OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Restoring, Customising and Modifying Ride-On Mowers Homelite 12.5/39 New Beer Wagon (fast)

A bloke from work had seen my add on the notice board and asked what sort of mowers are you looking for? I said what do you recon, the same as the pictures on it (victa 18 and Rotomo). He said ive got an old ride on up home if you want it, but it does not have any cutting deck, (perfect, less to take off) so I said I would go and have a look, it was a Homelite 12.5/39, he had a soggy beer box that he said had some bits in it but did not know what they were, so we loaded it in the back of my ute (3 flat tires) and I bought it home, pumped up the (not completly flat) back tire and all good, but no such luck with the fronts, tubeless and had perish cracks in them, (got two tubes and now good), pulled the soggy box apart and it had the main body of a carby and manifold, complete air box & battery hold down. Someone had broken the bit off under the main jet where the bowl screws on and was about stuffed so I just took the carb off the 8.5hp that I had lined up for my Victa Transmatic ride on, and bolted it up, also stole the new starter motor I bought for the Victa as well as the one on it had the insulation broken from were the power wire goes on, topped up the oil and put some fresh fuel in and the battery out of my CanAm and it started straight up and runs sweet.




I wish I had taken some more pics of it when I got it as I have only got one and its not that good, anyway thought everything was going to well as when I put it in gear (transaxel) it did not move so I pulled off one back wheel to check the keyway was in there, and it was, so pulled off the other one and the whole axel came out, the spline looked ok and on the end was a groove so I asumed it may be just a circlip had come off, so stripped the ass end out and apart and sure enough I was right, put it back together with a new circlip and she's now a goer. By the way I did not want to spend much if any on this thing.

Next the exhaust was rattling so I tryed taking it off and just managed to break both bolts off in the head, they had enough sticking out to get the multigrips on but they both broke again, (bugger) the I noticed the thread in the head so off to Nubco after thinking about how to make the exhaust and bent up a peice of wire to take to the exhaust shop on the way back, first it was straight out but was way too noisy for sneaking around after a few beers, just luck had it a mate had a small muffler off some sort of mini bike in his trailer he was taking to the tip, so I snaveled that and this is the result.



I give it a paint with some off the shelf hammertone green and a can off black, made some stickes for it and tidied it up a bit. Will put pics in a new post as I'm not sure how many you can add in one go.