Well, I bet it’s not as badass as mine.

So, remember when I ran out of gas after dark and decided to bush hog that scarry stretch of driveway?  Well, being as I’m on the east side of a freakin mountain, the sun sets a tad earlier than normal, so I added some halogen lights to the C.  They do a pretty good job of lighting things up.  The L’s and C’s used a magneto and not an alternator, so I mounted the battery tray (though I have yet to upgrade to electric starter) and did up a custom wiring harness and switch mount.  The mount is (try not to laugh) an old TV ariel clamp that held the antenna to the mounting pole.  I had to modify it a bit, and still need to paint it, but it fits right in on the left handlebar.  The mounts for the lights are flat bar welded to the tank straps from the parts tractor, sandblasted and painted AC orange.  For the most part they look almost stock.  Purists will probably bitch, but this isn’t their equipment, so fuck ‘em.

The yard rake is something I drew up and fabricated this weekend.  I hate raking, and using the loader to clean up the bush hog leftovers kind of tears up the ground.  I got the idea from an ebay auction.  Some guy took the mount from the snow plow (essentially removed the bade from the swiveling mount) and bolted it to a commercial compact tractor rake.  I looked at Northern and Tractor Supply, but off-the-shelf rakes kind of got pricey, and it was looking like I’d have to take a torch to it right away.

Dad had all kinds of steel at the house, and I did see some haying teeth at TSC (great place for fabricating stuff).  Anyway, to make this a little shorter, I decided to make the swiveling yoke (unlike the auction guy), but still use the tractor side of the plow mount.  The haying teeth ended up being just the right size for the 1 1/2″ tube I had, and the correct length (mounted like I did it) so the tractor sits level.  3″ channel and a piece of 3″ square made the rake side of the mount.  As it turns out, the whole thing ended up weighing less than the 30″ rotary deck, and without the battery up front would have been ass heavy.  I found a barbell and a set of 4.5 lb weights in my old basement, so I hacked the tube and welded the halves where you see them.  That way I can weight one side or the other and still have it heavy on the nose.

I’m sure I probably over engineered the rake, but I’d rather have it that way than have it fail in the field.  The other nice thing is the haying teeth are easily replaceable, and readily available at TSC.  The black part just below the bar is rubber, so they flex.  I tried it out raking the back of the dam, and it sure does what I wanted it to do.  I also tried it on the cleared part of the driveway and it sure makes cleanup easier.  As a side benefit, it’s probably the tool I’ll use to rake in the grass seed, as it doesn’t tear up the soil.

Till next time…

For everyone that got to see the Bandit crash video on my youbube site, I hope you liked it.  It’s gone now.  I guess some dick reported the audio track and YT disabled it.  Without sound, it looses something.  So I deleted it.  That and all the other vids that had tunes for BG effect.  WTG YT/Google.  Ever think that maybe folks might hear those tunes and actually go out and (God forbid) purchase it?  It’s not like it was a clean tune only soundtrack that someone could rip off and get for free (no, it had other sounds that “messed up” the original tune).  About half the vids I had that had music for BG were flagged and muted, so I said fuck it, they all gotta go.  I hope all those artists loose money over the nazi strongarm BS you guys are so hip on.  I hope they become starving artists, and thank their lucky stars they have RIAA, google and youtube looking out for them.  Way to go.

So from now on, all my vids will be just as lame and boring as all the other ones on YT.  Woot.  Another step towards pulling the plug on that page alltogether.