Free Sabre by John Deere Lawntractor Repower! Installing a rebuilt engine and see if it runs!

That's right. You guys saw it coming. Last episode, I picked this up from Nick from Bellport for free. That's right. Free. Remember, it's just a rolling chassis. No engine. However, I have this rebuilt engine from a year or so ago. I actually installed this engine into one of my haulers last year, but there was something wrong. It revved way too high. I thought for a second that maybe when I rebuilt it, the governor gear fell off of the shaft. However, I thought about it and was like, well, I just threw any carburetor on there. The throttle flap on the carburetor could have been stuck. So I'm just going to put this engine in here. It's the only spare engine I have, and I know it runs, albeit revs really high, but I'm going to fiddle with it. Now, this engine that I built is probably a 17 and a half horsepower one, but the cover on it says 14. So I'll find another cover that says around 17, 18. It's all about the same anyway. This original tractor was 14.5, but I want to try to put a better engine in it. which hopefully is this one so i'm just gonna put this on i've got four engine mounting bolts connecting the throttle to the throttle bracket the wiring loom to the harness attach the fuel lines oh i have to find a muffler i mowed the lawn yesterday and i took this battery out of one of my tractors that i haven't used in a long time it's a good battery so we'll put this battery in put the engine on connect all the stuff find a muffler somewhere and see if this fires up Of course also if it does all work I'll have to fix this hole in the deck. I'll need a new seat or a seat cover and find some knobs. You can get another tractor running for sale. So after cleaning it up a little bit looking at the details of it it's missing some stuff. Good news is that it actually has the muffler. The muffler is in here. I just need the down pipe that goes into the hole of the muffler. down pipe that corresponds to this. another thing is nick took the solenoid so right here i have a brand new hypo solenoid that i'm going to install it's also missing the power cable and with john deere's it goes to a relay to the fuse so i'd have to attach this cable to the positive side of the battery these two go to the solenoid It's also missing the power cable going from the positive side of the battery to the solenoid, which I had to find. You'd have to find another one to hook this to the positive side and connect it to the positive relay that goes to the fuse. Also, looking at it, this is a fuel pump operated fuel delivery system. The engine I have has this dipstick, which is the old style, which means it doesn't have a fuel pump capability. Suppose you could tap into the valve cover. It's not really designed to do that due to the horsepower. So now I'm thinking about converting this from a fuel pump operated, gas tanks in the back. Battery looks low enough that I could actually put a gas tank up here and have it fuel delivery right to this engine. So I got to think about this for a bit. It's missing some stuff. I need to get all the stuff before I can put this together. When you put the battery in, So there's all this room for a gas tank. You know what I mean? That gas tank could be fed straight into the carburetor without me having to worry about the fuel pump. Because this engine, you can't really put a fuel pump on it because you would need a dipstick that has the pulse nozzle that sticks out. And that model does not fit this hole of the sump cover of this type of engine. So this engine's only designed for gravity delivery of fuel. I mean, there are ways you can get it going, but it's not going to work right. So I got this fuel reservoir. This is the kind that has the nozzle that sticks out of it for the pulse line for a fuel pump delivery type engine. Problem is this also has a voltage regulator, whereas this one doesn't need one. So I just took out the old dipstick along with the rubber grommet. Of course, it does not fit. So I got no choice. If I'm going to use this engine, I have to use this dipstick, which does not have the nozzle. I guess you can fabricate one, but I don't think its engine is designed for it. So you're not going to get a great pulse. I'm going to have to go to the backyard and see if I can get another cover that doesn't say 14. And look at this starter. I wonder if that starter even works right. I don't remember it not working. i need to find new cover downward facing muffler exhaust pipe a gas tank that will fit right here some damn knobs a whole bunch of other into the shed found one of these found one of these these from an mtd that's not gonna found this gas tank that fits right there got another lt 