My 3 cubs- a work thread

[Mudrig150]

Hello everyone! Anyone who has been here a while will probably recognize me from my... well, tantrum would be putting it lightly, from late 2018. Anyway, after a few years to mature and a few years being a John deere man, I have gone back to mainly being a Cub cadet guy, mainly dabbling in 82 series despite being surrounded by quietlines and previously owning one myself.
Anyway, I guess I should introduce them, eh? I'm going to go in chronological order from when I got them. This is gonna take a while, but bear with me.
1985 1210
Got it from marketplace for $225, after browsing on a whim and seeing it for sale. The ad was extremely vague and showed a white and yellow 682 with some questionable damage described as having "electrical issues" which didnt matter because I planned on swapping in a K series in place of the KT17. I decided that I would go check it out just for the heck of it.
Needless to say, what was there when I arrived was NOT a 682, but a 1210. The second I saw the K301 I immediately felt relieved, which ironically made the previous owner think I was disappointed. Bought it right there and then.
Got it home, fixed the horrendously botched wiring including an aftermarket key switch that had different terminal arrangement and was for a Magnum powered 1210, which was powering the coil full time and would turn over the engine when the key was switched on. Points were at double the usual gap which made it run horrendously until I noticed that little issue.
I've mowed with it a handful of times and I'm quite happy with it, though it's main job of mowing has gone by the wayside since we sold the property it mowed. I'm stuck halfway through a hydraulic lift swap, having everything but the rockshaft in, with the hydraulic lift rockshaft needing to be pressed apart.


1980 782
Shortly after getting the 1210, I was interested in picking up a parts tractor to rob the hydraulic lift out of to make the 1210 more usable. Saw a pretty shabby looking 782 on marketplace but it didn't seem like a good candidate for that, given how it was previously a parts tractor already and looked pretty stripped down. After a week, I just so happened to scroll past it again and stopped to actually look at it, and noticed the hydraulic ports on the front for the power angle, and saw that it was surprisingly intact, having all of the body panels and dealer stickers. $50 later and we dragged it home. Originally I was going to part it out and keep the twin stick for the 1210, but a certain idea that's been in the back of my mind for years suddenly came back to me: kawasaki V-twin swap. I found a low-ish hour but pretty neglected FD620D from a 3205 that was being parted out and decided to shove it into the frame, and it fits really well with no cutting, surprisingly.
I still have to find a muffler, make a harness, and get the driveshaft shortened to have a first test drive but considering it was a $50 roller a few months back, I'm happy with my progress so far. (Do note that the diesel is currently wearing the 782's hood, since its hood is all bent up. Thats why it doesn't have it)

1984 782D
I'm just going to cut to the chase. I have a very wierd relationship with this tractor. On one hand, I love it! It runs great and has so much power. On the other hand... well, it was a fight to get it running initially. I spotted it on marketplace for $500, said it was a project and it would not run. Not in the slightest. Didn't even try.
That was incredibly accurate, it had no life in it at all. Not even a pop out the exhaust. Would crank and crank, spewing smoke, but absolutely refused to try to fire. After much frustrating troubleshooting, I found that the injection pump was not pushing fuel out at all, other than what I'm assuming was leakage past the plungers when they moved up and down. I disassembled the injection pump, and immediately spotted that:
A. It had been torn down before, and screwed with. Shim surface had silicone all over it.
B. The injection pump plungers were backwards. All 3 of them.
Even after fixing that, it STILL fought me! It just would NOT start at all. Against my better judgement, I gave it a whiff of starting fluid and it did literally nothing (I did it without the glow plugs being hot to keep it from combusting too early just to be safe). Just as I was about to give up hope and wallow in the misery of rebuilding it, a miracle happened: it started up for seemingly no reason.
I'm not even going to mention the wiring mess of random wires going to ground when they should've gone to power, including the PTO wires and the fuel pump wire. Also the pickup screen in the tank was collapsing because it was all crushed.
I haven't really done anything with it though, since the gear reduction starter is half burned up from them wailing on it trying to get it to start, and it died completely on me after fixing it. Before, it wouldn't spin unless manually engaged with the flywheel, I got it spinning again, and now 3 starts later it doesn't spin at all. Great.

I've got a lot of work left to do on the three stooges here but I am going to be so happy when they're all together and running. Until then, the 1210 can represent for the 82 series on its siblings' behalf.

[Mudrig150]

Was scrolling marketplace for a parts tractor when I spotted something that caught my eye. Needless to say, I brought it home.
The engine from the 782 is going in this frame, my original plan was to part out the diesel, then was going to part out the 782, but I have decided to instead send the 782 to greener pastures and get a white and yellow tractor to part out to fix the two other tractors.
The 1912 is actually a late one with everything but the fender pan, fuel tank, and the battery box. Engine was super exploded so I told the PO to keep it, but I did take a nonfunctional 2072 rear end that was there to swap new guts into to get going. It's complete otherwise, surprisingly I got there before anyone took anything off of it.
60" deck has some broken off baffles but is entirely intact otherwise, no rot holes or patches.
Will update when I get that parts tractor!
Oh, and some pictures:

[finsruskw]

OK, so what's up with THE MONSTER PICTUYRES HERE ANYWAY!
Makes it a REAL PITA to read w/o a screen that is 4 freaking feet wide!!

[Mudrig150]

The pictures are just showing as links on my end. Are they showing as images for you?

[CubDieselFan]

Yes, we see them as pictures. You can upload them here.

[Mudrig150]

Fixed the pictures being ginormous, added pictures of the 1912, and figured out why I couldn't see them. Turns out they show better when you have attachments, signatures, and profile pictures turned on... Was wondering why the site looked so empty.

[Oak]

The 1912's & 14's are pretty rare, good save.

[Mudrig150]

Originally Posted by Oak

The 1912's & 14's are pretty rare, good save.

I figured that even without the original engine and without knowing that it wasn't a common tractor, it was still a cheap super with a really nice 60" deck. The 20 horse kawasaki should be nice for the old girl.

[Mudrig150]

Thinking about actually painting the 1912 like this mockup I made of my diesel in white and red... Still want the blue decals vut I might go with the factory style ones.

[Sergeant]

Originally Posted by Mudrig150

Thinking about actually painting the 1912 like this mockup I made of my diesel in white and red... Still want the blue decals vut I might go with the factory style ones.

That looks like a great idea. The late IH Cub Cadet engineering department (which most of the department is deceased now) would have probably liked that color scheme, as they all hated the solid red color, which wasn't their choice. A sales vice president at IH made the red color choice.