Craftsman GT3000 "MUTT"

I realized i have a horn to put on this thing so I stole it off the truck and put it on. It's pretty loud

The horn is sweet. I'm going to have to find one myself to scare off the deer lol.

Rope got here today. Only 5 days late lol

Figured out the winch will drag mutt with the back wheels locked

Wow! this winch has been a great success!

Thanks. I think it's turned out pretty well. I'm honestly thinking about narrowing the drum though, it would make doing a roller fairlead a lot easier.

The question is...can it pull you in reverse?

Not blowing another reverse chain.

very cool man, Im definitely gonna have to build me one

I recently picked up a bunch more crimp connects and i know i have switches around here, thinking about throwing an led pod or two on the rack that i can swivel for back lights or forward, kinda reminiscent of the cultivator lights on old tractors with fender lights.

Oh and i think i have some repairs to do on the rack as well as making the latch I've been meaning to do on it for ages.

Mounted the lights. They can swivel around backwards or forwards which is pretty handy.




Found another one of these PTO switches I like and threw it in. They're a lot heavier duty than the cheap toggles you can get and are everywhere on old mowers.


I also gapped both plugs to .020" rather than .030" as a little experiment. She seemed to appreciate it.

Got the lights wired and put these adjustment handles on so i can tighten them without a wrench.




Pretty bright considering it was day when I took this.


Also hauled some wood with Mutt today. Didn't want to pick up the front end too bad surprisingly, seems the winch added some weight to hold the front end down

Looks pretty slick how those handles for the lights seem to fit into that little spot on the rack. Makes it looks like a factory set up.

Yeah, almost. They're springloaded so you can pull it out and turn the handles too, so you can have them in the holes proper.

WTF how that thing hauls so much and so heavy stuff!!!

Winch makes a good plow lift


Removed the springs and used some thread rod instead. Have yet to test this as I'm out of gas


I don't think removing the springs will cause any issue as i expect the pair of ⅜" bolts I'm using to mount the whole thing to break before anything else

I threw a 40 or 50lb chunk of stainless on this thing, drops a lot quicker and should dig more now. I also tightened up a few misc bolts on it that were loose. Lot sturdier all around now

Now that all the snow came down, how’s it workin?

God i wish there were snow. Nothing but miserable rain here.

Also a little thing i did was switch the direction the winch brake cable actuated the brake. It pulls now instead of pushes so the cable shield doesn't try to pull apart. It makes the lever on the dash pull down instead of push up which kind of makes more sense i guess.

Seems she's lost spark. Ruh roh.

Oh no!  Are you thinking a coil problem?

Ye I swapped the coil and she's all good

I ended up taking the weight off cause it would try to dig in too much. She still pushed some dirt though. Don't think the 820 is appreciating this at all

Why should the 820 hate plowing? I guess clutch dumps and shifting it without clutching under load will wreck it way way more

It just doesn't like the general load i think. The clutch is being a bit of a pain and not fully disengaging too, so that's not helping anything

Old rear pulley is clapped.


Bored out the center of a broken MTD spindle pulley to fit the center from Mutt's stock pulley in machine tool. Maybe like an ⅛" bigger where the belt rides than the previous pulley, shouldn't make any big speed difference.


Back in and painted.


The reason i have this all apart is because of poor clutch function from out of alignment pulleys. Turns out the whole clutch assembly is pretty high, and i can't add a spacer on the clutch to align it without the belt interfering with the clutch linkage, so I cut the welds on the clutch lever and knocked it over to about where i wanted it. Looks like it'll work, I'll weld it tomorrow probably.

In machine tool today i made a pair of bushings to replace the original plastic ones on the clutch lever. Pretty simple, ⅝" I.D. ¾" O.D. Just had to drill the holes in the frame out to ¾", didn't even take much material out.

You can see the one bushing there is trapped on the shaft. I shouldn't have to replace it within the possible life span of this machine so it should be fine.