Romping tractors in deep mud/swamp/creek!
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Taking these 60’s garden tractors back through the woods, and the through the crazyiest stuff we can find. through all the mud, swamps, and the deep creek. mikes bolens 1000 was running off a magneto, and i didn’t know if it was reliable enough to be going through 2 and a half feet of water with. When i first put that Wisconsin Tr-10D engine on it, i hooked up the magneto, and it ran horribly. so i threw a coil on it, and it ran perfect. and i just stuck with that all last year. then i took the Startergenerator off of it, and made it pull start. not having a battery anymore, i took the 12V coil off of it, and returned the beast to the magneto. and it seems to run fine… but i really thought it wouldn’t take that water well at all. It was a Crazy thing, the other tractor, the 1050, with the 850 engine has a 12V coil, and that actually died in the middle of the creek! for a few seconds. i shook the coil wire off, and it started right back up. 
good thing too, because that water was cold, and i don’t know how we were gonna get those 550 pound tractors out of the creek… haha
oh yeah, and early on the rubber flex plate/u-joint type thing on mikes 1220 exploded when we were going around the circle. and thats a first! never had that problem before. i should probably go and fix that today.
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Remember going to Montgomery Ward? I do, it was one of the last real department stores selling a full line of products. They sold lawn tractors since way back, originally being made for them by Gilson. Then from the late 1970’s to the late 1990’s when they stopped selling tractors, they were made by MTD. In the later years, Ward’s also sold them under “Signature 2000″ and “Powr-Kraft” brand names. I saw this “needs work” tractor for a good price, so I snapped it up. Now that I think about it, this tractor was probably purchased at the same store loacation I used to go to. It has a Briggs & Stratton 16hp opposed twin-cylinder motor, a 7-speed Transmatic transaxle, a 42″ deck and 9/10ths of a grass bagger. The guy I bought it from said it had no ignition switch when he got it, and all he had done was verify the motor cranked over when jumped directly to the starter.
I couldn’t remember what was wrong with this Craftsman LTV/10 lawn tractor, so I figured I would see if I could get it to start, but quickly found out it’s 10HP Briggs & Stratton engine had no compression. Just listen to it! I don’t need a gauge to tell me it has no compression when it sounds like that! It was about then I remembered where it came from. We bought it for $35 at a swap meet a few years ago, drove it about 150 feet, and it abrubtly died. The motor is fixed now, it ended up being a burnt valve.