FRANKENMOWER ENGINE SWAP MAKING A GOOD LAWNMOWER OUT OF TWO TRASH MOWERS RUSTY CUB CADET & MTD DECK

Hey guys, how you doing? It's Henry. M-O-S-E-N-G-L-O-W-E-R-S! Can you see me? Anyway, in my next project, I've got, uh, this old Cub Cadet that I got from... God, when you're... When you get around a 55, I'm gonna be 55 this October, you just don't remember what you're used to, you know? Whatever. Uh... I got it. I don't know where I got it from, but it's, uh... It's a crappy Cub Cadet MTD product. Deck is trashed. Engine is a Power-More engine from Zhongshan. I like to call it Power-No-More. I don't work on Power-More engines very often. I've had a few, but never one that didn't work. So, you know, this is gonna be kind of a challenge. Has decent wheels on it. It's got a bagger, but the deck is done-ski, so you can't use the deck. Completely rusted out in a whole bunch of places, and it flexes, too. Both bell handle cables, the self-propulsion as well as the brake cable is... I think the brake cable kind of works, but not really. The other one seized. And then I have this thing here. I got this from Bill Martini. Um... One of the last things that I got from Motherlode 33 over at his house. And it's just your very basic MTD deck. It doesn't even have the height adjusters. It's got good wheels. It's in good shape. It's got the side deflector. It has one bell handle, but no cables at all. But it's a solid deck. You know what I mean? There's no rust. There's no rot. You can just put an engine on here and make a basic lawnmower. I'm leaving it in the rain because it's got some mud on it and dust and dirt and all that. Saturate it with some water and I'll wipe it all down so it's nice and clean. This one over here, I want to just get the engine started and running so that I can easily just take the engine, put it on there. Maybe paint this part red so it matches with the lawnmower. It's going to look like a huge engine on a small deck. Like an engine on wheels, essentially. But this one's going to need a lot of work. We need to get the bell handle straightened out so it releases from the keel. Then we can test it. Without having to go into the rain, you've got rot right there. You've got rot right there. You can actually see through the top. Underneath that sticker, plenty of rot. So this deck... You guys can do it at home. Tonski! But engine? I mean, it's a power no more. How good could it be? Look at this job over there. It's like a carabiner with two wire connectors. I mean, you know, whatever. As long as it works for him. Yeah, so the cables are questionable. I think the bagger might be alright. But I won't be able to use that bagger with this because this is a mulcher. It's not designed to have any bagger. What should I do first? I think I have to secure the bell handle cable to make sure that the brake is released from the flywheel and also the magneto so that we can blow some jism in here and kind of pull it. Just looking real quick. When I put down the bell handle, check it out. It moves like less than a millimeter. It barely moves. Because look, see this rod here or this bracket? It's kind of bent outwards like that. I'm not giving it so much. So I'm going to get some channel locks and just bend that this way so that it has more slack to pull. Because right now, if you pull it, it just moves barely. It's tough to get in here because there's no place to grip. That pulls the needle. I think there's something wrong with the bell handle. The cable. I think the cable is gunsky. That cable is messed up. I'm just going to take it out. Put a clamp over here. I'll figure out another wiring system later. Just put a clamp on here so it should be disengaging the brake from the flywheel and also the magneto so that it should get spark when we pull on it. I'm just going to pull on it really quick just to see if it's free. Oh. Can't do that because there is no pull handle. It's just a rope. I'm going to have to get a pull handle for this. Ooh, that wants to suck all the way in. I better hold on to it. There we go. Now we've got a pull handle. We can give this a couple pulls. I'm going to take the air cleaner cover off. Air cleaner. Spray some jism in there. The gas tank is completely dry and empty. Oil is a little bit over the full line. It looks good. Oh, it sounds pretty good. It stopped raining momentarily. This one has a pre-filter in there. It's really dirty. This is... Eh, it's okay. Excuse me. Choke is open. There's a choke cable here. Oh, wow. And it works. It's a choke knob. And, yeah, it's now closed. So that's good. Let's open it again so we can blow some jism in there. Right in there. This mimics a Kohler and a Honda. Alright, so now it's choked. I'm going to give it a couple pulls. See if we get it to turn over. So there's no bail handle cable. If it does start and run, it won't run because there's no gas. But... Hey! That doesn't sound bad at all. What do you guys think? Should I just put some gas in here and see? Engine sounds a'ight. Alright. It's a clean gas tank. Very big gas tank. Goes really low. And I probably put too much gas in it that I need anyway. But let's just see if it runs and stays running. Meaning the carburetor would be clean because it would suck if I had to take the carburetor off and clean it. Because, well, I haven't done too many power no-mores. Power more. So if it runs, how am I going to stop it? I guess I'll choke it or try to pull the spark plug off or something like that. Anyway, here we go. You guys think it'll run? I don't think so. Let me give it some help. Sometimes if you