So does my garage and now so does my side yard.
I scored big today though.
My friend Steve GAVE ME this little trailer AND the riding mower today!!
I have been hounding The Wifely Unit for at least the last two years about getting a riding mower and it has been like talking to a brick wall.
All of a sudden yesterday it’s OK. After it got brought up I find out why, it’s because her Dad is 80 years old, has Old Timers and has a yard big enough to put two freaking houses on.
She thought that I could just throw a riding mower in the back of my truck, haul it 35 miles, mow her Dad’s yard and then throw it in and bring it back.
Really?
Get a clue!
My friend Steve told me a week or so that he had a couple of riding mowers but that they needed work. He got them given to him.
So I texted him and asked if he still had one.
Yes he did and then he says he even has a little trailer it will fit on.
So he sent me that picture up top.
He said the engine started with starter fluid, the gas line has been disconnected at the tank.
AWESOME!!
I have been wanting a little Utility Trailer for a long time too!
He picked it up at an auction for $20.
I got up early and headed out to his place this morning. He even bought me breakfast .
It took some doing to get the mower on the trailer, the steering is locked up but he did have some ramps. A bunch of two old farts huffing and puffing, some lifting and dragging but we finally got the mower on the trailer.
No lights, no safety chains and no pin for the latch on the tongue.
At least it fit the 2 inch ball mounted on my rear bumper.
Then he proceeded to load up the back of my truck with all kinds of stuff!
If you haven’t guessed yet, both of us are Pack Rats.
Metal gas cans, new post hole diggers, a new propane tank, air hoses for my compressor, knives, a heavy duty cart, a Kindle, just all kinds of stuff!
His Wife was glad to see it go and I was glad to get it!
Steve is the oldest friend I have. We have been Partners In Crime for damn near thirty years now that I think about it.
One of those friends you may not talk to for months or a year but when you do it’s like it was last week.
One Hell of a nice guy.
I was worried about getting stuck in his yard because the back tires on my truck are needing to be replaced in a serious way. Bigger than shit I tore the hell out of his yard. I had to back up and get a run 4 times even though there was barely any slope because it’s been raining like hell here for the last two days.
Ruts and all now.
He wasn’t too worried about it, less to mow now.
I finally left his place and went straight down the hill about a mile to a Bi Mart and went in and got some stuff for Safety Chains, hooks and a clip for the latch. Screw the lights, the thing was narrow enough you can see the back lights on the truck.
I stopped at my brother’s place on the way home then eventually got the whole thing home.
Then I couldn’t get a hold of anyone to help me get it off the back of my truck, through the gate and into the sideyard. No jack or wheel up front and it’s way too heavy for me to try and jack around with by myself. I called my kids, Nephew and a Buddy. No one available. My Buddy Finally called me back and he came over to help. He’s pretty stout but we still fought the damn thing getting it through the gate. After tossing down some plywood cut offs we got it rolled out into the side yard and parked.
Both the trailer and the mower need a whole bunch of work but all that is going to take is my time and some parts.
It’s not like I don’t already have 400 projects but this lawn mowing gets to be a serious problem and nobody can afford to have a service come in and take care of it.
You might as well ask a pig to fly trying to get the kid over there to do the Father In Laws, forget him doing it here.
He is young and out and about all the time.
That leaves me.
So whatever it takes, I am going to fix this mower.
The trailer also needs some serious attention but that won’t be so labor intensive.
New bearings and seals, maybe a hub, a couple of tires, wire up the lights and a little welding on that headache rack up front. Oh yeah, a set of fenders.
Not that big of a deal all in all. The mower is going to be the biggie. I do have the nose cover but it’s broken all to shit with a chunk of the plastic missing out of it.
I’ll figure something out there.
My very sincere thanks to my friend Steve, this is eventually going to make my life a lot easier in the long run.
If I live long enough to get it all fixed.
Oh boy did you ever SCORE!!
ANd you now have a project or two that will really pay off.
I don’t envy you a bit. Really. C’mon, man!
Happy for you Phil!
Thanks!
Is this project #4082 and 4083? Are those 8″ or 12″ tires and wheels? Just extend the bed over the wheels and no need for fenders, build ya some ramps too! If they are 8″, throw those away and at minimum use 12″, 8″ is too small diameter of tire for highway speeds. You go 60,they are going 100…
Congrats on a major score. I Had a similar problem with shitty trailer lights and iffy wiring. Went to Horror Fright and bought a complete kit package; LED lights, 30′ wiring harness, works like a champ. Bright lights and they draw a fraction of the current that the old incandescent lights did.
Phil scores big, AGAIN! There’s some people out there, and I’m glad you know a few.
Maybe some fiberglass mat and resin to rebuild the nose cone?
That broken front end needs a custom construction. Make a job of it – make it look like a Mack – or an Abrams – or the bow of the Titanic.
A double hat tip to Steve.
