My wife let me buy a Mustang!!!

[FrankBoss]

When I went to get it I told my youngest "Dad is getting a yellow mustang" had him going for quite a while...

And yes that motor is a Nut warmer.

FrankBoss

 

[FrankBoss]

Lol, not what I was expecting---Pillen140

Congratulations: Frank........You win the

AWARD!

Thanks Guys!

FrankBoss

 

[armadillon]

The thread got me too. Although my immediate thought when clicking was "Hope it's not a V6 SN95...

 

[tpelle]

We had one like that when I was a kid! But ours was hot-rodded!

Actually, my dad (who was of the great depression generation) was very frugal, and never bought brand-new lawnmower in his life. He would drive around the evening before trash pickup, and if he saw a lawnmower out at the curb he would stop and throw it into the car trunk. Used to embarrass my mother to death.

He would always have three or four lawnmowers in some state of salvage - rebuild - overhaul at any given time. Anyway he brought home this rider one time that had no engine in it. But he had this big honkin' Koehler vertical shaft engine, about 10 or 12 horsepower, that he swapped in. The chassis was probably made for like a 3 hp or so engine.

Anyway, the crankshaft end on the engine extended about 3/4" below the bottom of the mower deck. One time I was mowing with it and drove straight across a narrow sidewalk we had, and the end of the shaft high-centered on the concrete. I think that was where they got the idea for those mechanical bulls that they used to have at all the country and western bars.

The only way the engine would fit in the chassis was with the exhaust pipe discharging right towards the clutch pedal. Your foot would get very hot using it. Once I got the bright idea of going to the garden hose and soaking my sneaker down with water to cool my foot off. Ended up with second-degree burns on my foot when the water flashed to steam.

The worst thing was that it didn't have a recoil starter - just one of those pulley things with a notch in it that you would hook a knotted rope into and wind around the pulley. Well, it was hard to start, and I figured I'd put a longer rope on it to see if it would help. I used a short leftover piece of my mom's clothesline if I recall correctly. Must have been 8 or 10 feet long. Well, I wrapped that thing around the pulley and gave a mighty heave, but when it started I had only pulled maybe half of the clothesline off, and that danged thing jerked out of my hand and started spinning around, and whipped the cr@p out of me before I could get away from it. It finally threw that rope off of the pulley and I swear it went about 75 feel - looked like an arrow going through the sky!

Those were the days.

Thanks for the memories!

 

[pillen140]

Lol, "gang rep". Thanks for the rep mark! Still unable to rep anyone from my phone without it shutting off though!

 

[doorgunner]

yep......flashback.....if you hook the trans up backwards--it'll do about 50 miles an hour......

 

[tpelle]

yep......flashback.....if you hook the trans up backwards--it'll do about 50 miles an hour......

Hah! That reminds me of another one!

This buddy of mine down the street, name of "Buzzy McC" (Honest, that's all I ever heard him called, even by his mom and dad), his dad worked as a maintenance man at the GE jet engine plant in Evendale Ohio. He would bring home all kinds of stuff - pieces of pipe and parts of machines and things, and when he'd collected enough he'd take it to the scrap yard. But it was better than Disneyland to us kids.

Anyway he had this little two-wheel walk-behind tractor thing that had a jackshaft as part of its reduction drive. We used to tie a string of three or four of those little Radio Flyer wagons to it, and use it to pull them up and down the street. We figured out that if we took the sprockets off and reversed them it would be a step up, not a reduction drive.

Once we got it together we tried running it, but as soon as we'd engage the clutch the engine would stall. My buddy's older brother, Dave McC, had this little Ford Falcon woody station wagon, and he suggested towing the tractor and it's string of wagons to get it up to 10 or 15 mph or so, and maybe the engine wouldn't stall when Captain "Buzzy" Kirk engaged warp drive.

So here we go, older brother Dave driving the Falcon Booster, Buzzy at the controls of Tractorship Enterprise, and me sitting on the tailgate holding on to the tow rope.

Well, I have no idea how fast that thing would go, but when the drive engaged Dave had to hit passing gear to stay ahead of it! Only thing that saved us was I was so scared of the upcoming crash that I screamed like a little girl and threw the rope away as I scrambled up through the Falcon heading towards the front seat and relative safety, and the rope went under the land-speed tractor and jacknifed the whole rig in a cloud of dust and Radio Flyers.

And the kids today just play video games. Sad!

 

[killj0y]

Hah! That reminds me of another one!

This buddy of mine down the street, name of "Buzzy McC" (Honest, that's all I ever heard him called, even by his mom and dad), his dad worked as a maintenance man at the GE jet engine plant in Evendale Ohio. He would bring home all kinds of stuff - pieces of pipe and parts of machines and things, and when he'd collected enough he'd take it to the scrap yard. But it was better than Disneyland to us kids.

Anyway he had this little two-wheel walk-behind tractor thing that had a jackshaft as part of its reduction drive. We used to tie a string of three or four of those little Radio Flyer wagons to it, and use it to pull them up and down the street. We figured out that if we took the sprockets off and reversed them it would be a step up, not a reduction drive.