give it some help, something will loosen up. Yeah, so fuel is not getting to the carburetor. Or the carburetor needle is stuck in the hole. The float is up. It's probably rusted. Oh, I guess I'm going to have to take off the carburetor. I had to stop the time-lapse to show you guys. Once I took that stuff off, look at it. Just look at this. Look at that. This is a work of art, man. I mean, you've got to try hard to fuck it up that bad. I mean, I just don't think this has ever been cleaned at all. I mean, it didn't even blow it off or anything. Jesus. Caked on there, man. How do these things even move? Oh my god. I just broke the seal. This was stuck there. Ooh, maybe it might start now. You know what? I've got to take this apart and just see what's inside. All right. Cleaned the carburetor thoroughly. Took the main jet out. Cleaned that. Bowl was very varnished. Had some debris in it. Not that much. But a lot of varnish, though. It was really sticky. So I cleaned the bowl, cleaned the jet, blew out all the holes, took the pilot jet out, cleaned out everything. I think it's pretty clean. So, the fuel line was a little gummy and soft. I feel like it was collapsed, but not quite. But the fuel was flowing when I saw it. Let's see. What do you guys think? I think it'll work. All right. Let's choke it again. This thing sucks, right? Causing a vacuum. This thing's out. Well, at least we proved that this thing runs pretty well. Actually, really well, because you couldn't even shut it off. You couldn't even stall it if you wanted to. So it runs really well on run. I knew it would, because I cleaned the carburetor pretty well. So we know that this engine now runs well. Obviously, when we put this engine onto this deck, it's not going to be self-propelled. This is self-propelled, but you can't use the deck. So unless I get exactly the same Cub Cadet model, I'm not going to be able to get it to run. So we're just going to take this engine and put it on that one to make one. We're going to need a bail cable from somewhere to get this to engage, and obviously taking off the blades and all that stuff needs to be done. But pretty cool, pretty cool. This is probably the cause of it not working too well, because look at the pre-filter. It's completely clogged. I'm going to blow this out, put this back, and then we're going to continue with the swap tomorrow, because, I don't know, I just don't feel like continuing today. Oh, hey guys, how you doing? So it's the next day. Some nut woke me up in the morning and says that he wants to see this. It's my made one Toro mower out of three different mowers. It doesn't have self-propulsion. I put a Honda engine on this Toro deck. You guys remember the episode recently? Anyway, I just pulled it out of the back. I have it listed for $125. It's just a simple push mower. It's got a Honda engine on it. Good bag. And the self-propulsion doesn't work. Let's see if it starts up. The cable's a little frayed. I'm trying to trim it so it doesn't look too janky. That's what pickup owners need to do when it rains. Let's hope we sell this push mower with the bag for at least $100. Oh, so nice guy. Loved it. I let him pull start it as you saw. Started right up. Ran great. I told him that it's not self-propelled because the belt broke on the bottom. I was trying to take the cable off just so I can have it for something else in the future because the cable's not doing anything for anybody right now. I didn't have time. He was here already. Really nice guy. We ended up talking about his hernia surgery. When you meet people for the first time, you talk and one topic leads to another. He talked about his hernia surgery. It's interesting because you learn things from other people. I find that interesting. When you have different conversations with random people, because you don't know them, you're not worried about embarrassing yourself or anything like that, but yet you could learn something new about something. Anyway, he gave me $125 and he's like, I don't even want self-propulsion. Perfect. I told him that's the reason why it's only $125 for the Honda engine. With a Honda engine and a bagger by the way. The wheels were a little loose and he didn't really care. The tread was bad. He didn't really care. He just wanted to spend $100 for a good reliable engine. That's definitely a reliable engine. I'm on my way to Home Depot. The water input from my sink to my refrigerator to supply the water to the ice maker of the refrigerator sprung a leak last night. I was walking to the kitchen and I heard a sound. I put my hand behind the refrigerator and my hand was coated with water. The water line sprung a pinhole leak. I had to go there and get these valves or sleeves that you put into the line with a brass round oval ring on it that you put together. I need to try to figure that out. I did shut off the water for that area. I need to fix the ice maker. We're still in summer time. You need ice. I guess you can get a separate ice maker, but that's a pain. Anyway, I sold it for $125. That was mower number 28 for the 2023. See you guys later. Hey guys. It's been a couple of days. I've been working on some other stuff. I figured I'd finish up this project once and for all. As you saw from recently, I got this engine running. It runs great. Now all I have to do is take this engine and put it on that one because this one's deck is all trash. I'll keep the wheels and other stuff that I might need, but mainly I want to get one lawnmower out of the two. This engine I know runs well. We'll put it on here. This is obviously