Works for me

I've got city sewer... but I'll bet there's one heck of a story behind that statement!

 

Yeah nobody could find our septic It runs under the concrete floor in the basement. And it didn’t just line up to vent pipes and go straight. Had a 45 degree angle and it’s buried 6 feet below grade. When my wife moved in, we had a bunch of my nephews quasi-living with us. She wanted an above ground pool for the kids, so we put one up, but she wanted it in a particularly sunny bright spot in the front yard.
But honey there’s a tree there. You own chainsaw
Honey its 3 feet out of level over 20 feet.. tractor

so we put it where she wanted it
Built a 25 foot circular retaining wall dropped 6 yards of sand and put it up
Deck added underground wire added
Boys splash water runs down holes at pipes and posts sink so next year added a 2 foot wide circular ring to put pipes on..

6 years later found out 12,000 gallon pool was directly on top of D box that was crushed

bevel you’re sand like a bowl so it is easy to get wrinkles out 10 to 12 inches in middle of a 24 foot circular pool is perfect!

 

Time for an incremental upgrade. A coworker had this 1976 Cub Cadet mode 1000 garden tractor. Needs new front tires, a carb cleaning and a general once over, but I traded it in exchange for a couple loads of saw logs to feed the mill he has on order. Hard to beat the older machines. I’ll save the v-twin from my craftsman mower (never know when you’ll need an extra motor) and scrap the chassis.

 

Nice machine Eric! Keep us posted on getting it all set. And pics of course.

 

I had the 16 HP version of that machine...it worked fine but I could never keep motor mounts in it...even made my own, those were a lil better....sent it down the road eventually though. Got replaced with a zero turn mower, which in my case was a better fit since mowing was most of its job.

 

This will see some use mowing too, but what I’m looking forward to is hauling wood up to the house with it. My craftsman lawn tractor did the job hauling, albeit I never pushed it too hard pulling a lot of weight. I kind of want to mount a small plow on it for winter too. If it works well, I’d happily sell my snowblower. One less engine to worry about.

 

They are stout pullers...plenty of power to pull about anything you have enough traction to move, especially in 1st gear.
That was my only gripe with the one we had growing up was the 3 speed trans, 1st was too slow for mowing, and 2nd was a bit too fast most of the time...the one I had later on was a hydro trans, model was a 1650 IIRC...that was a nice setup.

 

Last year I upgraded to a zero turn mower. Had a cub cadet 2518—48” deck deck was in bad shape—-rusted through in a couple spots—-and needed new bearings in the spindles. Have a 48” blade for it. Was always a pain in the azz to remove the deck and put the blade on in the fall and then swap them back in the spring. Scrapped the deck and leave the blade on all the time now. Pull my splitter around with it. A couple weeks ago I repurposed an aluminum jet ski trailer into a 3’x6’ yard trailer—-used reclaimed 2x4 concrete form boards for the floor and sides. It is narrow enough to fit through the gates in the backyard, so no more hauling wood to the house with the wheelbarrow. I can’t believe how much I have already used that little rig…have definitely put more hours on the old tractor in the last two weeks than I have on the new zero turn.

 

Nice upgrade! You'll need some chains if it will be pushing snow.

 

Next order of business… stripping the Craftsman down before scrapping it out. This might actually be the start of a build thread in the next year or two….
I have this pipe dream of building my own sawmill (on the cheap of course). This motor runs perfect so I might as well use it. The only downfall is that it’s vertical drive but I can use a set of 90 degree bevel gears to make the final drive horizontal. I’ve been checking out a lot of DIY sawmill build videos lately and know I can make something at least as good as a lot of what I’ve seen. More to be revealed…

 

Nice I had a 1986 with 18 hp and hydro drive..

 

I still have a cadet 129 stock 12hp that probably has never been touched, need to rebuild the motor , head needs done at the very least. Can't beat old steel,
I have a 90's deere right now until I get around to fixing the cadet. It works but it's gone as soon as the cadet is back.

 

Eric don't ever compare your mechanical helpers to others, size, shine or price. You get it done, and that's all that matters buddy.
Everyone's needs, property, budget, time, age, physical abilities (getting old) and mechanical abilities all come into play here. "Get 'erdone"

 

have a 728 Simplicity from the 60's and the snowblower for it , mower deck went south. 727 was pull start 728 electric start. apx 7.5 hp granny gear then 2 more. Neat thing on these is the back end rotates just under the seat so traction is always there independent of the front end - it's the one bearing that everyone forgets to grease. decks were true floaters as well.

 

Well, I went out and bought a fresh battery tonight since the one that was in there was over 10 years old and wouldn’t take a charge. I then pulled off the carburetor, removed the float bowl and gave the thing a good blasting with cleaner. Got it back together and couldn't get it to fire up. Checked to see if I had spark and had none. Tomorrow will be a busy day, but whenever I can get back to it I’ll try cleaning/checking the coil. Hopefully the contact surfaces are just dirty and I’m not getting a good ground. The last time this thing ran was 9 years ago, so I wouldn’t be surprised if a mouse chewed a wire or something either. I’ll get it, eventually.
Tonight I did manage to get the motor off the craftsman mower and stowed away too. For now I’m going to focus on getting this Cub going though. Cutting the lawn with a push mower in the heat is getting old

 

Points ignition? If so, clean 'em...
Edit: I can't find the info, but according to this pic of a coil for sale, I see a condenser, so that means points...
1976 Cub Cadet 1000 Garden Tractor * KOHLER IGNITION COIL * Riding Lawn Mower | eBay

 

I didn’t even think of that but I just looked it up and yeah it’s got points.

 

Likely a 5 minute repair then
If you are not familiar with it, file 'em (a fingernail file works), then clean 'em by pinching a lint free cloth in the contacts...cash works...then hold points open and give a quick blast of electrical contact cleaner. That should do it.
If you don't have contact cleaner then you could try it without, see what happens

 

brenndatomu nailed it.
Dirty point contact. Fired right up and ran decent.