The First Tractor

This is my first tractor. Yeah, I know, it's a lawn tractor, and worse yet, an $800 chain store tractor. Not even a good lawn tractor, you sniff dismissively. But I have to say, this tractor has given us superb service. All I've ever had to do to it is change the oil, clean the air filter, put gas in it, and fix flat tires.

It's just your basic 15.5-horsepower Bolens, and I originally bought it because my property was seriously overgrown with dead grass and weeds that posed a serious grassfire risk. So I bought this thing and proceeded to mow brush for about a week. It would have been faster to use a real tractor and a brush mower, but not being able to afford a real tractor and a brush mower, I used this. And I used it hard too, mowing brush and weeds three or four feet tall on rolling and uneven ground, and other than getting stuck a time or two, the tractor never quit. I had to fix five or six flat tires (mesquite thorns go right through the thin "Turf-Saver" tires) but then I put a tube of green Slime in each tire and the problem with flats went away.

Then I bought one of those cheap $60 stamped-metal assemble-it-yourself wagons for it, and I've used it as a motorized wheelbarrow for about two years. And I've used it a lot. I've moved tons and tons of dirt and gravel, scrap iron, manure, furniture, rocks and brush with it. The original paper-thin tires lasted about six months, then they sprang hundreds of spontaneous leaks. I covered the tires with soapy water to find out where they were leaking, and there were so many leaks the tires looked like they were foaming. So I ordered a set of beefy, muscular hand truck tires from Northern Tool and managed, through the proper employment of words I wouldn't want my kids to say, to get them forced onto the rims and got them to inflate. Since then, the cart had put in many a hard day of work with no complaints at all.

I realized I could drop the mower deck to its lowest position and use it as a grader. My neighbors think I'm mowing dirt, but I'm actually grading with the blades disengaged. It works really surprisingly well, so long as the dirt is soft, but a few passes with the deck and the dirt is smooth and level and nicely graded.

My son left a bunch of scrap iron with me after he quit working for a metal fabrication shop, and I built the blade shown in the picture out of those scraps. That was about a year ago, and time and use revealed certain weaknesses in my design and my welding technique. I fixed the weak welds, added a few gussets where necessary, and changed the design of the hand-powered lifting lever. Then I covered it with red spray paint so it wouldn't look quite so much like Depression-era junk. It may look cheesy, and it certainly won't dig in hard ground, but it's excellent for cleaning stalls, spreading soft dirt and gravel, and skimming big rocks off the ground. The tractor pulls it without any problem, and will pull it even when the blade is overflowing. And it doesn't interfere with the normal trailer hitch, so I don't have to unbolt anything to switch from the blade to the trailer - I just pull out a piece of pipe that serves as the blade's hinge pin, and it drops right off. I can dismount the blade without even getting off the tractor.

It is also handy, because it will fit through standard equestrian gates and will turn in a relatively short radius, making it highly useful in stalls and tight areas.

Also visible in one of the pictures is a mount I made for a dozer blade, which I also made. The dozer blade proved to be relatively unsuccessful. The geometry of the mount is such that it tends to lift the front wheels of the tractor off the ground, plus when pushing things the nose of the tractor makes ominous creaking noises. So I discontinued use of the dozer blade, but the rear box scraper remains in frequent use.

My point, and I guess I have one, is that I am very pleased with my chain store lawn tractor. It is about three years old now and it has proved to be very reliable, other than a burned-out headlight, and it starts every time. My future plans for the tractor are mostly related to tires. I want to order tougher, burlier tires for it from Northern Tool, and since I'm not worried about saving my turf, I'm going to see if I can find rear tires with lugs. It doesn't need the additional traction; I just think it would look boss. And I have vague notions of building a genuine midships grader blade, with adjustable sweep angle, that uses the stock mower deck mounting points and height adjustment mechanism. Why? Because it would be boss!

If I have any complaint with the tractor at all, it is this. I lost the plastic trough you're supposed to use when you drain the oil, and without it, the tractor kind of makes a mess of itself when you remove the oil drain plug. I think I can live with that.