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yes...the forrest gump mowers...not a whole lot has changed on those mowers since they first came out and were known as the Comet.

The handle bars are a little different but everything else is about the same.

They just have small air filters on those engines. In the summers of the dry/dusty south they need to be cleaned about once a use or the engine will take in tons of dirt and eat the cyl/piston/rings. Other than that you have to really do something dumb to kill that machine.

warning: they cut slow.
 
My dad used to have a snapper. I used to love cutting the lawn with that thing. Then he got a snapper self propelled walk behind. It was a hunk of crap. He then got a LawnBoy and while it stunk like hell you couldn't kill it. He even give it to me when the deck finally started to rot. I put sheetmetal over the holes and used it another 10 years. I ended up giving it away and today it still is being used. I had a toro personal pace mower but traded it for this riding hunk of crap troybilt and it worked well until I started letting my neighbor start using it. His son really tore it up.

Josh give me a number I can call you at and I'll come down and visit you and order parts.



On another note. My grandfather used to always weld an additional pulley on his riding lawmowers. He would then attach to the front a water pump run by a belt. What are your thoughts on me attaching a generator head to the front of my lawmower? I could get a big generator to used with an 18hp motor.

 
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Trollhole said:
My dad used to have a snapper. I used to love cutting the lawn with that thing. Then he got a snapper self propelled walk behind. It was a hunk of ****. He then got a LawnBoy and while it stunk like **** you couldn't kill it. He even give it to me when the deck finally started to rot. I put sheetmetal over the holes and used it another 10 years. I ended up giving it away and today it still is being used. I had a toro personal pace mower but traded it for this riding hunk of **** troybilt and it worked well until I started letting my neighbor start using it. His son really tore it up.

Josh give me a number I can call you at and I'll come down and visit you and order parts.



On another note. My grandfather used to always weld an additional pulley on his riding lawmowers. He would then attach to the front a water pump run by a belt. What are your thoughts on me attaching a generator head to the front of my lawmower? I could get a big generator to used with an 18hp motor.

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there is acutally a forumula for figuring out the perfect match for an engine to a generator. That way the output HP of the engine match the KW output of the generator...but i can't remember it. You can google it.

A cheap way to do it is if you have a power inverter....hook an alternator up to your lawnmower. Any cheap...gm/toyota/whatever internally regulated alternator to your mower. Then you can use the power inverter to run whatever...lights...radio...tv...anything that inverter willl handle.

Generators themselves (unless you find one with a blown motor) are expensive.

The lawnboy 2 cycles were great push mowers (also had self propelled models) but thank the EPA for those going away.

Snapper IMHO makes 3 kinds of mowers. The cheap crap made to compete with homedepot/walmart/costco/lows/kmart mowers. They make a commercial series....and they make what i consider their best buy drive disk model. The only difference between the commercial and home owner models other than the engines are the wheels. One has metal wheels and the cheaper is plastic.

The home owner version of the drive disk mower is about 575 new. No need to buy a commercial version. The mower will out live the briggs engines on it. The good part is that you can get a new briggs engine for it once you wear it out for 180-190. You can't kill the deck or transmissions.


I'd put that mower against and $1200 commercial john deere, honda or exmark self propelled mower and it would last longer and cheaper to maintain.

I'll text you my number marshall.

and for what it's worth usually large gas powered single cylinder engine powered generator engines run at a higher rpm than your rider mower engines.

the mower usually has a top rpm of about 3200 compared to as much as 3600 on some generators.
 
CruisinTiger said:
Kilowatts to Horsepowers (kW to hp) and h.p. to kW (Metric Horse power to Kilowatt) Online Conversion Calculator - Converter / Chart / Table

Here is a link to convert

Josh are you able to make one of these generators??
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i don't know how to weld very well...but if i had someone to help me with the welding portion yes it could be easily done.

The 299 pressurewashers you see at homedepot and lowes have really crappy pumps. But the engines are pretty good.

It's easy to buy one of these pressurewashers once the pump goes bad for next to nothing (i occasoinally get one for free)

and using their existing frame it's not hard to bolt up a pulley an and fab up a mounting system to put on an alternator and V belt and hook up a power inverter to make it into a small portable generator on wheels.
 
dohcdelsol93 said:
there is acutally a forumula for figuring out the perfect match for an engine to a generator. That way the output HP of the engine match the KW output of the generator...but i can't remember it. You can google it.

A cheap way to do it is if you have a power inverter....hook an alternator up to your lawnmower. Any cheap...gm/toyota/whatever internally regulated alternator to your mower. Then you can use the power inverter to run whatever...lights...radio...tv...anything that inverter willl handle.

Generators themselves (unless you find one with a blown motor) are expensive.

The lawnboy 2 cycles were great push mowers (also had self propelled models) but thank the EPA for those going away.

Snapper IMHO makes 3 kinds of mowers. The cheap crap made to compete with homedepot/walmart/costco/lows/kmart mowers. They make a commercial series....and they make what i consider their best buy drive disk model. The only difference between the commercial and home owner models other than the engines are the wheels. One has metal wheels and the cheaper is plastic.

