Wheelhorse

[bjamison]

Sometimes on the main forum, I mention "other color tractors". Some of them are Wheelhorse.

Here is my 1997 year, model 314-8 Wheelhorse. I bought it new and it has been a great machine. One of the last tractors you could buy with a cast iron tranny and cast iron Kohler engine.

I've got quite a few attachments for it, front blade, grader blade, several deck sizes, snow thrower, moldboard plow and other tow behind attachments.

The pic below has the tractor with a 36 inch rear discharge deck. One thing about the Wheelhorse tractor deck design is that it is ground supported, not unlike a Simplicity (except without rollers - only a wheel on either side of the deck). As such the decks give GREAT side to side quality of cut - as the deck follows the ground. You can see in the pic that my yard is anything but flat and smooth and I get a super cut with this combo.

While I've got and use side discharge decks, one thing I like about the rear discharge decks is that they pull pretty much zero vacuum, so when it's dry, no dust bowl or rocks flying everywhere if you get on a gravel driveway. Also with the rear discharge, mowing direction (unlike with a side discharge deck) doesn't matter. You can mow right up against your house, patio or car and no clippings get blown onto anything. If you need to mow tall wet grass - or mow off the garden, no problem. In as much as the clipping are discharged to the rear, the deck cannot clog. If you are into collecting the grass clippings, you can pull a sweeper WHILE you mow and you can do this on the wettest grass (I've done it after a hard rain) and mow/sweep - no problem. The downside to this deck is - it will leave a fair amount of grass on the underside of the tractor behind the deck (which I blow off) and if the grass get's to tall, it will somewhat windrow the clippings.

Just thought I'd share a pic and some info on one of my "other color" tractors...

 

[mschutz]

Nice tractor Bill. I have admired those WH from afar and have been tempted a couple of times but have no more room in the garage. A guy at work has one and loves it.

 

[jdiederichs]

Similar to MTD getting Cub Cadet years ago, when Toro bought out Wheel Horse the writing was on the wall. Another proud, quality tractor brand was eventually phased out. Cubs remained IH influenced until the 1997/98 switchover to the 3000 series, prior models were essentially 682 and 982 models with updated features (power steering, super-steer etc.)

Unfortunately many new Toro/WH lawn tractors are now just MTD built clones of the basic MTD product line. Sad for the workers in South Bend, IN. who lost jobs at the real Wheel Horse

 

[bjamison]

Here is a link to a video of a Wheelhorse and a mid-mount grader blade working a gravel/dirt road.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItuZiOAOElM

The video says it's homemade, but Wheelhorse offered a mid mount grader blade and as far as I can tell, it looks just like this one. The weights are defiantly a user add-on.

I've got two of these grader blades and they work great. I've thought about adding removable boxed ends to the grader blade to hold gravel such that you can scrape off the high spots and fill-in the low spots with the excess gravel/dirt scrapped-up.

The tractor in the video is a 520H (H being hydro), 20 hp Onan, gear reduction steering, 1 inch spindles in a swept forward axle. The tractor can take a 60 inch deck and with an aftermarket kit, can easily be converted to foot control hydro. The 520H was/is a top of the line tractor.

There is no depth setting on the hydro Wheelhorses, but the 8 speed gear drive tractors have a height setting feature.

 

[dfrisk]

BILL - I made a belly-mount grader blade for my CC's 30 yrs ago. I found a broken chunk of full size grader blade cutting edge in one of Dad's scrap piles, 1/2" thk high carbon heat-treated steel about 6 inches high and 40+ inches long. The one end was broken, had to cut it off with a hacksaw. Took the teeth completely off 3-4 brand new really good blades cutting it. The mounting brackets & pivot are made from 1/4" thk steel plate, pivot bolt is a 1" dia. grd 5 bolt. Mounting bracket bolts right on the mule drive in place of the mower deck with four 1/2" bolts. Goes on/off in 2 minutes if your slow.

I've used it on everything from grading a packed crushed rock drive a quarter mile long, leveling black fill dirt for landscaping and eventual sodding, getting final grade for pouring concrete, and a couple years ago the old #70 wore it for two years straight re-grading all the ground around our house so the water runs away from the basement instead of INTO the basement. Some places I made cuts of around two feet, in many passes of course.

The tired old K161/181? in the 70 with weights & chains was plenty of power, spin the tires too much when really rolling the dirt & clay off the blade it's real easy to get high centered. I've used it to peal ice off my concrete driveway from 1/4" to 2" thk. Works O-K on little snows, less than an inch, but eventaully the snow hangs up under the tractor when the windrow gets too big.

