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1989 Ford LGT14D ultimate mower build

FordFascist

FordFascist

Ford Bigot
Joined
May 21, 2020
Member Number
826
Messages
448
Loc
Reno, NV
As many of you know, I am a Ford guy. I also needed a riding mower. At this moment in time my backyard was starting to become a fire hazard - my push mower was being a dick and I had already used a reel of .083 weedwhacker line. I was also quoted $800 for someone to come and clean this mess up because I am not a gardener.

After some research while in the bathroom last year I discovered that a riding mower fit my requirements:
  1. Ford
  2. Diesel
  3. Hydrostatic

The 1987-1991 Ford LGT 14 and 16D tractors. The 14D has a 660CC 3 cylinder Shibaura diesel, full ladder frame, 2 range hydrostatic transmission, hydraulic deck lift and PTO drive for the mower. It comes with a 48" wide three blade fairway mower. A lot of guys use them for small airplane tugs at private airports that can also mow the grass runway. In an added twist of fate, they match my 1991 Ford 1220 in this thread.

From the Brochure in 1987:
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Now was for the search. There aren't a lot of these things out west. Having travelled much of the country over the years for work and talking to people is the simple fact that in the eastern part of the US grass does not need to have sprinklers. That kind of dynamic means you would need something with a 4.5 gallon tank of diesel and a 48" PTO. I live in Western NV - where we water shit and it's a 50-50 on if it grows or if the fucking horses eat it. Side note, these things were really expensive. I have seen receipts in 1989 for $6500 for a fully decked out LGT14D which is nuts - that's about $15,000 in Bidenbucks.

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I ended up finding one west of Houston, TX for $1500 scouring Craigslist. It looked a little shitty but that can be fixed. Now I had to find a way to make back to Reno for not a lot of money. The owner was a hillbilly. Didn't take care of it but this was the best deal I could find. I had a family friend meet him at a halfway point from Austin and take it back to his house. I then shipped it to Reno via U-Ship with a hotshot delivering air conditioners to the Silver Legacy. Fuck yeah.

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A couple weeks later and it was mine:
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Step 2 was to figure out what the God-awful noise was from the mower deck. The engine is quiet. Given that it is effectively the same engine used on refer trailers, sailboat engines and Generac Diesel engines in diesel pushers.

I had to disassemble and go to town with the pressure washer:

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Operation Ghetto paint booth. I opted for Rustoleum Sail Blue as a suitable replacement. It turns out that Ford Blue and New Holland blue are all different colors than the the 87-91 Tractors so I had to improvise. I chose Rustoleum white as it was the closest to Ford Oxford White I could find.

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Next was to rebuild the mower drive. A lot of this obscure mower stuff is ridiculously expensive to source. I figured I could fix it cheaper. Lucky for me all of the bearings are standard Amazon fare. The biggest part I had to fix was the keyway on the drive spindle. The mower takes a 90° drive gearbox to drive the center blade and in turn has a pulley that drives the adjacent pulleys / blades.

I found that whoever had owned this previously had obviously hit something hard and caused this to break the key. The key got wedged in the pulley and chewed it up.

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It had also oblonged the cast pulley and caused it to be .050 over the shaft size. I knew that was going to be a challenge. I also egg shaped the shaft.

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Slowly building up the keyway to not put too much heat in the shaft. This thing is 25mm diameter so it's plenty strong for 14hp.

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My Coleman stove putting in work!

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Wrapped in a fire blanket to cool slowly.

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Turning down to the right diameter.

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The secondary purpose of this thing was to move trailers around because my forklift sinks in the dirt / gravel and my other tractor has a backhoe on it. So I needed to build a decent receiver.

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I now decided it was time to replace the wheel bearings since they had some axial play in them. Good thing Amazon stocks all of this stuff. It was the same bearing that the mower spindles took which was nice for carrying spares.