The home owner version of the drive disk mower is about 575 new. No need to buy a commercial version. The mower will out live the briggs engines on it. The good part is that you can get a new briggs engine for it once you wear it out for 180-190. You can't kill the deck or transmissions.


I'd put that mower against and $1200 commercial john deere, honda or exmark self propelled mower and it would last longer and cheaper to maintain.

I'll text you my number marshall.

and for what it's worth usually large gas powered single cylinder engine powered generator engines run at a higher rpm than your rider mower engines.

the mower usually has a top rpm of about 3200 compared to as much as 3600 on some generators.
Click to expand...

My thought was if I have this lawnmower that I use maybe 15-20 times a year if I could modify it so I could easily attach a generator to the front and then pop a belt on it. That would be a lot cheaper than buying a 10kw generator. Just the 10kw head is 800.
 
you will have to see how much room you have in the front of the mower to mount an extra pulley to power a generator.

On some of those troybilts there is not much space between the bottom of the engine double stack pulley and the deck. The muffler will also be an issue as the muffler is right along where that belt would go.

You could remove the engine shrouding and modify/find another muffler. If space is an issue you can remove the deck belt while running the generator. Then your only issue is mounting the genertator to the front of the frame and making sure that the engine is powerful enought to run the size generator you want to run.

for 800 bucks you could get a nice used generator (look in junk yards too as many RV's, campers and other vehicles like box trucks have generators and many are multi fuel like LP, gas/diesel as well as CL
 
I see them in pawn shops around here for $400-600 all the time.
Smaller ones go for $150-250.
 
if you could find a 5000 or bigger watt Honda or kawasaki generator for 400-600 it would be a steal especially if it is one of their "E" models.

They are quiet, sip the fuel and only rev as high as they need to in order to meed the demand of the load being put on them. This means that when there is little/no load (fridge kicking on/off) she will go back to idle rather than scream at full rpms all the time.
 
I have a 7k generator so I'm not wanting something small. I want something big so when I power the house, I really power the house.
 
if your wanting to power the house (heating/air/hot water/range/fridge/all the lights/tv's) you'll need a motor bigger than your 17hp.

You can go to gov't auctions and find the big military generators

or you can go on the cheap...find a generator with not motor...and then find a cheap 200-300 dollar car. Use the motor out of the car to power the generator.

You see small car/truck engines adapted in little boats in 3rd world countries to use as a boat motor or well pump motor...or to drive mining equipment.

I've seen some equipment run with a pulley system welded onto the car's front rotor.

but to power a house...youll need something big

you could possibly go "off the grid" at least partially with some house batteries and solar panels.

I don't know if your HOA would go for solar panels and wind turbines. But it's a thought!
 
It says it's an 18.5. All the 10kw gen heads state they need to have a 18hp motor. I just figured what I have would work.
 
Can I jump in on this mower chat?

There is a chance I will need a riding mower in 2-3 months. I'm looking at about 2 acres in grass (lawn) and 2 acres in field/pasture that would need to be maintained. I could probably get a neighbor to bush hog the pasture a few times and I'll probably leave the pasture in some sort of wildlife habitat so forget about mowing that. I will need something to cut the lawn. Cheap, probably used, and dependable would be good.
 
Trollhole said:
It says it's an 18.5. All the 10kw gen heads state they need to have a 18hp motor. I just figured what I have would work.
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is 10kw enough to power an entire house? I seriously don't know...i know a lot about the engines..but nothing about electrical.
 
eventhough said:
Can I jump in on this mower chat?

There is a chance I will need a riding mower in 2-3 months. I'm looking at about 2 acres in grass (lawn) and 2 acres in field/pasture that would need to be maintained. I could probably get a neighbor to bush hog the pasture a few times and I'll probably leave the pasture in some sort of wildlife habitat so forget about mowing that. I will need something to cut the lawn. Cheap, probably used, and dependable would be good.
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on the cheap...some goats!!!

for 2 acres you would probably want a 48" or bigger mower.

As far as used...the shop i work at now doesn't sell new equipment and usually the few pieces that we get stuck with selling as used are not in great shape.

you can keep an eye on CL for used mowers...as CL has some yardsale prices that come across frequently.

any of your variable speed mtd/troybuilt mowers are crap. You'll spend 150 bucks a pop having someone replace both the drive belts.

There really isn't a home owner lawn tractor out there that i would consider "good" for much less than 3k (thats entry level price) and even then you need to go to a dealer and not a walmart/homedepot to get one.

You can get a snapper rear engine rider for pretty cheap and will usually hold up better than any mtd/murray/crafstman/ayp/roper/troybilt but they are slow.

Forrest only ran them because he was rich and wasn't on the football field to make money
 
eventhough said:
So what you're saying is unless I pony up some serious cash I need to buy an iPod and get ready to sit on my keister for awhile?
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Put a PTO on your 55 and you can pull a bush hog around the place!
 
I say go for the goat option. They'll keep kids off the property too. Stake em down with a 30-40 foot (inedible) line and he'll make good on whatever is above ground.
 
Preacher asked me to be Jesus for our Easter event. So I have been trying to grow a beard, anyone else got any decent growth?
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I've got a mower in the background. :) John Deere L120 I keep talking about upgrading just havent done it.
 
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