Tinkering With Tiny Tractors

Tinkering With Tiny Tractors

Well, here's my first post on things mechanical.

Anyone that knows me knows that I'm a dyed-in-the-wool, true blue life-long tinkerer.  My mother tells me that as a young boy--4 to 5 year old, she had to keep all the alarm clocks and mechanical things up out of reach as I would take them apart to see how they worked  (.but, generally couldn't get them back together again  ;o} )

Well, the tinkering bug has stayed with me... I like to mess around with metal working tools, old cars, Ham Radio, and whatever else comes to hand.

Another thing I've always wanted was a small tractor.  As a small boy--just a little older than when I was dismembering mom's clocks and toasters--mom would take us into the big Sears store on 900 South in Salt Lake City.  They always had these big (to me), beautiful blue and red garden tractors for sale there...

Finally, a couple years ago, I got into garden tractors in a big way...

I started out with the Gravely walk-behind tractor... but soon graduated to Cub Cadets...

The one shown in the first picture above was built in 1967.  I found it down in Ephraim, Utah.  The PO (previous owner) had let it sit for awhile, and we couldn't get it started. So, we pushed it up into the bed of my pickup--no small task as these things are made of cast iron, and weigh about 500-600 lbs.


I got it home, pulled the carb and cleaned it with a can of WalMart Carb Cleaner, then pulled the shrouds from the engine to clean out the mice nests, etc.
I put fresh fuel in the tank, a new battery, and she cranked over and ran... Pretty good for a 40 year old "man toy"!!


These are great little tractors--at least the ones built from the 1960s to the early 1980s.  They were built by International Harvester Corporation (IHC) and their coloring and shape mimicked the large farm tractors that IHC made at that time. You could get them with all types of attachments, including mowers, tillers, snowblowers, and plows. (Picture below is not my tractor-- I just thought it looked neat).

 They are also very popular for Garden Tractor Pulls as their Kohler engines can be tweaked to get 50% more horsepower, and the drive trains are almost indestructible.


This picture shows a Cub Cadet that someone stretched into a dump truck... 

A little long to maneuver around the yard, but definitely intriguing, and... handy.



I've since "collected" a number of other GTs, including a Power King--that's my grandson "aping" for the camera in front of a friend's PK.

Then there's my White GT1650--

It's a great tractor--Briggs & Stratton 16 hp engine, shaft drive--even for the mower deck and tiller, and  hydrostatic transmission.  We tilled a bunch of garden with it this summer.

Then there's my Sears GT18...

Another "find" that wasn't running... in fact the engine wouldn't turn over so I thought it was locked up.  It had a rear scraper blade for it, and the owner let me have it for $200.  I got it up into my trailer (much lower to the ground and easier to use) and got it home.  Poured some penetrating oil in the cylinders (it's a flat twin Onan engine) and turned it over with a wrench... it popped free and then started when I hit the key... yesss...!!  It's in rough shape appearance wise, but I plowed 6 gardens with it this last year... below are some pics of me on it plowing some pasture last fall so we can have a larger garden this spring...

I plowed a 75 x 100 foot space--cutting through the grass and roots... it just kept a runnin'

Anyway... gotta run for now, I'll write more about my GTs later...

Smitty