Lawn Ranger Tomfoolery

So one or two of you might remember this from back in my Budgie days. This was a good gas pedal, used it across both engines and was still on it when I sold it.


So here’s the sequel to it works pretty good. Don’t have the cable hooked up yet here.


It’s still out of the way if you don’t want to use it.


I hooked it up so I still have the hand throttle on the dash too!

The gas pedal bent a little bit when I was messing around earlier so I braced it a little bit with more of the sign wire I made the belt guides out of. Should be plenty sturdy now it’s somewhat triangulated haha.


It occurs to me now I should have made the pedal rod out of a hay rake tooth, they are spring steel and extremely strong.

The gas pedal did wind up needing some sign wire bracing


Road trip to west liberty!


Here’s a hill I got to the very top and backflipped twice down


Did a number on the hood and actually hydro locked the 212 on its own oil.


Fixed the hood and did not learn my lesson! This hill took some serious clutch work to get up


Here’s the same hill from the bottom


I wish you could tell in the picture, I was airborne over a mud hole!


Cool spot where a creek undercut the hill


This thing is the most fun I’ve ever had on a tractor!

More of my usual over the top fixturing for a basic weldment


Made up a simple engine cage to prevent the hood stovepiping we saw on the last double-backflip down a hill. It’s more of a grill hoop with a support but it fits right under the hood well enough that you can stand on it with no issues


Can’t even tell it’s under there and it shouldn’t be heavy enough to affect handling at all

RichieRichOverdrive wrote:

More of my usual over the top fixturing for a basic weldment


Made up a simple engine cage to prevent the hood stovepiping we saw on the last double-backflip down a hill. It’s more of a grill hoop with a support but it fits right under the hood well enough that you can stand on it with no issues


Can’t even tell it’s under there and it shouldn’t be heavy enough to affect handling at all

A little warpage and porosity never hurt anyone, right?

Squareness and weld quality all went out the window when I broke out the galvanized EMT and flux core after I made the initial grille hoop. Good enough for the dang lawn ranger I guess

This is a fun ledge to play on

RichieRichOverdrive wrote:

This is a fun ledge to play on

Man those 633's are tough! Surprised you didn't bust an axle.

It actually has what’s referred to as a 4 speed unidrive. It’s 3spd with reverse. Does still have 1” axles and is regarded by pullers as the strongest wheel horse trans out there. The 8 speeds (same trans with hi lo) preferred for off road use though. They had both 1” and 1-1/8” axles too depending on what tractor they came in.

I may or may not have let the intrusive thoughts win on these  

@RichieRichOverdrive I kid you not I had those in my cart last night. I ended up ordering these instead   I'm excited to see how they work

ranch king pro 08 wrote:

@RichieRichOverdrive I kid you not I had those in my cart last night. I ended up ordering these instead   I'm excited to see how they work

How much were they?

Not meaning to keep the topic off course... I got those SunF's for my mower.  A small twig poked a hole in them within a month.  Seem to be pretty thin.

As for the tires @RichieRichOverdrive is looking at.  For what you got going on with the little horse.  I bet they work great.

One thing I realized over the years.  Tires that work well here at home, may not work great out east and vice versa.  Then you have the added complication of mud, clay, gravel, bolders...

@Ifitaintbroke about $85 after tax

MightyRaze wrote:

Not meaning to keep the topic off course... I got those SunF's for my mower.  A small twig poked a hole in them within a month.  Seem to be pretty thin.

As for the tires @RichieRichOverdrive is looking at.  For what you got going on with the little horse.  I bet they work great.

One thing I realized over the years.  Tires that work well here at home, may not work great out east and vice versa.  Then you have the added complication of mud, clay, gravel, bolders...

These are like 2ply, so hopefully thin enough to be flexible. They’ll be ran super soft and on beadlocks for best performance. Plus they were only like $95 shipped.

