By
Southern_Secret
Wooohooo!! Well after 7 long & hope drifting years iv finally done it I found me a WHEELHORSE! I'm in the south, those of you that don't know (all of you above the mason-dixon line) looking for a garden tractor, well it's like trying to find a grain of salt on the beach. I first had my interest peeked 8ish years ago when we went on vacation in northern TN. While up there, there was a guy who had 2 cub cadets parked in his yard, one with a sickle bar mower and one with a hammer knife mower on the front and I thought that was so cool. Fast forward several month's of digging and reading and I had made my mind up, my tractor had to & was going to be a WHEELHORSE no matter how long it took to find it! The days turned to weeks the weeks to month's and the month's to years......welp.... that's that it's not in my card's, I guess i'll just have to go green. My hunt slowed down to a crawl, still look but pushed to the back burner, better yet put in the far corner of the attic but still hoping that one day I will own a garden tractor (didn't matter what color at this point) although not very hopeful. Then one day I'm on market place and I see an ad for a 314H hmmm bet facebook has tricked me again, then I look at the location and its in my town.....wait just a min..... that's just a half mile up the road from me, so I click the ad. I start reading it "vintage toro mower for sale don't know much about it I think it will run just needs a carb and some wiring" but I cant tell much from the pics but what I can tell is that it has been sitting under a pine tree for a pretty long amount of time. I send the guy a message and set of a time to look at it, the next day when I got off work I make a B line to his house (on the same road I live on, I know right) and to the back yard we go. He tells me that the older guy he bought the hose from traded him so work for the mower and he didnt know much about it, but the PO had put a briggs carb on it and it was bogging down when engaging the pto is what the PO told him. (i will be posting more pics and when I do you will understand this next part better). I'm standing there looking at it as he's telling me this and I lift the hood and he points and tells me "that is the briggs carb he put on there I think if you replace that it will run" what he was pointing at was a huff-n-puff that had been put on to do away with the OEM pump. So by now I'm glowing inside, and I ask him his price he tells me $200 but if i was really interested he would do it for $125, I ask him if I can think about it over the weekend (this was on a friday) he say's thats good with him. I come home and immediately find this place and after digging on here I new right away I was going back and buying that thing monday!
I head to his house monday after work money in hand, but before I hand him the money he ask me "yall own the NAPA store in the next town over with the tire shop right?" yes sir we do "can yall mount some tires for me?" yes sir we can "if you will mount & balance 4 tires for me ill just trade you out even". I shook his hand and the deal was made, that was at the begging of september and after some looking over the tractor reading on here and waiting on parts, I got it home last week (i had it at my shop at our napa store).
Sorry for the long post everyone!!