our 1st wheelhorse mud mower

i found a few tractors on craigs list and one was an old wheel horse B80, i'm not sure of the yr but for $100 my brother couldn't pass it up, he's only wanted one since we built our very 1st mud mower, so he renewed a small personal loan and we made the 30 mile trip to murphysboro, il. and ended up bringing 2 tractors back, one was just a junk mtd with a good briggs 14.5 ohv we got for $30, we'll scrap the rest of the rusted out hunk of junk, the real prize was the wheelhorse
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we're planning to try and get the original kohler running, but it's locked up atm so we may not be able to,, depends on the damage if any sitting in a field for yrs did to the motor other than locking it up, if we can't he plans to fit a predator 212 to it and run that, the stock rear tires hold air but the fronts are in bad shape, hard and dry rotted, the transmission shifts freely and it seems to roll without issue, the clutch and brake pedals are seized, but nothing some wd40 and elbow grease can't fix

Welcome to the Wheel Horse Club!!!!

It'd be interesting to see what that K181 looks like when you tear into it.  Is that an 8 speed?  I couldn't see the hi/lo shifter so I wonder if it's a 3 speed which is still great.  This tractor must have done some plowing or grading in its life because I see the plow/grader mount still bolted to the transaxle.

This tractor is very interesting to me.  It's a model in between my 702 and my C-81.  Your B-80 shares some features with both of my tractors.  Cool.

Definitely worth the $100 and a short road trip.

That's a sweet tractor for $100! I'll be real glad if you can save that ol' K Series engine. Looking forward to more progress!

Crazy_Carl wrote:

Welcome to the Wheel Horse Club!!!!

It'd be interesting to see what that K181 looks like when you tear into it.  Is that an 8 speed?  I couldn't see the hi/lo shifter so I wonder if it's a 3 speed which is still great.  This tractor must have done some plowing or grading in its life because I see the plow/grader mount still bolted to the transaxle.

This tractor is very interesting to me.  It's a model in between my 702 and my C-81.  Your B-80 shares some features with both of my tractors.  Cool.

Definitely worth the $100 and a short road trip.

it says it's a 4 speed, but the shifter knob and when we were going through the gears both say it's a 3 speed with reverse, we noticed the old mounts on the axle as well and thought it must have had a plow or small grader, something like that on the back

AllisKidD21 wrote:

That's a sweet tractor for $100! I'll be real glad if you can save that ol' K Series engine. Looking forward to more progress!

we're going to do our best to save it, after looking at it closer we think it may be the pto that's locked up, it seems to have some sort of brake on it and that's clamped tight, my brother Jeremy wants to do this up right, he's going to leave the paint as is, but we'll pull the transaxle apart to check everything over in it, and there's signs that someone may have worked on the engine already, but we will find out soon, the guy we got this from also has 3 other wheel horse tractors, a mid60s 655, but it's in a lot rougher shape, a 211-4 with a pretty cool column shift 4 speed and a charger12 with a hydro they still have the decks, we may actually end up with at least 1 more, or the really cool looking bolens h12xl he has

nice, it doesn't look too bad, looks like most of the parts are there...

@darkside0914 wrote:

it says it's a 4 speed, but the shifter knob and when we were going through the gears both say it's a 3 speed with reverse, we noticed the old mounts on the axle as well and thought it must have had a plow or small grader, something like that on the back

That sounds right.  They counted reverse as a speed.  Sears did the same.

MightyRaze wrote:

@darkside0914 wrote:

it says it's a 4 speed, but the shifter knob and when we were going through the gears both say it's a 3 speed with reverse, we noticed the old mounts on the axle as well and thought it must have had a plow or small grader, something like that on the back

That sounds right.  They counted reverse as a speed.  Sears did the same.

Wheel horses I have are also the same, shifting is in a "H" pattern, 3 forward, 1 reverse....

well poo, the old kohler is free, i pulled that pto brake off and she turned like new but no compression at all, hoping it's just a stuck valve, and no fire, not that we expected it to have any, does this engine have points? it has a coil and condenser so i would assume points as well. we'll tear it down once the rain stops and check it out, hopefully it's not a busted rod or piston

Yeah I wouldn't be surprised of it was just a stuck valve. Also yeah, it'll be 12v ignition with breaker points and a condenser. The points are located in a little box below the carb and next to the cam gear cover.

Yeah, stuck valves seem rather common on Kohlers.  Although I have gotten one with a busted rod before, but mine's the first busted rod I've heard of in that series engine.

Well, it can happen to any engine when sit for a while out in the weather. If one of the valves is left open the exposed stem just rusts up and the valve can't move. Hopefully that's all that wrong with yours, 'cuz I'd just love to see 'er running! Haha.

AllisKidD21 wrote:

Well, it can happen to any engine when sit for a while out in the weather. If one of the valves is left open the exposed stem just rusts up and the valve can't move. Hopefully that's all that wrong with yours, 'cuz I'd just love to see 'er running! Haha.

