[Winner] [24] RROD’s Sears Custom 6

Some good Sears action in here. I was knocking out hills that a 53” wheelbase tractor would spin out or lift the front end before it got up.


My wheelspacers for the back are here, gonna try and get those mounted this weekend.

RichieRichOverdrive wrote:

My wheelspacers for the back are here, gonna try and get those mounted this weekend.

[He did not]

I did an evil deed. I cut the clutch pedal off a parts custom just to steal the foot boards off of it.


You can see it’s perforated and the bottom is turned up. My foot will still sit over the edge, but it’ll be grippier either way.


Apparently my vicious root pile got washed out in the last rain storm.


Had to stack some sticks under the first root lol. It was taller than the centerline of the rear axle. Combine that and a undercut and there’s pretty much nothing you can do to pop over them.


I managed to pin myself between the mower and a tree even with the tree kickers. Managed to wrestle out of it. I need to add something more in that area to prevent this.

I like the foot boards that turned out nice

Finally got the spacers mounted. Wound up being a little more involved than i thought. Sitting at 36” wide now vs the 34 before, impressive how much difference it made in stability, but still narrow enough to fit in all the stupid places i go.

Sears got its first ride at the local offroad park! This thing feels plenty stable now with the extra width.

You're really grinding away with all the unfinished business on that beast! It looks like it's working really well for you, great job on another killer build!

-= Custom 6 jealousy =-

No, seriously this has turned out to be a GREAT build. Definitely First place material.

Thanks fellas.

Got my first steering pop yesterday. Well, first one where the fan gear didnt fall off too. Didn’t seem to hurt anything at least. Think i’m gonna add some kind of jack bolt to keep the gears pushed together.

So several times now I’ve found myself stalled in a precarious position, and rolled over because i shifted my weight to yank the pull start. So in the interest of avoiding that i have bought an electric start kit for a GX270, reviews say it works on the 301 fine.


I plan to run a motorcycle battery, lots of room for it in the dash even with my ammo can. I will not be utilizing the stock control box, will just use my own push button for the starter and run the charging coil straight to the battery with a diode and fuse in line. Trying to keep this upgrade under 20lbs.

Once i have that done i will look into adding headlights. May have to change my exhaust for that.

Toying with the idea of a clutch lever. Need to put a knob on it but I tried it out a bit tonight. I have to teach my brain that there are very real consequences to messing with that lever

That is awesome it would be great when you're in a spot where your leg might get pinched you could pick your leg up and still use the clutch

Definitely could, the thought was more to be able to kickstand or brace with my left leg and still be able to clutch. With a light machine with low seat height you can really interact with your surroundings and make the machine move in different ways based on how you’ve planted your leg. Now i can do a lot more like that with my left leg.

Now you just need to implement a hand throttle on that clutch lever so you can throttle up as you let off and have both feet free Lol

It's still riding weather down there eh?! That's crazy to a person like me with all the trails buried in too much snow to even attempt! Lol

ranch king pro 08 wrote:

Now you just need to implement a hand throttle on that clutch lever so you can throttle up as you let off and have both feet free Lol

That’s actually not as crazy of an idea as you might think

Brianator wrote:

It's still riding weather down there eh?! That's crazy to a person like me with all the trails buried in too much snow to even attempt! Lol

No snow yet but it’s still been in the 30s. The kind of stuff i ride is buried in the woods out of the wind. Those trails keep you warm just with how hard you gotta work to get through them

Guess i smacked the brake band bracket on a rock. Was wondering why i didnt have brakes lol


Anyway i pulled the wheel off to bend that back. I’ll brace it if it bends again


Looks like we have our first big issue


I put the wheel back on and will be ignoring that until it blows up or something.

You know Corb Lund? I'm starting to think he wrote "Hard On Equipment" about you! Lol

To be honest i have no idea how i broke it. I do know it wasnt cracked when i put the wheel spacers on, which was 2 weeks ago now. I’ve probably put 12 hours on the tractor since then so who knows how it happened haha. The crack has a bit of rusting in it so it wasnt super recent. I know once or twice i did coast backwards off of a steep bank and smack a big rock with the tire so hard it about threw me off the tractor

I measured things up a bit, i’ll just get some material tomorrow to make a new one.

