New member here from VT

Hey everyone!

New member from Vermont here.

Over the last couple years, I have built a craftsman LT1000. Did a pulley swap, welded the diff, and added some atv tires. I then decided to add front suspension using the stock front axle cut in two for IFS. After beating that around, I recently added rear suspension! It was tricky and isnt perfect but it rides much better. I will try and figure out how to add pics and a poorly taped video I did of it.

Cool mower. Welcome to the forum.

Welcome to the forum! Love the setup you have going on!

The trailing arm on the rear is super neat, looks like a good design you came up with. You mentioned the single coilover causing body roll... have you thought about maybe having a coilover mounted to each trailing arm behind the transaxle, and then a mount for each on the frame? That would add to the stability substantially I would think. Either way, great work!

Also your front end setup reminds me of the Twin I-Beam I made on the front of my Ford-LT 110, it's a nice setup for trail cruising. One thing you might notice is, with a single tie rod, the distance between the wheels changes during suspension travel, which can really mess with your wheel toe. I was able to do away with that on my little Ford by doing a bellcrank and Y-link steering setup coming off of the stock steering. Works great and much safer. Just a thought, I'd be interested to see what you would come up with to fix that issue.

Once again, welcome and outstanding work!

Welcome to ATLTF!  Nice setup you got there.

dude, thats AWESOME!
but be carful with that ungoverned engine, if that flywheel flys apart.......results arent pretty.....

Sweet build!

That flywheel will not fly apart unless it's previously damaged. It especially will not fly apart before a stock con rod or counterweight. I think we've laid this myth to rest a million times.

Wow! Awesome work! Welcome!


Flywheel should be fine. I do 7000 RPMs on my completely stock 15 HP briggs... Of course, I don't really care what happens to it since it's already on it's last leg but I haven't had many problems so far. I don't recommend 7000RPM if you like you're engine of course but it shouldn't hurt it if you're only running it at that speed for a short amount of time.

Fellas, just remember this is supposed to be a welcome thread for Jmessier13, not a discussion about tired engine RPM topics...

@AllisKidD21 I haven't take an updated video or pics but I decided to build my own rear sway bar out of 3/8 cold rolled. It actually does an excellent job at controlling body roll.

With the front suspension the way it is now, the shocks are too close to the pivot point causing the shocks to not have enough preload to keep the front end up when just driving on pavement or a dirt road. It wants to droop and it looks like it has wicked camber. But a nice feature about it now is it acts like long travel so landings are soft. I plan on redoing the shock locations as well as the shock towers.

Folks, how do you post pictures on here?


And thanks for the comments on my build!

@Jmessier13 nice build and the easiest way is to get an account with a pic hosting site, if you're on pc, i don't know about phone since i don't use them, i use postimage, it's free, from there you just upload the pic to the hosting site then go to share (above pic) and the hotlink for forums, copy this and then paste here, this is assuming you're using postimage

when i first joined it said i had to wait 7 days before i could post a pic.......
so @Jmessier13, you probably won't be able to post a pic un oil you have been a member for 7 days

loggers gogert wrote:

when i first joined it said i had to wait 7 days before i could post a pic.......
so @Jmessier13, you probably won't be able to post a pic un oil you have been a member for 7 days

I think I need to find that setting and change it.  We tell people to upload pix all the time when they join.  Only see an external link setting.

Jmessier13 wrote:

Folks, how do you post pictures on here?

There's a link in MightyRaze's signature that says "How To Upload Pictures".... That's what you'll want to follow.