1000 gas tank fits right there i'd have to make some brackets got this gas tank that's actually supposed to go on the side of an engine but i think this might be too tall getting in the way of the hood. found a side discharge for the deck. one of the pulleys on the deck could be bad. this is good. some brackets i could make to hold up the gas tank. deck is missing one of these things. found a muffler that would definitely fit. well i don't want to say definitely but i think it'll fit maybe. found another muffler that i think might fit. Those mufflers don't fit. I did find a down tube. It goes onto the exhaust manifold and straight down into the hole. It looks a little low. Maybe it'll fit. Maybe it won't. I'm not sure. I'll figure it out later. Found a metal cover. 16 and a half horsepower and it also has the pinion gear guard for the starter. I got lots of parts. This deck is missing the cover. Missing one of the arms. Stop the thing from moving. That makes noises. This one doesn't. Found a return spring for this. I know, it seems like I got everything that I need, but... you never know once you get into it you're going to discover that you don't have it. so first thing we have to do is since we're here we're going to put the starter solenoid in there because this one does not have one. nick took it with him but i have a brand new one four post solenoid from my friends over at Hypo Parts. go to hypostore.com or hypoparts.com and if you order any parts for your lawnmower all kinds of parts use discount code henry and get 10 10% off your entire order. Four post solenoid. you can mount it either on a wall or on a platform like we have right here looks like that'll fit just perfectly gotta tighten these little nuts over here for the tabs gotta be tight because you want to make good contact so this is designed for either loop wires or tabs i'm going to use the tabs because this comes with tabs a couple of 3/8 nuts on here nuts and bolts Now that this is secure, it doesn't matter which one you have it on. One's negative, one's the trigger wire to the ignition switch. Now you have to attach one wire to here, one wire to there. First we're going to attach the negative ground, the negative terminal here, positive one onto here, and another positive one that goes to the starter motor. So as you saw, I installed the hypo solenoid. Works great. But then when I connected everything to the starter motor, it clicked and clicked and clicked, but it wouldn't turn the starter motor. And then I figured out that, oh, this engine needs to be grounded. So I didn't put the engine mounting bolts into the engine to ground it. So once I got that in there, check it out. Hey, hey. Nice. Now we need to put the muffler on. I need to swap out this metal thing with that red cover. Need to hook up the gas to it, the throttle cable. Double stack pulley on the bottom coinciding with the drive belt and the mower deck belt. But I don't have one of those double stack pulley. Crank shaft bolts. I have to go find one. But this took longer than I expected because I had to go into the backyard to find all the parts that I needed to put this together. But it looks like that hypo solenoid works as it should. Works perfectly. We've got the starter motor and the engine now cranks. Once we put gas to it, I'm sure it would start and run and stuff like that. But we'd have to adjust it because like I said, I think this engine revs really high and I don't Hey, that rhymed. But yeah, I'll continue this tomorrow. Good morning. It's the second day of this project. It's election day, so it's very quiet around here. Go out and vote if you haven't already done so. I did find my John Deere seat cover. Sure is going to be better than that. Found another muffler and another pipe. Taping this hood up seems to have held it together better. Now it's more stout. I mean, look, I could have plastic wrapped it. I could have drilled holes and zip tied it together, but I don't know. Gorilla tape works. I think it looks better than zip ties, Frankenstein in it, you know. Trying out this pipe. As you can see, it's not going to work because it would be a straight pipe. And this muffler won't fit because the frame is in the way. And this muffler would probably fit, but I'd have to chop off this area here to accommodate that pipe. And also when you put the hood on I think it would melt the hood so I don't think this would work. I mean it could work if I had to but I think I'm just going to try to fabricate some kind of output into a pipe that goes right in there. Since I'm not using the gas in this gas tank I want to suck it out. It's like a eighth. Got this fluid extractor that I got from a subscriber, Ginger Snap. I'm going to try it out now. These are one of those