But, you have a truck, the mower goes in bed, no need for trailer and even worse gas mileage. No offense to each his own. Its the same with quads, i see a full size truck pulling their quad with an empty bed and i just scratch my head. Why not use ramps? , a good aluminum set used to be, well used to be $75 havent priced any in a while. Anyway, happy Monday, its getting like groundhog day with a kick in the nuts every morning. I think the TPTB are literally playing wheel of destruction, roll the wheel everyday and see where todays decision to collapse society falls.
Great score! That trailer looks a lot like mine. I needed some tires a while back, and got a great deal from Northern Freight: tire, wheel, hub, and bearings for $37.49
https://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_48405_48405
I meant Northern Tool, of course. They also have a trailer light kits starting at $25.99
https://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_138883_138883
I have a hydro185 that was made around 1985. That damn mower just won’t die! It’s got the kawasaki fc540v motor that doesn’t burn a drop of oil. Main thing to look for if it doesn’t want to run is make sure battery is tip top and charged and keep extra igniter and coil on hand. The igniter is a small silver box on motor next to starter. Heat kills em so I relocated mine away from motor with a piece of phenolic. Every year I tell myself I need to sell that damn mower so I can have the space back in garage and so I can get some exercise with push mower, but then August in Oklahoma arrives and my thought process changes to fuk that I’m using the rider! Lol.
If that is a Kawasaki engine, you have struck gold! I have a 1992 hydrostat drive with the Kawasaki engine. After all these years you have to turn your head away from it in the shop or it will start!
I ran a Deere like that one for 13 years before replacing it with a new one. (D140 with 48 in deck) The mower is still good but the deck had gotten sad. Still has the original mower deck belt on it, but I think one of more of the spindles froze. All in all, I thanked the unit for its service and bought a new one.
Couple notables. You’ll need a 45 degree tip for your grease gun to be able to grease the spindles as the zerks are down below the deck surface (why oh why?) and one time the pull switch to activate the deck stopped working but it wasn’t the switch, it was the voltage regulator. Somehow that interferes with elec clutch for the deck.
Good mower all in all.
Hey, maybe if you’d gotten your wife that riding vacuum cleaner she’d have let you buy one of these. 🙂
The deck spindles on my hydro185 look like car hubs, cast iron with replaceable sealed bearings. The new ones are mostly cast aluminum and shatter if you run over a twig. They don’t make em like they used to!
You haven’t lived until you ran over a 7′ water moccasin with your John Deere mower with a 3 blade, 6′ deck and had it wrapped around all three blades… After that I carried my .410 shot gun in a scabbard along the engine cover. This in swamp south Alabama.
Another reason I’m not wild about the South. Give me Arizona where the rattlers hide And warn you if you get too close, there are few bugs, no mosquitos in particular, and stuff only grows if you water it, outside of local stuff like cactus and sage.
Metal gas cans?! Those must be worth $500 each! The latest gov’t help to gas cans has basically made them unusable!
Forget John Deere parts for the engine. Get the Briggs& Stratton parts and they are half the price. Forget any Chinesium parts as they are crap. Replacement spindles on Ebay have sealed bearings but a zirk that fills a chamber to lube nothing.
I am on my second JD mower. The first was a 22 year old I bought at a garage sale and used it for 9 years where I sold it for about what I paid for it. My current mower is one I picked up a year old back in 2004. The biggest issues have been Briggs issues and deck problems. I change the oil filter every spring oil change with an air filter change and just the oil mid-August. Use a $1.99 aftermarket Harley Sportster glass fuel filter and backwash it if it gets clogged.
When I bought my present place, a house on 2 acres, from my mother after my father died, a big 53″-cut Craftsman came with the place. Ma needed the yard cut at her new place, and that’s when I discovered that there was no way to fit that thing into my F-150. Before that, yeah, just run the mower into the bed of the truck. Works for a 20″ Snapper, not so much with a 53″ mower.
That’s the only reason I have my present 6×10′ trailer. I’m always looking for a deal on a bigger one, though.
Phil: Holy Shit! The JD mower That I’ve been trying to GIVE you is in way way better shape and has the HONDA conversion …. it just hasn’t been run in 3-4 years…..
54
Its still winkin’ at you, my friend, it’ll never be used here. With all your buddies, somebody can haul it out from Colo to you………soapweed
Phil, not sure what the number on that tractor is but it looks like about all you need is the hood.
Ebay always has a ton of Deere parts and the hoods are real common. Anywhere from $50-200 depending on condition etc.
As with anything like this on ebay, shipping is the killer
Does he really need a hood to run the machine? No, it can run fine with out a hood. I can’t understand why the concern for a hood from several people. That would be the last item on a check list even if I got down that far.
Looks like the 38″ deck, 5 speed belt drive transmission? My daughter broke the hood (learning) by running into the house. It will run fine without a hood.