TIM Z. - To add to what DON T & all the others have said, you'll break your cart L-O-N-G before you'll break your 124 from hauling too big a load of dirt. You will be TRACTION limited in what you can pull and stop with. Wet grass, mud, loose rock, etc will decrease what available power you can put to the ground, both pulling and stopping. Going up and especially down steep hills you have to be careful to not run out of power or traction. But on good footing, level terrain you can pull whatever you can fit into your cart, and you can heap it up too. A good running 12 HP GD Cub Cadet should spin-out from lack of traction easily in 2nd gear on grass and dirt unless you have lugged tires and lots of weight on the drive wheels. Even with maximum traction on dry concrete you should be able to spin both rear tires easily in 1st gear.
I've moved L-O-T-S of dirt & rock with carts behind Cub Cadets, both GD & Hydro's, and I always load the carts up full when I need to. My current cart I pull behind my 982 has a gross capacity of 3000 pounds which lets me haul about 2500# of dirt/rock, here's a pic, Mine has six inch tall sideboards on top of the steel sides;
http://www.solexcorp.com/productfiles/pronovost/503.html I moved about 15,000 pounds of dirt one afternoon in three hours with my 982 & cart, five heaping loads, couple of which I could barely dump, normally at idle I can dump a level to the top of the sides load of rock.
DAVE K. - I was going to suggest TIG welding those worn holes closed, much more focused heat with TIG. I found out the hard way about 6-8 yrs ago that there's a BIG difference between a drill press and a MILL when it comes to boring precision holes. My project, cutting four 5/8" wide slots about 2 inches long in some 1/2" thk steel plate turned out O-K, but it wasn't pretty getting there! A Bridgeport would have been the right tool for THAT job!