gas tanks where it actually has this sucking straw that goes on the top of the gas tank all the way down. It's not a pet cock on the bottom of the gas tank. So when you have the line, it doesn't come out. It actually has to have suction. There's no gas in here, but this stopper there fell in there. Now I'm going to use another Ginger Snap gift, a claw. Not claw, claw! Hey look at that. It worked! So the only muffler that fits is this old Toro looking one and that's without removing this thing too to give it more space. Problem is I can't fit these other mufflers on here because this is built where the top platform here stretches all the way out to the the front and it incorporates the muffler it's bolted in see so for me to fit Some of these mufflers, I'd have to cut this top plate here and remove that muffler just so it has room for it to sit. And this is really thick steel, really thick. Take chances of you getting hurt with the grinder, you know. I just don't think that the hood would fit with this muffler on here. This is the only one that fits with a little bit more modification. It doesn't But not fit, not for us. I'm gonna have to come up with something else. I may have to cut this whole front end off. As you saw from time lapse, I had to cut this area out to make room for that muffler, and it fits perfectly now. Took the old muffler out, replaced this red cover with that black cover, but unfortunately the starter guard doesn't fit this model. It's weird. Anyway, I just put gas in the gas tank. I don't see any leaks, which is amazing. I guess now I'm just gonna fire it up see if it starts. Remember I expect this to rev really high. But now that the battery's hooked up has 637 hours on it. Almost. Starts just fine and it revs just fine actually. It's that when I lower it past full throttle down to a lower throttle it doesn't stay running because the carburetor is probably dirty throttle flap is completely open you got full air going in there right and carburetor is just dirty enough that it won't allow full air fuel mixture good so i think i'll just switch out a carburetor i got lots of carburetors yeah nice of course i also don't have the double stack pulley on here which i should put on now because it slows down the crankshaft right now there's nothing on the crankshaft Okay. I changed the carburetor to a seemingly new carburetor. It looked brand new. I don't know if I checked if the needle was in there though. So it's leaking a little bit, but let's see. It's flooded and the battery's dead. I'm going to have to put the battery on a charger. Also I noticed that there was an oil leak on the bottom. The vent mechanism had no gasket on the bottom so I had to make a gasket put it on there. But now we've got a leak in that carburetor. It's flooding. Spark plug's probably wet so it's not going to ignite. I didn't check to see if there's a needle in there. Okay I opened up the carburetor again and there's a small piece of white plastic stuck in the seating area where the needle goes. Blew it out. Clear. reinstalled it it's not leaking also if you put a Nikki carb on here this old style air cleaner base gets in the way of the choke flap so you can't put like a new modern Nikki on there because the choke flap is too big and it gets in the way it gets caught so unless i switch it with a LMT Walbro i can't probably put this on unless i shave all this stuff off which is silly adjust this carburetor a little bit pop them a little All right, I shaved off some material from that air filter base, so now the linkage clears, the choke linkage clears the flap. What a pain. Anyway, see if it rolls. I don't think the drive belt is on the transmission. There's supposed to be some kind of keeper thing that holds the drive belt onto the top drive pulley of the double stack. It's not there, so if I violently loosen the brake, it's gonna fall off. But I think it's gonna work. I'll have to find a keeper or something. Great, let's see if the PTO works. Got reverse in operation. New engine on here, everything works. I do need to find a keeper though Keep that drive belt on. but we got a piece of junk that was destined for the landfill put an engine on here now it's a running driving mowing lawn tractor and i didn't spend a dime it was completely free so you know we could sell this for what 350 400 maybe 500 to some nut in my next episode i'm going to find a keeper keep that drive belt on the double stack pulley and then we have a hole in the deck Which I'll try to fix. Hope you guys enjoyed the video. Remember to like, share, and subscribe so I can continue to bring you repower projects. Hope you guys have a great day. We'll see you guys next time on Mowers and Blowers. See you guys next time on Mowers and Blowers.