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My next project was to figure out how to make this into a bagger. Keep in mind that finding stuff for this model year of tractor is next to impossible so I had to rely on making it. I found a bagger for free on Craigslist for a Craftsman / MTD rider mower so I picked it up after work. It needed a mower chute to hook it up. I have no illusions about being a fiberglass craftsman.

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I made a quick 90° bracket out of some .095 wall 2" square tube and welded it to the bagger bracket. Now it slides in the receiver.

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Using Masonite to built a rough template to overlay the fiberglass. I need to adapt my mower chute to be able to adapt to a 10" round adapter and also not exceed a maximum deck width of 56" so I can drive through my front gate.

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Getting a square peg into a round hole

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Like most of these grass catchers, the blades don't produce all that much air flow to push heavier grass clippings up the tube. Good proof of concept, but I will likely need to add a blower (like a bilge blower from Amazon) or an agitator to get the heavier clippings into the catcher. More to come.
 
Mower part is all finished. One of the many complaints about these tractors is that they have a permanent magnet generator instead of an alternator. That means that this produces a maximum of 15 amps at 3300 RPM. The glow plugs and starter pull a lot of amps so recharging means you have to run it at high RPM all the time and I was barely eeking 12.5 volts at idle. The other thing is that the regulator is super expensive and mine was intermittently going out. I also like to drive my tractor at night while having a beer and dim lights are unAmerican.

I found the standard Denso 35A alternator on Amazon was a perfect candidate for this thing. It was also half the price of the regulator and had more than twice the output. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XDHCKJC?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

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Now I get 14.4 volts at idle
 
My steering had always been a little loose so I figured it was time to pull it out and fix it while I had some downtime.

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I installed new bushings which I am shocked are easy and cheap to find on Amazon and changed the thrust washers out for roller thrust bearings.

The bell crank is much tighter now.

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Then coffee + the Craigslist app found me this guy:

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Which I bought because the following is bullshit:

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Now to mount my $150 snow plow attachment.

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Then I had to mock this up to see how much force it needed. I considered plumbing my tractor to use Power Beyond valving in the hydraulic lift system but figured that was overkill for this project. You generally let plow blades float when plowing so downward force is not really required. I used a fish scale to see what kind of force I was dealing with here.

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After some quick calculations I determined that a middle of the line linear actuator would do the job.

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Building the mounting post for the actuator

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Mocked in place:

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I then added some paint and an H-bridge using some generic relays along with a spring to help lift this off the ground faster.


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Time to smash some snow banks.


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I used some old forklift tires to add balast

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Then I put one some tire chains and laughed when I saw my neighbors wield a snow shovel.

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drive to RunningProblems house was during summer


I really want one of these now but I have nowhere to park it. I can confirm it goes faster than the fascist will show online.
 
Other stuff that I discovered while building this tractor:

My starter went out early on and I was in the process of looking for a new one. Messicks wants this much for a starter. Not to pick on them but holy shit.

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I went deep down the rabbit hole of Japanese starters and discovered that the same starter came in Hyundais, Mitsubishis and rebranded Chrysler vehicles from the late 80s.

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I got a replacement (upgrade) gear reduction unit at O'Reilly Auto for $60. Here is the part number: R612423A
Application is a 1987 Dodge Ram 50 with a 2.0 or 2.6L, or a Dodge Colt of the same year.

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mano002 said:
Now I want an old lawn tractor even more! How do you think it would do moving the trailer on grass?
Click to expand...

It's got pretty good-sized tires (23 x 10) on the rear and weighs over 1000 lbs so I would assume it would do pretty well. I haven't had any issues moving trailers around.
 
FordFascist said:
Other stuff that I discovered while building this tractor:

I got a replacement (upgrade) gear reduction unit at O'Reilly Auto for $60. Here is the part number: R612423A
Application is a 1987 Dodge Ram 50 with a 2.0 or 2.6L, or a Dodge Colt of the same year.
Click to expand...
Fucked Over Rebuilt Dodge :flipoff2:
 
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