Another Free GT 4000

V

vintagerust

Member
I went the other day to claim another free GT, this one a 4000 model with a 46" deck from 1998
Overall the machine is pretty clean, its got good rubber, no dryrot, and it looks very presentable overall. The deck is solid but the guy who had it said the thing shakes really bad and eats up right left front tires 'ever since he let his brother inlaw use it.

He handed me two new tires with, he said it hadn't been started in 8 years. It took two of us an hour to dig it out from under all the junk in the guy's garage.

Once out it looked really good, dusty but not battered. I could see right away the one wheel was sitting funny.

I winched it up onto my trailer, and headed home.

Once home I charged the battery, and it seems to hold a charge just fine, i added some fresh gas and a new fuel filter and it started right up.

When I engaged the blades I was in shock at how bad it shook. A quick look told teh whole story when I saw one blade hanging down below the rest.

I started by lifting it up and removing the blades, it calls for three 15 9/16" blades. It had one 14", cut down from a 19", one original blade at 15 9/16, that had been worn down to about 12", and one 21" push mower blade with one end cut off now measuring 14". The long end was bent downward to clear the deck.
Three new blades fixed it, and its great now but this is what I removed.

P000924.JPG

left to right from the bottom up.
Notice the center hole on the bottom blade.
It wasn't out a few ounces, it was out of balance by half a pound or more.
The thought that someone used it like that long enough for he blades to get this bad is insane.
The bottom blade, where you can see the bolt was not centered, had a piece of old blade underneath stuck to the hub so the blade didn't engage the 5 star pattern hub at all. Not that it mattered. The part number on it says its an original 21" blade. The piece under the hub center appears to have been the piece cut off one end of the blade with a 1" hold drilled through it. The bolt holding it on was longer, apparently a re threaded galvanized carriage bolt with two flats ground on the head to fit a wrench. Someone ran a fine thread tap over a course thread bolt and put it in with an open end wrench and went with it.

The issue with the front wheel was a missing inner wheel bushing. The bushing was broken off with only a bit it remaining, the spindle had been wrapped with duct tape and slathered with grease.
That repair matched the blade situation.
 
Shoot dog, the Pakistani Truckers on youtube will have that fixed before lunch. Make their own blades out of a wrecked truck bumper. Lots of grinding and cutting in FLIP FLOPS.(y)
 
Amazing what people will do with zero regard for theirs or others safety. Push mower blade on a 0-turn? Yeah some decks accept them but cutting and bending them down....... WOW.

This sounds like my newest bestest buddy on here SLOW LEAK.
 
It was on a GT 4000, a front engine garden tractor.

The blades on the GT are no different than those on a push mower, just shorter.
They're super thin. I stuck a new set on the thing, I think the total with shipping for two sets was under $25.

The thing that got me was that they cut the end off the 21" blade then went through the trouble to make a spacer to lower the blade, then still bent the blade downward on the end that was still too long. The one end was way short after the cut, a good 3" from the sides of the deck, the long end stuck out the sides from underneath. Being on the left side, you likely could have trimmed your toe nails when it was running as the long end was sticking out from under the deck as it turned about an inch or so.
Not only did it stick out, being bent down made it more like a rototiller than a mower, and the vibration was horrendous. They no doubt ran it that way for a long time just looking at the amount of rust on the blades and the cut end is tattered as bad as the others. All of them are bent, especially the middle blade but it likely had a few collisions with the left hand blade.

I don't know how any one could do that and still run the thing and think it was normal, or safe to run. I'm surprised the spindle shaft didn't just snap from the imbalance.
 
Surprised the deck didn't try to warp or torque out on itself. Must of been some huge vibes in the operator seat. Like one of those giant street repair vibrating rollers.
 
When I loaded it onto my trailer, which works like a mini rollback, I didn't notice anything hanging down but I did see the ends of the right blade all chewed up. Its the third one of these I've found for free so far. Other then the wheel bushings and the blades, it wasn't in bad shape. Oddly the deck, besides the one baffle was spotless, no rust, no big dents, good rollers, etc. The hood had a few light dings up front but nothing bad, and everything else works on it.
I never paid much attention to these before, I most had all Bolens, CC, and Simplicity machines over the years, only a few older Suburban models that belonged to relatives long ago. These are a far cry from the lesser models by a long shot.

I think the reason the three I have here are so clean otherwise is that there are no large properties in the area, and the three places that these came from were all 75x75 lots with postage stamp sized lawns. My own lawn is only about four or five passes with a 46" deck and its done. Certainly not anything I'd need a 22hp tractor with a 46 or 50" deck.

