I retired from stock car racing and sold out a couple of years ago and life was good. Then we went to the First Arkansas Redneck Olympics in Clinton Arkansas and they had a group of lawnmower racers put on a race. On our drive back home I started thinking and my wife started to get worried as usual. I told her that I still had a barely used 12HP mower that had been sitting in the back of the shop for around 10 years that I could build me a racing mower out of. She says why would you do that, nobody races them around our area. My answer was oh well I still want to build one in case I want to take a trip to a track sometime...
The next day I pulled the old Craftsman out to look it over and see if it would run. It was dusty and dirty and the tires were dry rotted but with a new battery and a little cleaning it fired up and run pretty good considering it had sat for so long. Since I had a good starting point and not having been able to look at a racing mower up close I hit the internet looking for ideas on how to build it for racing. That is when I found HeyMow.com and all of the great folks, pictures, tips and advice pretty much all ready for the taking. I started reading and looking at all of the build threads and printing out everything that I thought would help me on my quest to build the best racer that I could.
I learned that building it would require a lot of changes to make it safe as well as fast. The stock brakes and steering just would not work over 6 or 8 MPH as I had already determined and would be trashed. I found pictures and information on here and built a fully adjustable front end, lowered and reinforced the frame, built a jack shaft, built a brake hat for the trans-axle, installed pit bike brakes, worked the transaxle over and installed new billet hubs and racing wheels.After getting the chassis was completed I moved on to building the engine and found most of the information that I needed already here.
I finally got the mower built and ready for a shake down and break in the other day and took it out to that back field to the test track. I went though all of the break in, and testing and checking everything over and found everything to be working good. I then took it back to the shop and changed the oil and took it back out to see how it would do with a few practice laps. I would run a few laps in one gear keeping the RPMS under control to get a feel for it and then I would stop and check everything over and go up a gear and take another run. As I built up my confidence and feel for the handling as well getting faster every lap I started to understand how this could become addicting. This thing is going to be a blast to race and way faster than I imagined a little 12HP Briggs would run.
I would like to thank all of the members that have contributed to this site and took the time to take pictures and document their builds. With a printout of the rule books and pictures etc. from HeyMow you can build a nice racer plus you always have friends online for help when you hit a snag. A special thanks goes to the ones that have taken time to chat with me and gave me some good advice as well as deals on parts.
Now I just need to get it painted and take it to a track for a real test!