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Trac Vac ideas or pictures for an Original Cub Cadet 1961 year?

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mgrant

Member
Joined
Jun 15, 2011
Messages
15
displayname
Marty Grant
Hi all,
So I have a big fall leave problem and I wanted to get my Cub Cadet to help. Has anyone attached a Bagger or Trac Vac to a 38 inch mower deck? Looking for ideas from others that may have already done this or information as to why it wont work. Attached is picture of my deck.
 

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Marty, I've seen a few vacs that mounted on the back of the older tractors.Some were bags ,I have 1 with steel sides.With 1/8 alum sheet making a chute from deck is the easy part but making the round to go in the hose isn't.Those adapters are available online and a person could modify them to fit the deck.A bagger I don't know if the old decks have enough throw so no advice there.
 

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Thanks Gary,
I was thinking that the old deck won’t work with a bagger since it was never offered as far as I can tell. I was thinking of getting a cheap leaf blower and converting it into a vac system since there are a lot of them available. What HP is the trac vac blower on your set up? I think it could be a inexpensive way to make a vac system.
 
Wow, that looks like a nice setup how close are you to central Connecticut?
 
[
I am outside of the port jervis ny area in nj.
QUOTE="lpalma, post: 235607, member: 5936"]
This is free but no motor, was hooked up to a 70 which is not included but the hoses, blower and chute adapter is.


.View attachment 146235
[/QUOTE]
Thanks for that offer, I found some parts close to my home and I am going to try a dyi project
 
I built a Trac-Vac clone mostly from scratch. I used my cheap dump cart, 32" wide by 36" high by 42" long, rear door flips up to unload. The unloading the cart was the thing that needed improvement the most, I ended up digging it out with a pitch fork. I bought about $150 worth of steel, I used some angle iron and sheet, and a foot of 1" round steel bar I had to build the impeller. Wyatt Compton took pictures of it all hooked up ready to run one weekend. I used it 5+/- years, I was getting 24-25 loads off my 2.3 acres. I added to and improved the design several times. I had the grass in the yard get away from me one year, I mowed it, let it dry 2-3 days and vacuumed the clippings up, I could fill the cart in about 5 minutes, they packed in to a fairly solid brick. I ended up using black poly corrugated 6 inch drain tile to connect the chute on the deck to the blower and connect the blower to the cart. Using 8 inch hose would have been better. I used a freshly rebuilt K-161 7 hp Kohler to run the blower, I never had to run it much above an idle. I had a special set of blades I used on my 38" 3-blade deck when using the vac, I welded larger fins or wings on the blade, about 4-5 inches long by 1-1/4" tall, That REALLY improved the amount of air the vac moved, it would duck leaves under the deck housing from 6 to 8 inches away. Overall, I was pretty happy with it's performance. At the time my #72 Cub Cadet had a K241 10 hp engine, and with the tractor weight, blower weight, and a full cart of leaves, clippings, it was about all I wanted to pull.
Wyatt came out one Sunday and put his 44" deck with GATOR blades on his #169 and mowed and mulched ahead of my vacuuming. A cloud of leaf dust surrounded his Cubby. He was pulverizing those dry leaves into powder. I'd vacuumed all day the day before, did around 15 loads on half the yard. With Wyatt mulching ahead of me I got about 11-12 loads off the whole rest of the yard. Makes me think running Gator blades on a mower doing vacuum duty might be a good idea.
My vac unit is "semi-mounted", it's got a single pivoting caster wheel on the rear, and pins to two brackets clamped to the rear axle carriers, as I turn, the carrier swings outside the path of the tractor's rear wheels, the cart perfectly follows in the rear wheel tracks of the tractor, makes trimming around stuff amazingly simple for something almost 20 feet long, it can turn as tight as the bare tractor possibly can.
When I got my Pronovost P503 hyd tandem axle dump cart I REALLY wanted to build up sides and a top for it so I could increase loads from 28 cubic feet to 72 cubic feet and dump them from the seat. I DID increase the #72's horsepower to 14 to pull the greater weight.
I haven't used the vac since I got the zero-turn, the deck on the zero-turn mulches leaves many times better than the old IH decks ever could.
 
Thanks for all that info, I will post when my project is operating
 
Here are some photos of Denny's home built vac setup:

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Dennis, I love it when a guy says I can make one...Ingenuity is a marvelous talent !!! Definately noticed the comment about single caster wheel. I put one on the front of a big vac and added a tongue axle so I didn't have to lift the whole machine weight,worked super..
 
Marty, I put this on here before but showing you some other possibilities.It works fine if you're looking at a trailer thought...Sure beats lifting the motor to hook it up.
 

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GARY - I made two little stands to set the front of the blower unit on when unhooked from the tractor. I can move it around some to line up the holes for the pins. I can stick my floor jack under it and raise it to line things up too. The blower drive was changed after those pictures were taken. I ended up with an extra frt pto clutch and installed it on the engine and added a lever and arm with the fiber button to engage/disengage the blower. The drive shown in those pictures is just a belt tightener that pivoted on a bolt that I loosened and tightened. About the ONLY thing I didn't "Make" was the engine, I did over-haul it, new piston, rings, rod, exh valve. And the castering tire and wheel. The pivoting yoke the wheel/tire is in I did make. And I made the gas tank that's on it now, Dad wanted the engine in the picture back, it went in his Original, oil bath air cleaner, OEM gas tank.
The engine on the vac now originally came in my #72 when I bought it about 1980 or '81 It was pretty tired when I rebuilt a K241 and installed in it about 1986. Took me a while but I finally found a really GREAT engine machine shop, same one Dave Kirk uses. The engine on the vac is a battery ignition engine, I run a wire from the battery on the tractor back to the coil on the motor on the vac with in in-line on/off switch.
It's not fancy, but it works pretty darn good.
 
Can't even give it away!!, It is looking more like a Lone Ranger song...
To the dump to the dump to the dump, dump, dump!!
 
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