8
This was a productive weekend. My brother was available to handle the fabricating tasks while I worked on getting the engine installed. We took the trailer across town and picked up a clean but poorly running 3014 for my brother and we worked on that in between working on my tractor.
I drilled the new holes in the frame and bolted the engine down while my brother modified the clutch anti-rotation bracket. The pump coupler bolted right on and the debris screen installed just how I hoped it would.
I pulled the hood off and decided that raising the hinge bushings in the frame would be easier than cutting the hinge welds off the hood and adding a spacer there. My brother cut some new bushings for the hinge pin and welded them to some 1"x1" square tube then welded them to the frame. We're going to weld the tubes shut to make it look a little cleaner. In total, the hinge rod got moved up 1-1/4" and the hood clears the air cleaner with some room to spare.
I installed the new muffler and we tried finding a way to run the exhaust out that didn't involve cutting the hood but there just wasn't a good way to do it. My brother built a turbo car and ran the exhaust out the fender of the car with a nice stainless bezel with good results so we opted to go that route. I felt it would be easier and less gaudy than the big gaping hole in the front of the hood like the 4023 has. I cut back the outlet pipe of the muffler inline with the hood, traced the OD of the pipe on the hood with a marker from the inside, and my brother cut the hole and finessed it with a carbide burr. I'm going to make a nice stainless bezel to clean up the hole.
Excuse the booger wiring job in these pics. It was getting late and I was in a hurry to just get it running and as you can see in the last pic with snow all over the tractor, I did get it running. I filled it with oil, primed it, squared away a wiring issue, and started it up. The muffler is actually pretty quiet and it has a nice tone to it. After it warmed up I pulled it outside, thoroughly burnished the clutch, then attacked some old hard pack snow my dad pushed with his quad a week ago. The power difference is huge. The old 16hp would have struggled and lost rpm where the new engine barely got on the governor. I can't wait to run this thing in some fresh, deep snow.