1210 ISO mounts
 

I bought a house late last fall and needed to pick up a mower on the cheap to pick up leaves. I rushed into it a little and bought a 1210 with a plow, bagger and cart for pretty cheap. I realized it would probably need some work, being 20 years old. I used it to pick up the leaves and plowed the driveway a couple times while I've gotten to know it a little better. I noticed that one of the rubber ISO mounts is now completely destroyed, leaving the engine to sit off kilter. I ordered some replacement mounts off eBay for the Quietline series only to find out they are different. They are made of urethane not the original rubber but i was aware of that and don't see that as the problem. The holes in them are A LOT smaller. Do I have the right mounts or are the ones on there now the wrong ones (it is supposed to have a replacement engine). I'm thinking of just boring the new ones out so they will receive the old metal top parts.
What do you guys think?

Is the 1210 even a "Quietline"

-Pete

Pete I'm afraid that you might have been duped with the mounts you bought on e-bay. If they are the ones I'm thiking they are, you bought a $7 moog anti-swaybar kit for roughly 3x the cost. To answer your question about your tractor being a Quietline, the answer is no it is not. It's actually considered to be part of the 82 series. It's pretty much identical to a 1282. Now for your mount problem. I think you can use those urethane mounts. You just don't use the metal insert. You would really need to replace all 4 of them though. If you wanted to do it right, you would need to buy the same iso mounts for a quietline. A set of 4 will run you about $80. But in their high priced defense, they will work better than the moog bushings.

AJ

Quiet Line Cub Cadets were made by International Harvester and are the following numbers:
Manual trans versions: 800-1000-1200
Hydro trans versions: 1250-1450-1650

Quiet Line Cubs were built between October 1974 and September 1979. The 1210 was made by MTD.

AJ - you're right, they are a moog knock off. I used them anyways for the time being and i did do all four corners.

I've read somewhere that its possible to get solid mounts for these tractors, but you should only use them if the engine has balance gears. Anyone have any experience with these or have any thoughts? The engine on this tractor is an M series kohler, not sure if these have the internal balance gears.

Balance gears are bad actually. They were a bad design by kohler. They wear and get sloppy and the next thing you know, you'll be mowing and pass them in your yard as they get ejected through the block. Most people leave them out when the engine is rebuilt.

As far as using solid engine mounts, that's been a great debate for a while. In my opinion, I don't see why it would be any different than any of the earlier series of cubs with out iso mounts. Thousand and thousands of 12hp cubs have been built with the engine bolted directly to the frame without any rubber mounts. If it were my tractor, I wouldn't hesitate to buy the solid mounts and use them. They require no modification to the tractor so if you don't like them, you can alsways break down and buy the proper rubber mounts through cub cadet for $80.

AJ

aj,

Could you elaborate a little more on the balance gears? I have a K301 that I rebuilt last summer and I still have the balance gears in it. It does vibrate more than I think it should. I call it my "little harley" because I am constantly tightening bolts back down throughout the entire tractor because of the shakes. Would removing them help? Hurt? Why a bad design? Just asking because I will also be doing a 14 hp soon.

Don't mean to hijack the thread here but I find this interesting and it is the first I have ever heard this.

Thanks,
Jeff

There were a lot of 12 hp engines made without them, so there's no harm in removing them. What happens is, the needle bearings wear and the gears start rocking on the shafts, which eventually causes the engine to throw them out the side of the block. The bearings and stub shafts are supposed to be replaced when the engine is rebuilt, but few people do that, and so the bearings wear out.

Ahhhh....thanks for the explanation Matt. Makes sense to me. I got my 129 from my brother who got it hot and burned a hole in the piston. He didn't want to mess with it so I did. I had all the machine work done to the block and I did inspect everything and the gears felt pretty tight. I guess I'll just keep my fingers crossed on that one and replace them on any future rebuild.

I suspect most of my vibrations are due to a fin being broken off of the flywheel. I just got another one to replace it so we'll see what that does to help the situation.

Jeff.