TOdoubleD740
Member
Here's my beloved 125.. It's been a long journey, from a complete hack job/basketcase that I bought back in 2012, to the well-oiled, restored machine that it is today!
It had been poorly spray bombed with some horrific shade of light yellow and had some weird homemade hood on it. It was in rather rough shape, but it did run and cut grass, which was all I needed and cared about at the time. Once I did some research on what I had and saw what they were supposed to look like, I knew what I had to do. These narrow frames were too gorgeous not to restore, especially the 125. I just love how they look.. So 60's. Groovy!
It's since had a total make over and is restored for the most part. This has been a WIP over the past few years, with serious restoration work beginning in 2018, clear until this year. I'm sure I'll always be tinkering on and improving on it.. You can bet on that.
I gotta thank Marlin @ IHCCW Inc, Charlie @ CCSpecialties, Scott Urschel, Kirk Engines, Maple Hunter Decals, Hamilton Bob's, and other various guys on the facebook Cub groups, for helping me obtain some of these parts & pieces, for this wouldn't have been possible without them!
This is how it looked when I first got it.
Hideous!
I repainted the whole thing and replaced a LOT of parts. The first thing that had to go was that horrible, gaudy looking hack job of a homemade hood! Thankfully, I had a second parts 125 tractor to pick bits & pieces from. I don't have pics of everything from over the years, but do have a lot. Here's what I do have that wasn't lost to corrupt SD cards & HDD's, lost old phones, etc.
I had a NOS dash tin but ended up not using it, then eventually selling it since it's an actual working tractor, not a show piece or garage/trailer queen. I ended up restoring another dash tin that was salvageable, rather than pasting a decal over the entire thing. Here's some pics showing how I masked certain sections off before painting them. I used bits & pieces of a decal from Scott Urschel to cut the logos & labels out of before pasting them over the appropriate area, before clear coating over the entire thing. Trying to repaint logos and whatnot would've been a nightmare, so I did "cheat" a little bit there. The blue is Duplicolor Metalcast blue, but I should've done one less coat to make it a lighter blue, closer to the original. There's a side by side featuring a NOS tin & my restored tin towards the end, followed up by a final, installed and assembled pic.
NOS on the left - my restoration on the right.
Installed!
The Kohler K301a was totally rebuilt, bored .10 over and is running a rev 2 head (heart-shaped combustion chamber). Balance gears have been deleted. I do have a crank balance plate from Kirk Engines but it didn't get installed this time around.. Though I might send another crank off to have it installed and hopefully can swap it in someday. Vibration isn't too much worse than the other old, worn out K301 engine w/balance gears, TBH.
Heart transplant!
Up and running!
Again, this is a working tractor and is the only thing I have to cut grass with. I put some serious hours into this thing, over the better part of a month to get it "right" again, since last year turned out to be an expensive nightmare of a grass cutting season.. It chewed PTO belts up like crazy, literally every other mow I was replacing the PTO mule drive belt. This was because of the mule drive itself, which I also completely overhauled. It was a necessity. One idler arm in particular was super wallowed out from 50 years of use, so I had to remove it, weld up the hole, redrill it, paint it, stick it back on the pivot rod than weld that back up. Replaced the pulleys with the aftermarket "deep v" Stenns branded ones, plus a new adjuster bracket and now it's like a whole new mule drive. Once installed and set up/adjusted, I haven't had to touch a thing. Wish I would've done this long ago! Oh well, better late than never.
I also completely redid the 482U1112 48"and 3-spindle deck too, complete with new paint & decals. It was like Swiss cheese in a couple spots, so I cut all that rot out and welded in new metal. Repainted with Iron Guard IH935 white paint and the underside coated with Chassis Saver. Mows great and looks even better!
All in all, it was a lot of time, work and money but it was worth it. I'm sure I missed a LOT of details, mods etc, but you get the gist. I do have the original fiberglass pan seat that I'd like to install once I get it reupholstered, plus some other additions (sleeve hitch, etc), but I'll follow up on this thread once that's all installed. For now, I just wanted to document the restoration for once, how it currently sits and show some of the work I've done. I have a TON of more pics, but unfortunately the forum limited me on how many pics I can upload here, at least on this one post, but here's a couple more closing shots and how she looks today. Cheers
It had been poorly spray bombed with some horrific shade of light yellow and had some weird homemade hood on it. It was in rather rough shape, but it did run and cut grass, which was all I needed and cared about at the time. Once I did some research on what I had and saw what they were supposed to look like, I knew what I had to do. These narrow frames were too gorgeous not to restore, especially the 125. I just love how they look.. So 60's. Groovy!
