Homemade tractor (in aus)

   / Homemade tractor (in aus)
  • Thread Starter
#21  
This tractor from the late 40's should give you some ideads.
Also, a small DIY garden tractor is not an uncommon thing to do.
You'll need to shorten a rear, and use some minor machining methods for a pulley, but its doable.
Also, If you can find a 1970's ford with a 'granny low' 4-speed, that should be all the gearing you would need (maybe?)
PTO is the hard part.
Anywho, tractor pictured uses a Crosley transmission, mounted to a custom splined pulley, and a centrifugal clutch.
Wow that belt drive looks really interesting, I was planning on using a hydro off a lawnmower but now a regular transmission is definitely going to be more useful haha. I've found some out of a Ute for a few 00$ which will give me low gearing. As for the pto I'm planning on using a simple belt tensioner system to activate and deactivate. It's 100% not the best, but byfar the safest assuming I'm using a very high hp engine. Since the belt will slip long before anything else gives up. The only PITA part is going to be the tracks/transmission system. Hopefully that's somewhat easy to do however. But sadly next to nobody's done a homemade tractor
 
   / Homemade tractor (in aus) #22  
The te20, sadly no. I learnt the hydraulics are ran off the pto aswell, which entirely killed it for me as I can't justify taking it off just to lower the implement.

As for the tiller, I've found a powerful small one for 500$, so I plan on buying that and trying it whislt I source parts and finalise designs for the tractor
Actually you can lower and lift a running tiller.

With a hydraulic foldable hay tedder you do get the issue of not being able to fold the tedder with the PTO running because the U joints dont allow turning in folded position, and not with the PTO disengaged because you wont have oil pump drive then.
 
   / Homemade tractor (in aus)
  • Thread Starter
#23  
Actually you can lower and lift a running tiller.

With a hydraulic foldable hay tedder you do get the issue of not being able to fold the tedder with the PTO running because the U joints dont allow turning in folded position, and not with the PTO disengaged because you wont have oil pump drive then.
Oh I'm talking about having to unhook the pto when parking ect ect, plus it does concern me with other implements yk
 
   / Homemade tractor (in aus) #24  
I'm giving your thread a bump; maybe that's illegal, maybe it's immoral, maybe it just is.
 
   / Homemade tractor (in aus) #26  
I have a 68 model C 60 GMC pulpwood truck I drug home because it had a Kennedy loader I wanted. Another guy got the engine because it had a 4 bolt main, I got the rest. I'm thinking of moving the trans rearward and then putting a Ford engine and trans to drive it. I only say that because I have a pile of Ford carburetor engines. But I have a couple of broncos that I think will do better.
 
   / Homemade tractor (in aus) #27  
Im very pro-DIY because you always cone out of it with something valuable whether the thing you build is actually good or not! Ive never ‘failed to get better’ in the act of building something.

I own a B6100 and B7100 and agree they are fantastic for tight spaces.

So ive got a few ideas. For one thing, lots of stuff the size of golf carts or Japanese Kei trucks for example could be made into a pretty good SCUT replacement with enough gear reduction, and added weight to create traction if limited to 2wd. So if you can find a shell of either of those it would be a decent starting point and save you a ton of hassle figuring out the steering system and possibly the brakes. Even an electric golf/utility cart is a perfectly decent starting point for a gas engine ‘b6100 replacement’ project, and thats coming from a guy that owns a B6100 and a couple of golf carts. Not sure about availability of either thing in your area, though.

If building from scratch, another thing to consider is taking a fwd car transaxle, and mounting it longitudinally between two truck axles (narrowed preferably although i understand its far easier said than done). Doing this gets you ‘full time awd with center differential’ so it will turn sharp nicely but the real point is that between the fwd transaxle’s 1st gear and ring and pinion ratios it will be lower geared than the low range in most 4wd trucks, potentially FAR lower, before it ever gets to your drive axles. The differential in the transaxle could be welded if you wanted a ‘locked center diff’ or if you wanted to drive only one axle from it. A fwd transxle with a welded differential and a single modified cv axle feeding a 2wd truck axle, is potentially a very compact and cheap setup.

If you decide to use a small aircooled engine (which i probably would even though the car parts are such glorious overkill) you may consider the idea that as long as you have enough gear reduction, you don’t really need a ton of clutch strength and COULD get by with a centrifugal clutch or ‘torque converter’ as used on go karts. There are videos of tractors and full size trucks running off of centrifugal clutches on youtube.. although a torque converter ‘belt cvt’ would be preferable. Saves you the hassle of building (and rebuilding, and adjusting, and then repairing) a clutch linkage.