self-propelled, but that one isn't. It doesn't matter. I won't have to use the belts or anything like that. Just put the engine on here, connect the bail handle, brake cable, and that's good to sell. It's been a couple of days, so let's just try it anyway. Oh, it doesn't have a bail handle, so I have to go clamp it. Alright, I clamped the brake mechanism. It's on choke. Good engine. Runs well. We'll just take this off and put it on there. Should be simple, and then I have to find a bail handle cable. I stopped the time lapse because it's always a momentous occasion when you're actually putting it on there. That's like putting a V8 LS engine on a Toyota Corolla. I thought for a second that this was too easy. Engine fit on there perfectly. Engine mounting bolts went on really easily, and then when I put the blade on, what did I realize? That's right. Because that machine is a little higher, look at that. That blade is like an inch lower than the lip of the deck. This is going to be a close cut because this is not adjustable. It's your very basic push mower. It has no height adjustments. Unless you want your lawn to be scalped 100% of the time, I got to change that blade adapter. Given the condition of that blade adapter and this entire mower, it's going to be really tough to take that blade adapter off. I need a shorter one, preferably without a pulley on it because it's not self-propelled. I have to try to take this off and then go in the back and try to find a shorter blade adapter. Without a pulley puller, it's really difficult to do. I remember that the most successful times that I actually have removed the blade adapter on super rusted shafts was if I removed the engine and now I have an angled area where I can put a chisel. If you have the deck around it, there's no way you can get a chisel ported downwards at an angle that coincided with the right angle of the blade deck. If you just use some penetrating oil, I have some PB blaster here. You just have to try to make sure not to hit your hand. It's coming. With this angle, I can get 45 degrees going downwards. Here it comes. I broke the thing here with the crowbar, but that's okay. It was really on there, but successfully got that off. Now I have to find a shorter blade adapter and put it on and we're good to go. If it's not one thing, it's another. It wasn't the blade adapter at all because in the end, it's still one inch lower than the lip because that longer blade adapter just went over it. That's it. It would just cover that. It still stopped at the same place. It's not the blade adapter. This engine is just designed for a bigger mower that was more wider on the sides than this one. This is not adjustable in terms of height. That's why the blade still sticks down about an inch. I remembered that I had one of these before, just a regular push mower with a big engine on it. MTD makes them. You need to put a 0.75 inch spacer ring in between the engine and the deck. I have to put this in, which raises the height of the blade in by one inch. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to put this spacer ring in there. I had this from one of these MTD basic push mowers. Hopefully, now we got it going on. I'm so happy that I got this though because I only have one. I bet you guys don't even know about this. Who knows about this? Leave it in the comments. All right. I'm done. Went to take a shower, cleaned up everything. The phone died. I had to charge it, so I didn't show you any of that rest of the stuff. Got the engine on here. We got the blade going on. We got the spacer between the engine and the deck. Went nuts trying to find the right cables for the choke and the bail handle brake disengage button from the flywheel. I used the original Cub Cadet handles because it fit the measurements of the hole to the thing. You know what I mean. Had to do some swaparoo stuff. Now we got a working bail handle cable, a working choke and run cable that worked fine. Got the engine on here. Let's choke it again. Pull. Yeah. It took a long time just for retrofitting basically the Cub Cadet engine onto a really low profile, small, basic push mower deck with no height adjustments. Taking off that pulley, the best way to do it was to take the engine off again so that you had more clearance for a chisel and just bang it out with a sledgehammer. That's always worked for me. A little bit of PB Blaster Penetrating Oil will get it out. I've never had to use heat because I'm always worried about making the crankshaft so hot and red that it burns and melts the crank seal. Then you have a bigger problem of oil leaking out on the bottom. That's why I never really did that. It took a while to do it, but we have created another Frankenmower from a basic deck putting the engine on and the rest of the garbage from the trashed Cub Cadet. We made one Frankenmower out of two mowers. That's basically what I wanted to do. I have one more mower, maybe two more mowers left until I start working on some tractors again. If I don't sell any for the remainder of this summer, it's okay because you always have to have a good inventory of mowers to sell beginning of next spring. I have a bunch, maybe three or four, that are ready to go. I'll list this simple push mower for $100. It's not designed to have a bag because it's a dedicated mulcher. Engine runs good on choke and on run. If you want to just mow your lawn with a simple basic push mower, this is it, $100. Hope you guys enjoyed the video. We'll see you guys next time on Mowers and Blowers. See you guys next time on Mowers and Blowers!