The knobbies really work fine until they load up. It takes a lot of wheel speed to clean out a small tire and the lawn ranger just doesn’t have that. You can see what I mean in this pic lol.


Hopefully the wide lug spacing will not pack with mud easy. The tread depth is pretty mild, only 3/8” according to the description, so it won’t take too much power to spin them and keep them eating. The wide tread spacing with mild tread depth along with the soft tire will also hopefully keep more of the tire in contact with hard terrain like rocks, where surface area is everything for traction. That sounds counterintuitive but I think maybe I’ll get some contact of the smooth part in between the lugs, is that makes sense.

Interestingly enough, these tires are super popular with ATV hillclimbers here on the east coast, but are often seen ran with tire chains, like you can see in thumbnail of this video


So who knows, they may be no better than the knobbies, but damn they’ll look cool

And I don’t mind a little thread digression for tire talk

Been 3 days and the seller hadn’t shipped…messaged them and get this back. Seems they didn’t have them in stock…even though their other listing for the same tires says 10 available.


So whatever. @Creepycrawler points out to me that the same tires are for sale on Amazon so I hop over there and order some….from what seems to be the same distributor as eBay. Few hours later I get a notification saying they’ve shipped and fedex has picked them up. We’ll see I guess.


I’m ready to fight for these damn tires. I’ll keep ordering from whatever listing they have up until they either get tired of refunding me and take them down, or actually send me the tires. Don’t get between a man and his tire autism

At least he got right back to you and refunded you on the spot.  I've had good dealings with them.

Me want grippy rubber rings me get no rubber rings me get angry Lol. All jokes aside ebay has been really testy lately, bold move for a company that's outnumbered

YIPPEE!! I no longer have to go and violate anyone at chapparal motorsports.


So in preparation for the new tire and rim setup I went to rob the hubs off my spare 3 speed…so much for that idea. These things are/were ON THERE



so that really aggravated the ‘tism…I think I’ve settled on a new solution. Gonna make another set of 4x4 hubs, this time keyed with 1” bore. Think it’ll work better in the long run. Rims for the original plan are already super close to 4x4, I have another set of 4x4 8” rims here, and I think the 3 lug rims with the sheet metal screws and knobbies can be made to 4x4 without too much trouble.

I'm not just saying it... but the one's you make are probably 100 times better than the original casted ones.

Well yeah. But they do take a few hours to make lol. This would have been a little bit more convenient than making hubs, though I think going 4x4 is better in the long run.

It did occur to me that the easiest thing to do would be to just make 3 lug to 4 lug spacer/adapters.

Set up in the mill and walked off the bolt holes. They wound up a little closer to the bore than I thought they would   no biggie though, will hold fine. If I even use these rims.


I threw the zippers on the rims just to pump them up to 35psi and stretch them out. Realized I definitely need wider rims than whatever these are. Bead locks add some width as well but I’m not certain it’ll be enough to flatten out the tread profile to what I want.

Bolted them up front because why not. They are a bit taller than the rears in the current state. The messed up part is they would clear everything with some steering stops

@RichieRichOverdrive it'd be cool to get another set and stick those suckers up front

Meh, they’re not much for a steer tire. I like the pizza cutters I have although I will miss having my front and rear tires match.

Anyway, another set of hubs, as seen earlier in this build thread as well as in mutts thread. Used the same material as the front hubs too. These 4 lug hubs are super easy because you don’t have to worry about making the plates round.

These plates will wind up flush with the outside end of the center section, so I chamfered both the plate and hub for maximum weld penetration.


Fixtured up to prevent warping. Actually did make these a press fit to each other this time, not that it was really on purpose or makes any sort of difference.


Here we see the results of Richard booger welding his several hours of meticulous machine work together


Gonna finish bore, take a face cut, and cut the keyways tomorrow if I don’t get distracted doing something else

@RichieRichOverdrive very true about the steering. Also nice Machining as always mr fancy pants Lol.