Once we got it together we tried running it, but as soon as we'd engage the clutch the engine would stall. My buddy's older brother, Dave McC, had this little Ford Falcon woody station wagon, and he suggested towing the tractor and it's string of wagons to get it up to 10 or 15 mph or so, and maybe the engine wouldn't stall when Captain "Buzzy" Kirk engaged warp drive.

So here we go, older brother Dave driving the Falcon Booster, Buzzy at the controls of Tractorship Enterprise, and me sitting on the tailgate holding on to the tow rope.

Well, I have no idea how fast that thing would go, but when the drive engaged Dave had to hit passing gear to stay ahead of it! Only thing that saved us was I was so scared of the upcoming crash that I screamed like a little girl and threw the rope away as I scrambled up through the Falcon heading towards the front seat and relative safety, and the rope went under the land-speed tractor and jacknifed the whole rig in a cloud of dust and Radio Flyers.

And the kids today just play video games. Sad!

Epic...yea I remember playing outside lol. But we was po so there was nothing like that but we fashioned all kind of stuff together like a tyco tide around car we found junked that had no steering. It used two paddles for steering so we Jerry rigged it to work and would have a bigger kid pull it with a mountain bike till it felt like we going 50 till the crappy job on the steering gave and we went flying. Man then there were the jumps on thebmx that twisted the whole frame...good times.

 

[tpelle]

Epic...yea I remember playing outside lol. But we was po so there was nothing like that but we fashioned all kind of stuff together like a tyco tide around car we found junked that had no steering. It used two paddles for steering so we Jerry rigged it to work and would have a bigger kid pull it with a mountain bike till it felt like we going 50 till the crappy job on the steering gave and we went flying. Man then there were the jumps on thebmx that twisted the whole frame...good times.

Well, I didn't want to give the impression that we were rich - don't know where you would have read that in to what I wrote. After all, most of what we played around with was literally junk that Buzzy's dad brought home from work.

But we were rich in one thing, though, and that was creativity and experience. Really, think about it. For a couple of 11 or 12 year olds to study the jackshaft on that tractor and count the gear teeth and figure out how the reduction drive worked, and more importantly to figure out how we could switch it around to get what we thought we wanted out of it.....I don't think the internet generation could do that today.

Reminds me of a thread I recently read on a Jeep forum where a new Jeep owner had taken his Jeep off road, and was complaining that he had a vibration that seemed like it was coming from one of the wheels. Someone suggested that he try to see if he had scraped off a wheel weight. The guy replied to ask what a wheel weight was and where he would look for it!

But we did a lot of goofy and dangerous things, up to and including blowing things up. I should tell you about the home-made carbide cannon we made one day. Or the zip guns using umbrella stays and kitchen match scrapings. Or hopping on to passing freight trains - they were just leaving the switching yard and accelerating as they passed our railroad crossing - and riding for a few blocks before jumping off (except for that one kid that rode for too long and was afraid to jump off because the train was going too fast), or putting stuff on the tracks to see how much the train wheels would crush it. All things that could have cost life, limb, or realized that perpetual admonition that you'd put your eye out.

Thinking about this stuff brings back memories both good and bad.

Buzzy and I sort of lost touch as we entered our high school years, and Buzzy's family moved away. I do recall that Dave, Buzzy's older brother, became a Baptist minister.

Buzzy ended up getting in to a lot of trouble, and actually did prison time, because he had bought a Corvair Monza convertible (the American Porsche, as it was known), but was speeding through a residential neighborhood, blew a stop light, and hit and killed a kid in a cross walk.

By then, sometime during hagh school, Buzzy's dad passed away. Then Buzzy's slightly older sister, Linda, (who was a genuine hotty who used to sunbathe in their back yard in a bikini!) married a soldier and moved to Germany where he was stationed. Linda was in Germany and ready to deliver her first child when she was killed in a car accident on the Autobahn. That, plus her husband's recent death, put Buzzy's mom over the edge, and she pretty much went insane.

So it wasn't all fun and games.

But I'm rambling, now, like the old man I'm turning in to, and should probably get to work.

 

[dangerranger83]

I have always wanted one of those to restore and mess around with. Kniwing me, I would put an over kill engine on it.

I do agree, build thread for it is needed.

 

[doorgunner]

Flashback.....if you make a headgasket out of your mama's thick aluminum foil that she uses for baking the turkey....you can get a lot of power out of that engine....

 

[FrankBoss]

so far I'm missing the muffler and the air cleaner.

The little engine doesn't spark! so I'm switching from points to a Magneto.
My son get back from Summer Camp tomorrow so we will start messing with it again.

I use to work wheat harvest on the 80's as a teen. at one farm the owners dad well in his mid 80's was messing this a mower like this and put a final drive pulley on it from the scrap pile. he started it up and was doing about 20mph threw the field. it was awesome to watch the old man hauling ass over the grass! He didn't cut much grass since the mower was going too fast but he pushed it down everywhere it drove. Every since then I wanted one. Good stuff...

FrankBoss

 

[LearjetMinako]

Wait till you go mudding on that Mustang. I've done it a few times on my tractor.

 

[FrankBoss]

I have a few wheel Horses from the mid 60's too..
One's a Lawn Ranger!

FrankBoss

 

[FrankBoss]

Ok I started a build thread...Here
FrankBoss