Yes I know but because these engines are so old they have more of a chance to have sat for a while than most engines. And it seems that it would be easier for the valves to get rusty when they are in a horizontal shaft engine, because water could leak in through the spark plug hole.
Okay, let's get back on topic, don't mean to be jacking the thread.

AllisKidD21 wrote:

Yeah I wouldn't be surprised of it was just a stuck valve. Also yeah, it'll be 12v ignition with breaker points and a condenser. The points are located in a little box below the carb and next to the cam gear cover.

ok that brings me to the next question, does this need a battery to get fire? that is assuming the points, coil, and condenser are good, i know some old point systems do require a battery to run

darkside0914 wrote:

AllisKidD21 wrote:

Yeah I wouldn't be surprised of it was just a stuck valve. Also yeah, it'll be 12v ignition with breaker points and a condenser. The points are located in a little box below the carb and next to the cam gear cover.

ok that brings me to the next question, does this need a battery to get fire? that is assuming the points, coil, and condenser are good, i know some old point systems do require a battery to run

Yes it does.

@Double W Cross Ranch ok i thought it might, we were jumping the starter directly to crank it, it has a battery in it, but it's toast

Yeah, being a 12v ignition system, it will require a healthy battery in it to make spark.

It does have a compression release tho, so that could also be why it's spinning freely. Unless your hearing clanking and rattling , then the con rod is broken. These points are the easiest to work on, since they are external you can just pop the cover off and sand the corrosion off of the points and it should fire right up hopefully if the carb is good.

biggasmowers wrote:

It does have a compression release tho, so that could also be why it's spinning freely. Unless your hearing clanking and rattling , then the con rod is broken. These points are the easiest to work on, since they are external you can just pop the cover off and sand the corrosion off of the points and it should fire right up hopefully if the carb is good.

the carb looks clean, but we won't know until we get it off, the fuel filter is clean to, no signs of having had old gas in it, but it could have been replaced, as i said before it looks like someone was doing some engine work tryiong to get it running before we got it, there's no clanking sounds coming from the engine just no compression so most likely a stuck valve or the compression relief, we'll see when we get into it in the next few days, but for this weekend we have another job to do for a friend who bought a cub that had the engine pulled and a few parts taken off it, we have to put it back together and hope the engine's good

it looks like all our projects are on hold for the time being, the reason being we have a chance at a new house to buy cfd with a nice size garage, if we get it we'll be able to actually work on our stuff in relative comfort and be able to lock it up so the thieves can't steal it, so for the time being we are going to be putting all our money into trying to get this place and hopefully moving soon

Sweet! I hope it works out for you!

Double W Cross Ranch wrote:

Sweet! I hope it works out for you!

I just found out we got the house, my brother talked to the owner while i took my nephew to traffic court, he told me when we got back the house was ours,   we have to wait till the current resident moves next week, then comes my least favorite thing to do, move.

we signed the contract yesterday for the new house, we'll be moving in this weekend, should be in completely by Tuesday, and my brother found something for his wheel horse, a predator 420 13hp engine for $100 from a guy he does work for on occasion, it was on a wood chipper. but he scrapped the main body which was shot, and offered Jeremy the engine cheap, we still plan to get the old kohler running, but this will get his wheelhorse back under it's own power again, that in itself will be a great help, since the thing weighs as much as 3 of my murray widebodies

Sweet.  There's a lot of bugget performance mods you can do to a predator 420.  Is it electric start?  Sounds like you have it made with the new house and wheel horse project.

Crazy_Carl wrote:

Sweet.  There's a lot of bugget performance mods you can do to a predator 420.  Is it electric start?  Sounds like you have it made with the new house and wheel horse project.

sorry it took me so long to get back here, no the engine doesn't have electric start, pull rope only,
after weeks of soaking the brake pedal shaft in penetrating oil we finally got it freed up, and now that it's free and the clutch is freed up, which was much easier than the brake, we mounted the engine, had to move the plate rearward about 5 inches and remove the battery box, we also had to drill 2 new holes in the plate because the originals didn't line up with the engine mount holes, and we found out this could be an older Honda engine not a predator, but a predator 420 is the only one I could find that has a single center bolt in the valve cover and is the 13 HP we were told this is, doesn't really matter to me what it actually is since it runs perfectly, been sitting since before we moved and it started on the 3rd pull today, we only have minor things to do now to get this running under it's own power, namely a belt, a proper fuel line, the temporary line we hooked up is actually a hose off of my aunts old oxygen machine, it works but not something we want to run very long, and lastly a kill switch, we are just grounding the wire to the engine block to kill it atm, he has the original kohler up for sale, said he'd rather sell it to someone who could fix it that knew what they were doing, atm my brother plans to run the tractor as is body wise, he's going to lube up the chassis and replace the seat but otherwise leave it alone for now, he does want to put on a gm single wire alternator and mount some lights, but I don't personally see the point since we never go riding at night