M- After sitting idle all summer, I finally got the Suburban 12 I bought last winter running. Made some proper tire chains this morning and hooked up the plow/wheelweights I found and purchased last week. My neighbor, Jeff, was kind enough to lend his garden for testing the plow since ours had already been plowed this fall (see earlier post). His garden was in the soft bottom land and was tilled this spring. The soft dirt broke up easily and sure was fun to plow. The boys even gave it their seal of approval after they inspected it on their hands and knees! I still have a little adjustment to do on the plow, but it sure can dig. Now all we need is some snow so we can try out the snow plow!
Winter seemed long this years, so yet another tractor project was spawned. The idea was to stretch the tractor and add a bed for hauling things around the homestead. Things were going well until a chain broke, and unfortunately with this design, if a chain breaks, you lose your breaks! Not too cool, thankfully I was still testing, aware of this fault and no damage was done. Oh well, another project shelved until next winter...
We have had a lot of rain and snow this winter which has made it a little tough to haul wood around with the garden tractors, so I went to work building wheel weights and chains. The weights are made out of recast tire weights and added 170 lbs to the tractor. Between the weights and chains, it made a HUGE difference. I was even able to pull our 4x8 utility trailer (300 lbs+-)up the steep part of our hill with 6 inches of snow on it.
With some help from our friend, Josh, we converted a pallet tote into an additional trailer for the garden tractors, it holds much more than the wagon and the kids got a big kick out of the "train". Sure is a lot of fun to weld up something useful!
After siezing up the motor on my old Roper (did you know you have to check the oil?) Went to a mower guy to buy a salvage engine and a c. 1970 Sears 8XL followed me home. Had so much fun with it, a Sears Suburban 12 (complete with mowing deck, 3 pt hitch, and scrape blade) soon joined the fold. The 8XL runs like a champ, the 12 needed some work, however during the repairs it managed to throw the pully off the flywheel. So back to the salvage man...looks like plowing snow will have to wait until next winter...
