The "189" - one piece at a time 149 conversion

[sorner]

I don't know if I will, I don't have the pulleys in that mule yet but I held the arms in place where they would be and I tried to visualize how it will look and I think it will be fine. We'll see.. The alignment and clearance looks a bit misleading in the pictures because the cast iron grill frame has that lip that sticks back toward the engine. The PTO pulley isn't that close to the front of the frame. I was actually more concerned the PTO pulley would be too far back actually. I'll report back on this once I have that part put together. I still have some wiggle room to move the engine either direction if I would need to.

That's a cyclops mule in it, so it'll have the 5/8" pulleys, and I have a hanger for 48"/54" decks. If I have clearance issues with the deck because of the front axle being lower, I have a cyclops axle I could use that looks like it'll fit, or I could just go with taller tires on the front. The front tires on it are tiny, so that's making it look lower than it should be I think. I'll see how that all works out when I get that far.

[jimbob200521]

I believe you're going to have to put a Cyclops front axle on if you want to use the 48"/54" GT decks as they are larger than previous decks. The axle on the Cyclops can accommodate them because they have a swept forward design to allow for the bigger decks.

[sorner]

Yeah that's one of my concerns too. I'm hoping to make some progress on this this weekend, but picnics... I have the cyclops axle but no wheels for it.

[darkminion_17]

Just a thought, maybe it would have been easier to adapt the 149 parts, hood, grill, dash tower, ect ect.to the 1864....

[sorner]

I had the transmission and engine into the 1641 frame first, but the spread frame is wider for the grille so I would have had issues there and had to fabricate something to mount the grille to, and it's lower in the front so I would have had issues with the alignment issues with the hood. Also a stumbling block was going to be the deck height adjustment. I want to use a lift and sleeve hitch on it, so I wouldn't be able to put the rear hitch plate on it, so I wouldn't have that rear plate for the height adjust. Another issue was going to be the hydro plumbing for the deck lift. I would have had to re-plumb all of that. It's not completely out of the question at this point, but I decided to go back to the 149 frame and try it for now. The easiest path would have been to use the 1641 frame with the plastic hood and all that but then I would just have a cyclops with cast iron rear. What's the fun in that?

[J-Mech]

Putting a sleeve hitch on the 1641 and still have the height control would have been easy. Dash tower would have bolted on with very little modification and you could have used all the hydraulics off the 149. Simple spacer for under the grille shell....

I agree with Lew. I kinda think you went the long way around the block to achieve the same end result.... and you don't have it done yet.

[sorner]

That may be, but this is the way I went with it after weighing the options. How could I use the 149 hydro ram? It's a much longer stroke than the 1641. Even if I drill new holes to mount the bracket, I don't see it working with the rock shaft. I would have to swap all that over too. The grill shell is about 2" smaller than the frame of the 1641 so I would need a mounting plate to bolt to the original holes and sit the grill shell on that to bolt tight.

Like I said, I can always try going with the 1641 frame again. But after looking things over I thought it would be easier to do with the 149 frame in the end.

[J-Mech]

You would use the cylinder that is already on the 1641....
Why on earth would you swap it?

[sorner]

It's a different fitting. So I would need to adapt it.

[J-Mech]

Yeah.... so what? You can make a new hydraulic hose. That's a whopping $13. Maybe $26 for 2 of them.

If you are really really tight, you might just be able to put a new fitting on the hoses from the 149, if they are long enough.