Also, one potentially very simple way to get drive power AND pto power is to use a vertical shaft riding mower engine with two pullies aready on it, a fixed drive pulley and an electric pto clutch. You could use two ‘mule drive’ belt setups to feed your trans and pto. Mule drives were used for cutting decks and snowblowers on garden tractors for many years. You add a few idler pulleys and some bracketry but it lets you rotate and translate (ie move sideways) the power coming out of the engine 90 degrees very cheaply compared to a lot of potential gearboxes and shafts arrangements, or hydraulics.
 
   / Homemade tractor (in aus)
  • Thread Starter
#28  
I'm giving your thread a bump; maybe that's illegal, maybe it's immoral, maybe it just is.
Haha thankyou, I've been trying to update as much as I can, however I want to avoid clogging up the thread with tidbits,and being swamped with work means progress is slow
 
   / Homemade tractor (in aus)
  • Thread Starter
#29  
I've heavily thought about it, however due to needing to do clay work, whislt maintaining a small size means that 2wd would just spin. A good friend of mine has a smaller unit like that, also in 2wd, we tried it the other day. Well let's just say it tilled the area where it's rear tires were, just not much else lol.

If I manage to get the tractor done quickly, hopefully I'll be attempting a "harvester" which will definitely be 2wd
 
   / Homemade tractor (in aus)
  • Thread Starter
#30  
Im very pro-DIY because you always cone out of it with something valuable whether the thing you build is actually good or not! Ive never ‘failed to get better’ in the act of building something.

I own a B6100 and B7100 and agree they are fantastic for tight spaces.

So ive got a few ideas. For one thing, lots of stuff the size of golf carts or Japanese Kei trucks for example could be made into a pretty good SCUT replacement with enough gear reduction, and added weight to create traction if limited to 2wd. So if you can find a shell of either of those it would be a decent starting point and save you a ton of hassle figuring out the steering system and possibly the brakes. Even an electric golf/utility cart is a perfectly decent starting point for a gas engine ‘b6100 replacement’ project, and thats coming from a guy that owns a B6100 and a couple of golf carts. Not sure about availability of either thing in your area, though.

If building from scratch, another thing to consider is taking a fwd car transaxle, and mounting it longitudinally between two truck axles (narrowed preferably although i understand its far easier said than done). Doing this gets you ‘full time awd with center differential’ so it will turn sharp nicely but the real point is that between the fwd transaxle’s 1st gear and ring and pinion ratios it will be lower geared than the low range in most 4wd trucks, potentially FAR lower, before it ever gets to your drive axles. The differential in the transaxle could be welded if you wanted a ‘locked center diff’ or if you wanted to drive only one axle from it. A fwd transxle with a welded differential and a single modified cv axle feeding a 2wd truck axle, is potentially a very compact and cheap setup.

If you decide to use a small aircooled engine (which i probably would even though the car parts are such glorious overkill) you may consider the idea that as long as you have enough gear reduction, you don’t really need a ton of clutch strength and COULD get by with a centrifugal clutch or ‘torque converter’ as used on go karts. There are videos of tractors and full size trucks running off of centrifugal clutches on youtube.. although a torque converter ‘belt cvt’ would be preferable. Saves you the hassle of building (and rebuilding, and adjusting, and then repairing) a clutch linkage.

Also, one potentially very simple way to get drive power AND pto power is to use a vertical shaft riding mower engine with two pullies aready on it, a fixed drive pulley and an electric pto clutch. You could use two ‘mule drive’ belt setups to feed your trans and pto. Mule drives were used for cutting decks and snowblowers on garden tractors for many years. You add a few idler pulleys and some bracketry but it lets you rotate and translate (ie move sideways) the power coming out of the engine 90 degrees very cheaply compared to a lot of potential gearboxes and shafts arrangements, or hydraulics.
Sadly in my area, kei trucks are stupidly expensive (around 5-10K for one that's half rusted out) and the golf carts are mainly abused by teens hooking on them (I know as I used to participate in said hooning lol)


As for the gearbox mechanism, you've actually described exactly what I'm planning with the mule drive. Sofar the general idea is to have 2 engines, one running each track. To do this I'll be using a belt and tensioning/de-tensioning as a clutch, aswell as just a simple brake rotor to come to a stop. Those two engines will be synced via joined throttle cables in the cabin area. The clutch system will then goto a sprocked and chain drive to act as the final drives, to avoid slipping and water ect.

The two engines PTO's will hopefully be connected via belt, to then run a mule drive for the rear pto, which will either be fully or mostly chain driven as to ensure that I don't break/slip belts constantly. If I'm lucky and figure out my ratios correctly, I might even end up with a 540rpm pto. the hydraulics I'm planning on either running off a pony engine, or just adding them to the engine directly.

The tracks will most likely be conveyor belts, with metal inserts to provide traction, and the road wheels ect will just be simple rubber ones.

I'll be sure to add an update either tomorrow or on the weekend with my plans laid out more clearly, but thankyou for the advice, it actually helped me alot :)
 
 
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