High Horsepower Garden Tractor Fitted With Custom-Built Engine

High Horsepower Garden Tractor Fitted With Custom-Built Engine ENGINES Engines 25-6-24 At first glance, Brett Hasbrouck's model 126 Cub Cadet garden tractor looks pretty much like it did when it rolled off the assembly line in the 1970's. Once you notice the 31-in. "pulling tires" on the rear axle, though, you might suspect it's not quite stock. "When I rebuilt the tractor, I wanted it to look as close to stock as possible," says the Middletown, Connecticut, garden tractor puller. A closer look at Hasbrouck's little tractor reveals individual brakes on the rear wheels, but not much else - until you look under the hood. There, in the same amount of space occupied by the original 10 hp single-cylinder 4-cycle engine, sits a custom built 2-cylinder, 2-cycle powerhouse that turns out just under 200 hp. Hasbrouck built the engine in his home metal shop, based on a design used for motocross bike engines. "The idea is to put two motocross bike engine cylinders together on one crankshaft to make a high horsepower pulling engine," he says. Working with a friend who has a computer program for designing engines, Hasbrouck put together a design that uses two Honda single cylinder castings, machined to fit together and mount on a crankcase Hasbrouck built in his shop. "I also had to make the crankshaft because there was nothing available that would work in the engine we designed," he says. The twin-cylinder engine has a displacement of 1,000 cc. When they used a fuel mixture based on methyl alcohol, the engine turned out about 150 hp. When they switched to a gasoline-based mixture, it upped the output to more than 190 hp. Because the original transmission and rear end weren't designed to handle the horsepower and torque the little engine puts out, Hasbrouck dropped in a Jeep transmission and a Ford 9-in. rear end, narrowed to just slightly wider than the original Cub Cadet axle. Instead of a clutch, he installed a constant variable transmission (CVT) between the engine and the Jeep transmission. "It's the same belt drive transmission used in snowmobiles, and gives you increased torque as the engine speed and forward speed of the tractor increases," he explains. Hasbrouck's Cub Cadet still has factory steering but he added individual rear wheel brakes, complete with separate hydraulic reservoirs for each, to help steer it while pulling. "The front end tends to come off the ground when it has a load behind it," he says. That, and the tractor may reach speeds of more than 20 mph while attached to the 8,900-lb. weight transfer sled used in garden tractor pulls. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Brett Hasbrouck, 1262 Millbrook Rd., Middletown, Conn. 06457 (ph 860 343-1618; E-mail: bhasbrouck@mohawk-mfg.com).

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