I also find it odd that three out of the four models I found over the last two weeks are nearly identical, all green, all 98-99 models, with 20 and 22hp Kohler Command Pro engines and 6 speed manual transmissions. My guess is they got run sparingly by the old guys that had them and put away so they got very little actual use over all those years.
 
vintagerust said:
I'm surprised the spindle shaft didn't just snap from the imbalance.
Click to expand...
This. I'm surprised, too. I'd give those spindles a VERY good inspection. I'd still be surprised if they were all undamaged

vintagerust said:
My own lawn is only about four or five passes with a 46" deck and its done. Certainly not anything I'd need a 22hp tractor with a 46 or 50" deck.
Click to expand...
Yeah, but it's nice to be able to go out with 15 minutes of sunlight, and knock out the mowing. Even if you run a bit into darkness, you have lights. I used to think riders were overkill for suburban lawns. When I had suburban yards, I had a push mower. I've changed my mind.
 
The problem here is that the road is higher than the lawn, there's a berm at the road's edge on the lawn. So a big deck scalps that bad, then there's three trees, five bushes, and a row of flowering quince full of tire killing thorns along the driveway. To get a mower this size on the lawn, I have to drive out of the driveway, around the bushes and do the wandering maze thing to get at all of the grass. With the push mower its about 5 or 6 passes and a few loops around the trees and I'm done. The 20" mower doesn't span enough ground to scalp the high spots and it can get under the overhang of the flowering quince without getting a flat.

By push mower it takes 20 minutes or so, with a rider, I have to dig out the rider, clear it a patch, move the two cars and the truck out of the drivway so I can get the rider out and around onto the grass. Then there's still many areas, like up by the front step, in the corners, and around the back porch that a rider can never get to. So I still need to fire up the push mower. By the time I get everything moved and get mowing with the rider I could have been done an hour earlier. With this one I just picked up, I can't even unload it because there's no where to put it other than on the trailer, or on the other trailer, which is currently full of wood from a tree that fell down last summer which I cut up. Tonight's project is to clear that trailer and find a place to stack up that wood for future burning.

The first two GT 3000 machines are also stil here, so I've got 4 1998-99 green Sears GT mower, and two Cub Cadet 2135/55 machines, and five simplicity 7116 and two 3410/2416 tractors but the SImplicity tractors are not mowers, I sold those decks because I got tired of storing them. I'd sell half of them too if I found a serious buyer but I'm not selling a good tractor for the scrap prices most here seem to want to pay.

A guy who looked at the one GT 3000 last night said it looks brand new, and that if he had money he'd give me the $950 I have it listed for but he has to buy the one at Lowes for $4,400 because he's broke, the one at Lowes won't cost him anything out of pocket. He can go there, wave his credit card and be mowing the grass tonight, but to buy mine, he needs to find $950 in cash today. Chances are if it sells it'll be to someone who came from far away like for the DLT 3000 I sold last week.
 
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I run into the same thing, ads get no attention at all for really nice stuff these days, they have money for new junk but never any cash.
I got a neighbor like that, he buys a new mower two or three times a year, tears it up and just puts another on the credit card. Yet doesn't have $10 in his pocket to buy a spark plug or gas half the time. He's got a yard full of dead, wrecked machines and appliances he replaced because he either ran something over and wrecked the mower deck or ran it without oil, or flipped it over on himself.

I listed a boat I had from a relative that passed, it was 38 years old but garage kept and like new, I listed it for a grand, I needed it out of the yard there. It took 8 years to sell. all I got was messages offering $50, or they wanted to trade for a complete pile of junk or a dead cell phone or something. The only things that have ever sold are to people who drove over 200 miles to buy them. Never anyone local.

I have a GT 3000, it belonged an uncle of mine, he bought it new, rarely used it, he got it as a back up when Sears where he lived closed up in 1999. I think he may have run used it twice, his main mower was a water cooled John Deere 4x4. I think he bought the Sears to cut along the back of the garage up by the house rather than moving everything to get the tractor in there but ended up just pouring concrete and putting raised garden beds in there the same year. It sits in my garage here now, its been there since 2003. I run it every so often but don't have any grass to mow. At best it gets a ride up the driveway and back or I take it to the store down on the corner sometimes just to keep it working. I tried to sell it once and couldn't get $500 for it back in 2005 or so. The original paperwork says he paid $2.400 for it new.

There were a few versions of it, he wanted the Kohler 20hp Pro motor only, and a smaller deck, which ended up being the 46", I seem to recall there being a Briggs Stratton 22hp, with a 48" deck, then one with a 25hp Kohler with a 50" deck, then another Briggs powered model with a larger deck that no one had in stock.
The best of the bunch were either of the Kohler models in my opinion. The thought that anyone would just give something like that away boggles my mind considering that anything close to that today would likely be over $5k, maybe more.
A friend of mine has the same 20hp Kohler on a CC zero turn with well over 4,000 hours on it and it runs great after over 25 years. I seem to recall the Briggs motors had some issues back then, but I'm not sure which models.
 
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