It's my most used home-made attachment by far for my CC's.

I remember back in spring of '87 when I took it to my Father-in-law's to landscape his back yard, he didn't see the value in even unloading it. "Can we lift it out and set it down?. NO! I drove around his end of town and finally found a dirt pile I could back up to and unload it on, came back and got him, and I backed the tractor off and drove the 72 back to his house and went to work. It was tough getting started, I was grading down piles of dirt 2-3 feet tall next to a RR tie retaining wall. Every Friday for a MONTH He'd have 3-4 single axle dump truck loads of black fill dirt dropped by the side of his house and the 72 would pull load afer heaping load of dirt out and dump it in large windrows. A skid steer would have been the right tool for THAT job! After about two wheel barrows full the wheel barrow got parked in the weeds. When the dirt was all moved everybody would go inside and get cleaned up for lunch except me. By the time they were washed up I'd have all that dirt leveled and packed, all the high spots pealed down, and low spots filled in. Using rakes, shovels, hoes, etc He expected it would be Labor Day before he could put down sod. Well, we got the WHOLE darn family together for a Memorial Day SOD party. The #72 and cart made a great combination hauling rolls of sod too. 26 yrs later there's still a real nice grade where we filled in with all that black dirt, no low spots where the ground settled.

 

[kmcconaughey]

Denny,

Feel free to email photos your homemade grader to me. I've been wanting to see photos of it since you first mentioned it many years ago.

 

[jchamberlin]

Dang, Denny, I wish you could post pictures. I would love the see the blade and the work it did at both your's and your father-in-law's house.
(I bet you were in good standing with the Missus after helping her old man out so well.

)

Edit: Kraig was faster than me this time.

 

[bjamison]

I thought I had pics but can't find them - yet.

One time I had a garden and it was in a low place, so I put a ditch around it to drain off some water. I dug the ditch with a Gravely two wheel tractor and a rotary plow. Don't know if anyone has ever seen or used one of these, but a piece of sod doesn't stand a chance - no matter how tough. However, don't hit a big rock or your arms/legs could be very sore the next day.

I laid black drain pipe in the ditch and ordered some gravel. Being the not so smart type, I needed about 8 tons. I called the quarry and they said $32. I asked if that was a full load and they said no. I asked how much a full load was and how much gravel. They said 16 tons and the same price. I said bring 16 tons.

Next day, I get a frantic call from my Wife/Boss saying there was this HUGE dump truck and they couldn't fit it in the back yard and due to overhead power lines, couldn't dump it in the drive way. So I said, dump it in the front yard. Only 16 tons - right?

When I got home, there were two piles of gravel about the size of a small toyota car and I was in DEEP trouble with the boss. Neighbors have always looked upon me as a bit nuts, so that wasn't a problem with these gravel piles.

At that time, all I had was two Wheelhorse tractors. A 14 hp 8 speed with manual lift and a 520H with hyro lift. BTW - I still have both.

I bought a Johnny Bucket that was designed to fit the sleeve hitch on my 520H and hauled that gravel to my garden one scoop at a time. Worked like a champ. The balance, I used my 8 speed tractor to push the gravel into my driveway. I dressed down everything with the same 8 speed tractor and the grader blade.

Some great seat time!

BTW - while I had the ditch dug around the garden, I dropped a small chicken wire type fence in the ditch. That was the best garden fence ever! Ground hogs couldn't dig under it!

 

[dfrisk]

KRAIG - I'll get some pic's of the blade and send them to you for safe keeping! My blade is different than Dan H's, his design raises higher which would be nice at times, mine only raises about 2 inches above the ground when sitting on a hard level surface. But it does go well below ground level which is good. On the older NF GD tractors with the smaller foot rests you can apply "Body English" to the blade and really make it dig, apply weight to one side and the mule drive lets one side REALLY dig, can make a nice ditch 6+ inches deep in two passes.

Only thing it doesn't like is SOD. But you make a couple passes with your weight on one side and you can peal sod off and work on bare dirt. But the clumps of sod do prevent the blade from penetrating into the dirt if the clumps get under the cutting edge of the blade. Once you get some dirt loosened up you can shave off high spots and pull the dirt into low spots really quick. And with "Body English" you can make real nice gradual slopes for good drainage.