A 5 lug hub puller is really a godsend if you’re serious about this mower stuff. The torch is necessary to cook the sleeve retainer loctite loose


Was able to extricate the axle tube just by pulling the hitch plate. I stuck a wrong length john deere axle tube back on just so i could tip the tractor back over. If this were a 633 (they also break axle tubes, i witnessed that firsthand) i’d be dropping the whole trans and replacing a case half.


Yup, that crack is rusty. Which means I’ve been beating the hell out of this thing with the tube broken for a good while now. Guess the axles and carrier are pretty tough to take that beating! I would still be running it if i hadn’t noticed when fixing the brake.


I got as far as cutting a piece of material for the new tube tonight. Will hopefully get working on that soon.

I'm very interested in seeing what you come up with regarding the fabbed up tube! That's very cool and I'm sure it'll be a very stout piece.

Got some work done on the new axle tube.

I wasn’t real sure what my order of operations should be on this. I decided to face and center drill the end and turn the taper first, then weld the flange on. The center drill will support the end of the part while i turn the flange round, then i will punch a hole through it, bore the alignment plug and o ring bores, then flip it around and bore the bearing bore.


The bolt holes had 1/32” clearance from factory, so i figured they weren’t so important that i couldn’t just drill them prior to welding. I decided to go with a 1/2” thick flange.


1/4” chamfer on both parts for a nice big V to fill with weld. Tacked it up and threw it in the woodstove to preheat before i welded it.


This surface still has .05” to be faced off, i left that extra material on so the weld could be turned smooth as well as get rid of any warp or undercut. The other side is also welded.


Backside faced off. That stump in the middle where the live center was in the way will just get drilled away.


Went ahead and faced this side off too for the hell of it. I did have to clearance the welds for the bolt heads anyway so the corner got a nice 45* angle that cleaned up a lot of the weld.

That's wild that you're making your own, I can't wait to see this installed on the tractor!

Blew a 1-1/32” hole through it to clear the axle.  You could actually pass a 1-1/4” bit through the old tube, that’s how hollow they are.


Here i have the locating step bored, about to bore the step for the O ring.


Flipped it around and checked that it was running true and then bored for the end bearing. Just a few tenths press fit for a nice tap fit like stock.


So here’s it after all the lathe work.


Big chamfer in there is just to clear the seal in the locating plug.


This old JD swept axle steering arm was a convenient thickness so i chopped it up in the bandsaw to make the mounting pad for the axle tube.


I was gonna do something fancy here with milling a flat and precisely locating the hole but I decided that just bolting it up and tacking it and pulling it off to fully weld it would be good enough.


Welded up and axle tube bolted back up to the trans.


Kinda gave it an in-place paint job and reinstalled my hub with new loctite. I didnt feel like waiting for the paint to dry before installing lol.


As soon as i had the tractor back on all fours i immediately tore the engine off for the e start conversation will have some video on that actually as 301 estart conversions are extremely poorly documented currently.

Installing the electric start wasnt really much more complicated than hogging out a couple cast in holes.


Starter tucked in there nicely!


And a quick little bit of wiring! Just doing a push button start. That little battery is just tiny and is still good for 300cca It’s allegedly an Li-ion. Hope it doesn’t get too fussy about the charging system, don’t want it to blow up. Maybe it has some internal brainboxery to protect it. I scavenged the diode out of the starter box that came with the estart kit for charging. Probably only a 2 amp system tbh.

2 amp oughta be fine since you don’t have any lights and have the recoil. Haven’t had any issues with the stock vanguard charging system on my suburban

No lights yet

I went back and looked at the amazon description of the battery and saw it has a BMS (battery management system) built in. I drove around about an hour pounding on stuff and checked the battery a couple times and it wasnt warm or anything and was still at a good voltage, so that’s good.

All the battery and starter and whatnot just took up empty space i had, still lots of room for my ammo can and whatnot


Eagerly awaiting my new seat!!!