Another GT14 Custom Project

[ztnoo 2,298]

For whatever reason, GT 14 hubs seem to be the worst to remove, IMO

I personally believe it because of the above the normal axle surface length of 4 3/8".

Lots of addition area for rust and corrosion to collect over 45 to 50 years.

 

Good job, and glad you succeeded!

 

[ztnoo 2,298]

How do your axle key slots and the keys themselves look???

OK or pretty beat up?

[dtallon 320]

I hit the axles with a wire wheel and both sides cleaned up pretty well.  The RH side was a little loose before I took it off.  No one part looked significantly worn.  I didn't look inside the LH hub after I got it off, but as tight as it was on there, I don't think the keyway was worn at all.  

 

Dave

[dtallon 320]

The GT14 project has continued, albeit at a slower pace due to some pauses waiting for parts, seals and gaskets during the reassembly process.  You would think that would leave more time for posting updates, but instead I seem to have been finding other projects to fill the gaps instead.  I'm happy to report things are finally all back together and functional.

 

Given the wear on the GT14 pump slippers and plate, I proceeded with the plan to swap in the Charger pump/motor unit.  This did require swapping the motor drive gear over from the GT14 unit to the Charger one.  Thanks to some of the info on here, it wasn't too difficult to do.  While inside the motor to swap the gears, I noticed the difference in the amount of wear was not as obvious between the two units as it was on the pumps.  It all went back together fine, just took some care to keep everything clean and put back together the way it came apart.  

 

Before putting the pump back together, I went ahead and did a gentle polish of the slippers and port plate.  It really didn't take much to get the scratches down to where only a few of the deeper ones were left.  Since I used some heat to get the pump fan off the shaft, I went ahead and replaced that shaft seal before putting the fan back on.  

 

The transmission case also need some work before it got reassembled.  I swapped in a B/C series cast parking brake pawl since both the Charger and GT14 ones were severely worn.  The intermediate shaft bearings needed to be replaced on both sides, and since the gasket between the two halves is NLA, I had to make one of those.  I cleaned out the good inlet screen from the Charger and installed it.  For mounting the pump/motor back on the transmission, I probably could have made that gasket as well, but opted to get one from my Toro dealer.  I have started a habit of tracing any gasket I get before I put it on, just in case I need another one someday and they aren't available anymore.  

 

 

After getting the trans back together and bolted back to the chassis, I still had some work to do.  I had swapped the acceleration valves to try them in the GT14 before, so I needed to swap all those pieces back.  By now I had plenty of practice with those parts.  Since the Charger was manual lift, I also had to swap over the hydraulic lift spring and valve, and remove the plugs from the ports before I could hook up the lines.  Finally, it was time to refill with ATF.  I took a long time filling a little bit and then spinning the pump by hand to try to work the air out of the system.  Eventually I got nearly all 5 quarts into it.  After a few days passed, I was happy not to see any little puddles of oil underneath, so I must have done OK getting everything back together.  

The final step before being able to put the rest back together and test it out was fixing the tensioner pulley/parking break lever.  Recall that this tractor had no pulley when I first took it apart.  Fortunately, the rest of the lever/linkage was there, because it is unique to the GT14.  I swapped the pulley from the Charger, and then welded up the arm on the transmission to take out the wear that had accumulated over the years.  I also had to replace the peg that contacted that arm, because it was worn a good part of the way through.  Of course, with the tensioner in there properly, the belt that came with the tractor would no longer work so I got a NOS 8334 belt off Ebay.  Delivery took a little longer than expected, but when it did finally come, it fit perfectly.  

 

 

At last, I got it all back together.  It was time for the moment of truth.  I started it up, slowly engaged the drive belt.  No leaks or bad noises so far...  pushed the lever forward... it moves!  I started driving it around to the back yard for a more thorough test.  Just as I got to the back yard, the tractor abruptly stopped.  I disengaged the drive belt, took it to low idle and slowly re-engaged the belt listening for any bad noises.  None were present, so I tried driving again.  It moved a few feet and then stopped again, although less abruptly, and then just as quickly started again.  After that instance, it didn't happen again.  I suspect maybe there was just some air in the system that had to work it's way out.  

 

I drove it around some more in forward and reverse and everything seemed good.  If I "floor it" from a stop, there is a slight hesitation before it fully starts to accelerate, but I can live with that.  I tried backing up the hill that it stalled out on that started this transmission project.  My heart sunk when it stopped at nearly the same place as before.  Fortunately, my spirits quickly rose again when I realized my progress halted not due to the transmission, but because the tires were slipping on the damp grass.  Further testing convinced me that things seemed to be working as they should, so I consider the repair a success.  

 

 

Edited December 22, 2017 by dtallon

[dtallon 320]

With the transmission repairs (knock on wood) behind me, I was ready to move on from that very tedious phase to something a little more fun. It may be putting the cart before the horse, but I wanted to get the tires for this project sorted out. 

 

Shortly after I got this tractor 2 years ago, I started looking for some ag lug tires for it.  Tires for the GT-14's 15" rims were hard enough to find, and tires in the original 9.50 width were even harder.  What ones I did find seemed to come in either 8.50 or 10.50.  I eventually settled on the look of the Goodyear Sure Grip tires.  They were sort of hard to find, but I stumbled across some on simpletire.com in the 8.50 width for a price that was significantly lower than the few other sources I could find.  The price was enough to get me to pull the trigger.  Since they tried to cancel the order, I'm pretty sure the price was an error, but when I pushed back they did honor it.  A week or so later, they were on my doorstep.  Before I got to the point of doing anything with them, as previously mentioned, the project went on hiatus.  

