Henry Rifle Forums

Redthies,

My pleasure:

Brush guard down

You just unhook a few things and then drive over the deck. Flip it on it's end and scrap it out. I propped a "safety sledge hammer and tamper" but they were not needed. On the level ground, it was not going to tip over, even when I was scraping very hard. Drive back over, pop a few pins and levers and put the brush guard back in, check everything and you are in business. Really easy and awesome.

Man no whiskey at all in these photos. Looks like a lot of work to me

Al, my neighbor at camp has a 500 series tractor with a smaller mower. I try to help him whenever I am there as he is old enough to be my father. You have to drag his mower under the tractor, horse on a belt and do a lot more than I had to with this larger machine. I can clean the deck each time I mow, which is good for the deck. My neighbor could, but it's a chore.
The whiskey comes after the work.

My Sears lawn tractor is a pain to put the mower deck on and off, have to drag it into position and then make several different connections. The snow plow is fairly easy, just line up two pins.

Waiting for it to break down so I can justify getting a small John Deere, mine does have what they call a automatic transmission, only have to shift it between forward and reverse but it sometimes is difficult to get into reverse when plowing snow, a hydro-static transmission would make snow plowing a lot easier, power lift and steering would be nice too but probably out of my price range.

Dave, look closely at the fourth picture down on this page. That Craftsman was a good find last year. I had one just like it as a back up on my parents farm. That was something Dad and I enjoyed collecting. He liked real Cub Cadet garden tractors. I liked them all. He also had real John Deere two cylinder tractors.
Anyways, I found the Sears Craftsman garden tractors were always in good supply and easy to work on. Attachments were usually popping up on Craigslist and reasonable in cost. That particular mower in the picture has the easiest deck mounting system I've had on a Craftsman. Four pins, two in the front and two in the back and then put the belt on. Simple after you drag the deck underneath. (Not so simple) The snowblower is not so easy to set up, but works. I have a sleeve hitch that I will be putting on it that works with the lawn mower deck handle. That will make it a "true" garden tractor when it works in the garden, lol.
I prefer not to have a payment, but 0% financing was too much to resist.

daytime dave wrote: ↑

Sat May 01, 2021 9:22 am

0% financing was too much to resist.

understood .... all toooooo well understood

My Craftsman does fine for lawn mowing and towing my little trailer around, wish it had a little more power, have to go really slow when I occasionally mow the pasture.

Problem is with snow plowing, just have a small hand lifted snow plow. It will move a surprising amount of snow, sometimes the first pass can take awhile if the snow is deep. Issue is when you are mounding the snow pile and have a fair amount of pressure on the blade the shift lever takes quite a bit of force to get it out of forward so a true hydro-static transmission would be nice.

I got spoiled when my last few years at work they got me a nice JD, with power steering and front lift. When I first started with the school district I had a push mower and a little 2 cycle rubber blade type snow blower. They eventually got me a nice Honda track drive blower, it would really throw the snow, even packed plowed snow but did give you a work out. Had a Cub Cadet for a while but they cheaped out and got me a small, home model which wasn't really up to the amount of snow I had to move, also had no power lift so had to lift the snowblower by hand.

I remember going to the maintenance shop after a snow storm and the guys would be sitting around complaining about how tired they were, I'd say "are your hands sore from working the plow's joystick or did you get overheated because you forgot to turn the heat down".

I never knew hand lift plots were a thing. I made my own a couple of years ago though. Welded up a frame and bolted a piece of pipe to it (about 1/3 of a 16” water pipe so I have two mower “blades” for when this one breaks). It works pretty well and I just got a set of chains for free so I should be good to go. JD sells a blower for my little tractor, but it costs about the same as the actual tractor! Once we get a bigger property I’ll likely buy a 8N or similar. One of my friends just bought a Kubota MX5400, but he’s got a bit more budget and need for it. I do have tractor envy though...

Someone just brought out the big toys.