General mower builds

I checked out the prices... DANG!

Been working on the murry widebody for Griffin. Has anyone else had issues with putting smaller pulleys on the transaxle? I put a 4" on since it is what was sitting around and the belt dumped into the shifter rod.  I am in the process of making a larger pulley to work around it, but I was wondering what others have done. I think there was also a height issue, but I can work around that too with the custom pulley.

I had to make some new belt guides on mine when I went smaller.

Yeah changing pulleys on widebodys aren't as easy as Craftsmans. Mine rubs the shifter on the MM, but I plan to do something to fix that on my other widebody.

The rubbing on the shifter isn't THAT big of a problem, but it could still be fixed. When you put your idler in, make sure you have the belt running on the INSIDE of the shifter instead of the outside. The belt will cover more surface area of the pulley that way hence less belt slippage. You may need to build a new clutch that way though.

Got any pics or links to build threads?

Here is how I solved the belt rub on the shifter.  Pretty similar to Fearlessfront's.

Your pic gave me lots of hope, even though it turned out not to work in many ways. Tried an oppy on the mower, no dice, too much hood cutting. Went with a 15.5 Kohler. I did do a similar idler, but its wide, so it pushes on both directions of the belt. I measured with a worn out 1/2 inch belt and got 92.5 inches, turns out a 94inch 5/8 belt is what is needed. Now all I need to do is create a wire harness for power on, start, and stop. Not too worried about aux lights just yet.

I also tried an oppy on the gimphorse, no go w/o lots of hood modifiction there too, so it'll probably get a 15hp Kohler too. Aside from that, tires and an idler pulley, it'll be mostly the same.

OH! I need a shifter boot for the gimphorse, anyone have any leads or hacks for those?