My Other Hobby

[stevefitzwater]

Well with my declining health, it is more my sons hobby now, but a little back ground, this started out as a car restoration hobby with my son, then the roof fell through, he is a GM Tech, and when the auto companies failed, they closed a lot of dealers, his dealer was closed, I have video of the last car we did, he sold it a Marine in Florida, so I made of video of it prior to shipping, to document the condition prior to turning it over to the shipper. Since my health was getting worse and he was struggling, going from 70k a year to $25K is a painful change, I decided to start restoring John Deere Lawn Tractors, same principle, just cost a lot less then a car, the average condition lawn tractor can go from $800 to $4,000 depending on the size, vintage and popularity. This tractor you will be seeing pictures cost me $1,200 it came with a 48″ double stage snow blower, it did not run, it is replacing a modern version I bought in 2006, a 300x which had a snow blower, so I sold the 300x snow blower for $1600 in December, so financially I am already ahead on the deal, and I still have to sell the lawn tractor ($1500 – $1800), which will cover the cost of materials and parts for the next tractor to be restored.

Right now I have 4 riding lawn tractors on a moderate size city lot.. LOL. I have one that is setup for the winter, it is basically used for clearing snow, it is an ugly old 1969 140 H3 with a cab on it that needs a complete over haul, but there was 2 in front of it, one was finished earlier this year. A 1996 John Deere 318, it was a frame off restoration, everything was stripped, repaired, and then repainted. It took almost 2 years, he does this at night or when there is a free weekend. The motor was completely overhauled, re-bored and John Deere used one engine block for two motors, a 18 hp (like this one) and a 20 HP, by making a few changes, it now has a 20hp twin in it. The fiberglass hood had to be repaired, it had several cracks and a few missing areas, the seat pan, a part originally powder coated by the manuf. ad to be ground down an then all of the rust repaired. Anyway, the last piece to finishing off this one, was adding bar ties to the rear (looks like a full size tracker tire) and 5 rims to the front. Since it has arrived back from my sons shop, it has been used almost weekly, when it gets cleaned, I will add a final image. Oh, my son calls this my wife’s “HotRod”, and had me cut out a vinyl template to add some flames, they are on the engine cover under the hood, there should be one pic of it from the front..

Here is the link to the images, they are “Poster size”, but windows should resize them for you to it your screen, as far as your phone Chris.. sry.

http://www.thefitzwaterhistory.com/Horology/318/

[bernie weishapl]

Nice hobby. Looking pretty good. We all need a nice release from the daily grind.

[arutha]

Beautiful job Steve, I love to see anything restored.
Paul.

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