It's since had a total make over and is restored for the most part. This has been a WIP over the past few years, with serious restoration work beginning in 2018, clear until this year. I'm sure I'll always be tinkering on and improving on it.. You can bet on that.
I gotta thank Marlin @ IHCCW Inc, Charlie @ CCSpecialties, Scott Urschel, Kirk Engines, Maple Hunter Decals, Hamilton Bob's, and other various guys on the facebook Cub groups, for helping me obtain some of these parts & pieces, for this wouldn't have been possible without them!
This is how it looked when I first got it.
Hideous!
I repainted the whole thing and replaced a LOT of parts. The first thing that had to go was that horrible, gaudy looking hack job of a homemade hood! Thankfully, I had a second parts 125 tractor to pick bits & pieces from. I don't have pics of everything from over the years, but do have a lot. Here's what I do have that wasn't lost to corrupt SD cards & HDD's, lost old phones, etc.
I had a NOS dash tin but ended up not using it, then eventually selling it since it's an actual working tractor, not a show piece or garage/trailer queen. I ended up restoring another dash tin that was salvageable, rather than pasting a decal over the entire thing. Here's some pics showing how I masked certain sections off before painting them. I used bits & pieces of a decal from Scott Urschel to cut the logos & labels out of before pasting them over the appropriate area, before clear coating over the entire thing. Trying to repaint logos and whatnot would've been a nightmare, so I did "cheat" a little bit there. The blue is Duplicolor Metalcast blue, but I should've done one less coat to make it a lighter blue, closer to the original. There's a side by side featuring a NOS tin & my restored tin towards the end, followed up by a final, installed and assembled pic.
NOS on the left - my restoration on the right.
Installed!
The Kohler K301a was totally rebuilt, bored .10 over and is running a rev 2 head (heart-shaped combustion chamber). Balance gears have been deleted. I do have a crank balance plate from Kirk Engines but it didn't get installed this time around.. Though I might send another crank off to have it installed and hopefully can swap it in someday. Vibration isn't too much worse than the other old, worn out K301 engine w/balance gears, TBH.
Heart transplant!
Up and running!
Again, this is a working tractor and is the only thing I have to cut grass with. I put some serious hours into this thing, over the better part of a month to get it "right" again, since last year turned out to be an expensive nightmare of a grass cutting season.. It chewed PTO belts up like crazy, literally every other mow I was replacing the PTO mule drive belt. This was because of the mule drive itself, which I also completely overhauled. It was a necessity. One idler arm in particular was super wallowed out from 50 years of use, so I had to remove it, weld up the hole, redrill it, paint it, stick it back on the pivot rod than weld that back up. Replaced the pulleys with the aftermarket "deep v" Stenns branded ones, plus a new adjuster bracket and now it's like a whole new mule drive. Once installed and set up/adjusted, I haven't had to touch a thing. Wish I would've done this long ago! Oh well, better late than never.
I also completely redid the 482U1112 48"and 3-spindle deck too, complete with new paint & decals. It was like Swiss cheese in a couple spots, so I cut all that rot out and welded in new metal. Repainted with Iron Guard IH935 white paint and the underside coated with Chassis Saver. Mows great and looks even better!
All in all, it was a lot of time, work and money but it was worth it. I'm sure I missed a LOT of details, mods etc, but you get the gist. I do have the original fiberglass pan seat that I'd like to install once I get it reupholstered, plus some other additions (sleeve hitch, etc), but I'll follow up on this thread once that's all installed. For now, I just wanted to document the restoration for once, how it currently sits and show some of the work I've done. I have a TON of more pics, but unfortunately the forum limited me on how many pics I can upload here, at least on this one post, but here's a couple more closing shots and how she looks today. Cheers
The part # is IH-546775-R92
They're certainly a lot cheaper to rebuild.