Jeremiah - I could take pic's of the landscaping work I did here, but without "Before & after pic's" which I don;t have it wouldn't really give you an idea of what was done. On the west side of the house, there was a base for a large 10 ft diameter satellite TV dish, I figure the concrete on the bottom of the pole weighed over 2000# and stuck up about 1-1/2 ft above the grade I needed. I dug out along one side of the pole with the SH & loader, then pulled the pole over, up and out of the hole, took both the SH & M to pull the pole & concrete up and out, the SH had plenty of power but was traction limited. Between the time I dug the pole out and pulled it out we got an inch of rain. The 70 & blade filled that 4+ ft deep hole in minutes. I had a high ridge about ten feet away from the west wall of my basement that allowed water to run toward the house, and ultimately into the basement. To eliminate that ridge I hauled 15,000# of dirt away from that side of the house one afternoon, 5-6 loads in my BIG dump cart heaped up to maximum capacity. I dug them with the loader on the SH and carefully dumped the buckets of dirt in the cart from the rear, the cart is only about 2 inches wider than the loader bucket. Only took 3 hours and NO sweat! Would have gone much quicker if I had a hyd bucket on the loader.

And my Father-in-law always liked me, just now he knows how resourceful I am at mechanizing hard work with cheap home-made attachments for Cub Cadets.

 

[jchamberlin]

Great story, Dennis. I have a clearer picture now that I have read your description, which probably tells ME more than the pictures would have.

 

[bjamison]

Traded my log splitter even-up for this:

Tractor is a late model 520H. I think it's about a 1995 year make. It has about 158 hrs on the clock. This model tractor is hydro, has a heavy swept forward axle (which allows for a 60 inch mowing deck and gives a tighter 26 or 28 turning radius), has a gear reduction steering (read mechanical power steering) and 1 inch front spindles. The weak link on these tractors (if you want to call it that) is the 20 hp Onan twin cylinder engine. When they run, they are GREAT, lots of power and smooth. Sometimes they are plagued with electrical wiring issues, but the most frequent complaint is loose valve seats in the aluminum block. Onan aside, the tractor is one of the best Wheelhorse ever made and can be converted to foot control.

The loader is a Kwik Way. It seems to operate smoothly. It's hydro is self contained and is driven off the engine PTO belt drive.

 

[kide]

Now Bill is looking for a maul and a wedge.... (Looks great, Bill!!)

 

[bjamison]

Actually I've got two other log splitters. I've been paying for one for about 17 years and the other for about 15 years. A couple of gravy biscuits and they are good to go...

 

[bjamison]

Here is a link to some pics of a some Wheelhorse tractors at a get together. Some cool pics of moldboard plowing too and a great video of a Wheel horse with dual rear wheels and a BIG tandem disc being pulled by it.

http://www.wheelhorseforum.com/topic/43061-warsaw-indiana-picture-thread/

 

[aschumacher]

That 5th picture is a serious 'Garden TRactor'? with 8 tires on it ! Be neat to watch that tractor do its thing.

 

[bjamison]

A few links to some moldboard plowing videos by some Wheelhorse tractors I found on the internet. I may have one of my Wheelhorse tractors out in the garden doing the same this Thursday if the weather is good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BqRbet6_xw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFsUOam_fUE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd3xjWzv7Z8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEiFFxBqaIw

 

[bjamison]

Did a little plowing today. Used the 520H. His tractor is 20 HP w/Onan engine, is hydro and has hydro lift. I've installed a foot control kit and the combo is a pleasure to plow with.

Soil is a little damp, but plowing went very well.

 

[mhomrighausen]

Bill J. Very nice little tractor. I've a young coworker with a Wheelhorse like yours and he's looking to make a Brinly hitch to put a plow on his tractor. Would you please post some pics with measurements or e:mail me some? I know he'll be very appreciative. TIA!!!

 

[bjamison]

Marlin - I'll get you some info sooner than later on the hitch.

One more pic of the size of the completed garden.

I've thought about plowing the whole garden area - way back everything you see around the patch I'm plowing was in garden. I have planted the whole thing myself. It would be kind of cool to plow up the whole thing and have a family plow day.

Next up is let this ground sit for a few months while I get the carb back together on my old Troybilt Horse tiller. Once I till it down, I'll sow some buckwheat and rye. Late spring, I'll mow it off and moldboard plow again for a new 2014 garden.

 

[jstertz]

Bill-- That 520 looks like it is making short work of that sod! I'm jealous! How well did the foot control work for plowing duties. I know that works really well for mowing lawn but what was your feeling with using it for moldboard duties?