The whole town said that he should've used red...

But it looked good to Charlene In John Deere green.

I am not much of a country music fan but I have always loved Joe Diffie and figured it was an appropriate name for this thread. After seeing some of the mower to go-cart conversion threads I figured I should share one of mine.

A few years ago one of my former coworkers posted an old JD70 lawn tractor for sale on Facebook for $100. I didn't need the deck or engine so he sold it to me as a roller for $50. I always thought I could build something cooler than a plastic Power Wheels and a lawn tractor was the perfect starting point. 

This was all 2 or 3 years ago. I did some measuring and ordered a bunch of parts (most came from monsterscooterparts.com). The proof of concept worked well.

https://youtu.be/TTY8KfDVI2c

This was all a few years ago. I tore the thing apart with plans to do a full 'restoration' and some upgrades. Well it has sat in pieces for a couple years now and I have to face the reality that I am not going to dedicate the time to making this nice. My kids deserve to have a toy they can actually play with. 

I am hoping this thread will keep me accountable on actually getting this thing back together this summer. I have started putting it back together and will document my progress on here with some more details.

I started out by re-mounting the transaxle and getting it  back to roller status.

Flashback: I was lucky that these old Deeres had an actual transaxle with a keyed 3/4" input shaft. It was originally driven by a series of belts and pulleys off of the engine. Now it is driven by a 48V motor.  It was pretty easy to find an assortment of gears that fit the input shaft. My original mounting of the motor was a hack job at best. One of the mounts was floating in space outside the frame. It is a little hard to see in this picture but the right rear bolt was only mounted to a piece of scrap that was bolted to the other rear mount.

The chain tension was tight. I have plans to remedy both of these previous shortcuts. First was the bolt floating in space.

I finally got a small tank for my welder and got it set up. I love welding but don't have a whole lot of experience. So far I am really happy with this Eastwood unit.

I cut a piece of scrap to fit in the void that the motor wants to mount to.

I will admit that I rushed and my first attempt didn't fit at all...too small. I used some CAD of the cardboard variety and ended up with a piece that fit much better on the second try. Then I welded it in. I am pretty happy with my welds considering they were the first ones with this welder and the fact that the lenses I got in my cheapo auto darkening helmet is WAY too dark. I was welding blind. I would get started and just weld in the direction I thought I needed to go by feel.

Above is from the bottom side. The important part is the top side which I was happy was very flush with the existing frame.

I was missing my shop magnet. I took it to work a few months ago for a welding project there and must not have brought it home. I ended up using some magnets from our child-proof cabinet locks from the kitchen to hold the plate in while I welded it. The kids have figured out how to use the magnets anyway so I figured I was safe to re-purpose them....not so much. I had to scrub them and return them to the kitchen. Sorry SWMBO.

Back when I originally built this I had used the shelf right behind the dash panel to mount the controller and other wiring. When I took this apart I hit some of the rusty parts with a flap disk. Then it sat for 3 years in a midwest garage and all those areas were covered in surface rust. In keeping with the 'don't make this nice, make it functional' theme, I wire brushed the areas and hit them with some Metalize rust converter and then topped it with some red oxide primer.

Above is the platform that will house all of the controls and wiring. Below is the battery box.

And with the primer:

I have some implement paint that I bought from Tractor Supply I am going to use to spray these areas so they kind of match the rest of the tractor. I bought a cheap HVLP gun set, also from Tractor Supply that I am going to try and use to shoot the paint. We'll see how that goes. I hope to get to that in the next couple days and will post results.

Way cool

I thought it was a rip Joe diffie thread so this is better.

One can never have too many JD lawn tractors (ok a Wheelhorse too).....a welder .....a poorly 

adjusted helmet....and ideas . Carry on this looks like FUN

759NRNG (Forum Partidario) said:

One can never have too many JD lawn tractors (ok a Wheelhorse too).....a welder .....a poorly 

adjusted helmet....and ideas . Carry on this looks like FUN

I actually went and bought a JD 60, also a roller for $50 because it had a slightly less damaged hood and slightly nicer wheels. I could make another one but I think I'll stick with one that the kids will have to share.

I had 10 minutes today so I got the motor mounted (now using all 4 bolts) and lined up the sprockets. 