 

Fast forward to several weeks ago, when I am once again working on this project and thinking about how I want it to look when it's done.  I'm not sure what led me to it, but I stumbled across some ag-lug Interco Interforce ATV tires in a 27" size that would fit on 12" GT rims.  I definitely liked the look of the smaller rim and taller sidewall better.  Since I already had bought the Goodyear's, I deliberated long and hard about buying a different set, but eventually convinced myself that for the time I was investing into the tractor, it was worth it to get the look I wanted.  I waited until I got the transmission back together and proved it would run again before ordering a set in the 27x10-12 size.  

 

So, with the backstory out of the way on how I came to have two sets of new rear tires for the GT, on to the fun part, the fit-up.  Before getting into the effort to dismount/mount the tires, I decided to take off the stock tires and just set the new ones in place to see how they looked.  I found it hard to judge with no rim in the center, so I cut pieces of cardboard to simulate the rim.  

 

The Goodyear's actually looked better than I expected.  I had recently found some pictures of an MTD 990 with the same tires and thought the tires looked a little small.  That still might be the case if I mounted them on the rims, but for the mock up I was pleasantly surprised.  Side by side, you can see that the 8.50 width is narrower than the original 9.50's.  

 

The Interco's were true to size in width and height.  Despite what the tape measure says, to me they looked a little smaller than the original tires.  I think it is because even though both are 27" in diameter, the tread makes up a much larger portion of the diameter on the Interco.  The smaller rim size may play a part too.  Interco does make a 30" size, but I don't think those would have fit without modifying the fenders.  Despite looking slightly different than what I expected, I was pleased overall with their appearance and decided to continue down that path. 

 

The Interco's presented another small challenge.  I had a couple different 12" rims to choose from to use with them, but none with the right backspacing.  The stock GT-14 rims are 8" wide rims with nearly neutral backspacing.  I had 12" dia, 8" wide Wheel Horse rims, but they all were heavily offset to the inside.  I had a set of rims off of a Craftsman GT that were closer, but still had about 1" more offset than I needed.  I decided I could probably make that up by mounting the hubs farther in on the axle. I saw on another GT-14 thread a debate about how much strength you loose going from the GT-14 hubs down to the regular hubs for a 12" wheel.  The GT-14 hubs are beefier without a doubt, but I have some hubs off of a 520H with dual set screws that should be up to the task of what I will likely use this tractor for.  

 

 

 

 

[19richie66 17,508]

Those wider ags look great. Good job on the transmission.

[dtallon 320]

The rims are... Yellow?!

 

Before getting into anything else, I will go ahead and address the question, "why are the rims yellow"?  I still don't want to totally reveal my plans because I'm not confident I have the skills to actually pull it off, but for now lets just say I'm going for an industrial look.  

 

To go with that industrial look, I picked some 5.70-8 Kenda x-grips for the front.  The height was a good match for the 18x6.50-8's that came on the tractor.  

 

The Interco's were the biggest tires I have tried to mount myself, and proved to be some of the more challenging ones as well.  I'm not sure if they fit different because they are ATV tires, but it took more of an effort than I'm used to to get them onto the rim.  I mounted them with tubes because I tend to not have much luck getting beads to seat with my smallish air compressor.  As it turns out, the beads didn't want to fully seat with the tubes either.  On both tires, and both sides on each tire, I have a similar amount of bead that won't seat fully up to the edge of the rim.  I'm hoping that when the weather eventually warms up, the tires will become a little more pliable and will seat the rest of the way.  

Installing the tires on the tractor was fairly uneventful.  Thankfully, the GT-14 hubs came off much easier this time (thank you, never-seize) The 520H hubs went on without too much difficulty as well.  The axle key from the GT-14 is actually longer than the 520H hub is, so should provide more strength than the key usually used with those hubs.  As expected, installing the hubs an extra inch inward on the axle positioned the tires (mostly) inside the fenders.  The tires plumped up a little bit when they were inflated so they are now just a little bigger than the original tires.  

 

Seeing the tires all installed on the tractor was a nice boost in motivation to continue with this project.  The pace will probably be slower the next couple months with some other, non-tractor activities coming up, but I'm looking forward to the challenge and seeing the results.

[953 nut 55,230]

             Pardon me, I am having tire envy!         

[19richie66 17,508]

Nice👍

[Sarge 3,463]

Careful - I'm just over an hour away and really liking those steer tires....lol.

What exactly are those?

 

Sarge

[oliver2-44 9,752]

Industrial yellow hubs and rims on a horse🐴

 

So so is it a miniture industrial:

Front End Loader

Bull Dozer

Maintainer

Fork Lift

 

So what do you guys think, is there any other pieces of equipment we should add to the guessing list?

[953 nut 55,230]

18 hours ago, dtallon said:

I'm going for an industrial look.

I like the thought of a loader and box blade. Don't think I have ever seen an Industrial Look  though there have been a couple of customs with fork lifts and a road grader years back.

[Chris G 3,296]

20 hours ago, oliver2-44 said:

Industrial yellow hubs and rims on a horse🐴

The color scheme is the same as a old copar panzer. But that horse looks pretty stout regardless. Also I'm liking the front end loader idea. 

[RandyLittrell 3,877]

@dtallon Just wondering how your coming on your GT-14? The Interco's look perfect on the tractor, it should make a heck of a plow  tractor!! 

 

 

 

 

Randy