss to indicate the step in the side plates true so I can true up the OD of the plates so I can chuck on the OD to cut the bore of the plate *gasps for air*


One side plate done. It’s bedtime for now, I’m not quite the young whippersnapper I was in 2017 posting the nights work at

Boy! excellent machine work and Idea, should be stout enough for sum good romping!!!
Wonder what will break next?
Gears? Guess will discover soon enough ! LOL