I was going to start working on the chain but the kids insisted it was time to go inside. I was hoping to be further along than this but life gets in the way sometimes. Hopefully I'll get some time to work on it this weekend.

Wow. I thought I was going to have this done by the end of my August vacation but here I am just starting on it again on my last day of said vacation. Life happens I suppose.

Today I decided I was going to paint. I had done some prep as was documented in previous posts...very little prep. Remember this is about making this thing work, not so much making it nice. I was only going to paint the areas I had prepped and leave the rest but then I decided screw it and went full steam ahead, painting areas that had no prep at all. My original plan with this thing was to restore it but 2.5 years later it is time to make it whole and painting over totally unprepared surfaces is where that mentality lead me today.

I used this cheap HVLP gun I got from Tractor Supply when I originally bought the implement paint.

It worked well. If I had actually spent the time to do thorough prep work I am confident it would have laid a really nice finish. It was the smallest in the 3 gun kit which I figured would make clean up easier. I don't have an air dryer or filter setup on my compressor. I just drained the tank a couple nights ago (long overdue) and went for it.

For the little prep that I did (wipe down and spray), I am super happy with how it turned out. There are tons of major imperfections but from 10 feet away it looks awesome. My kids certainly wont care. I am hoping to start assembly after work a few days this week and have it up and running this weekend. Knowing me, reality will be next month.

Wow, I worked on this thing two days in a row!

Tonight I got the chain on and put together a idler/tensioner. It probably isn't ideal but it is WAY better than the previous setup that had the chain much too tight.

Then I started mocking up where I want things to go. When I had this running before it was extremely basic. I am doing a little more this time so I am going to have to do little bit better on the packaging.

I threw the hood and a headlight on to see what it would look like. I used an existing hole for the headlight but it interferes with opening the hood so I will have to drill some new holes for those.

I mounted up the foot pedal and remembered a neat feature that I wish I could say was forethought and not dumb luck. The deck height adjustment lever works as a throttle stop. With the lever in the 'up's position you get full range of motion of the pedal. With the lever in the 'down' position it limits travel to about 50%. This sorta gives you 6 forward speeds to choose from (3 forward gears). Not sure how useful this will be but it is neat that it worked out this way.

I am going to need to do something about the hood eventually. The front edge is pretty bad. I may just paint it so it matches and leave it damaged.

would be sick with a mock '32 ford grille

Wow. I have done quite a bit and totally forgot to update this. I got the wiring wrapped up but it kept popping the breaker. I isolated it to the shunt. I am pretty sure I can see where the short is. For now I just eliminated that from the wiring. I can still see the voltage on the gauge which is all I really care about. 

I still need to mount the relay for the lights. For now it is just floating in there.

Both seats I had were cracked and looking pretty sad so I bought a replacement at Farm and Fleet. It was the cheapest one they had and had a bunch of variously spaced bolt holes on the bottom which made me think it might fit this old tractor....wrong. None of the holes lined up. So I built a bracket out of part of the old deck support.

I didn't want to gain much height and I still wanted the seat to be semi-adjustable. The holes drilled in the pic above are for mounting these brackets to the seat itself and the sharpie marks are where I needed to weld studs to.

Turned out how I had hoped it would.

I adjusted the chain tensioner setup and it works better than before but may be a little on the loose side.

We tested it in the driveway for about half an hour. Everything was working great. 

So we took it around the block.

I still need to install the LED taillights that I got. I haven't figured out how I am going to mount them yet. The headlights are ridiculously bright. 

The next night we decided to go around the block again and it died halfway around and I had to push it home. I am honestly a little shocked it made it as far as it did on just one charge. It probably went ~.75 mile (and some of that was moving adults around). 

It is pretty quick in 3rd gear. I had to walk a brisk pace to keep up.

I need to do something about the loudness. The gearbox is kinda noisy as is the motor/chain. I am thinking about getting some rubber bushings to go under the motor mount. Need to change the gear oil too as it is likely from the 70s.

My original plan was to use a raspberry pi or arduino to be able to shut it off remotely via bluetooth. I don't think that kind of complexity is necessary now that I see it running.

I will upload some videos and post them later.

https://youtu.be/d3Y0qnvI7uE

https://youtu.be/gZT1uUN7XKM