1998 - Volume #22, Issue #6, Page #08
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"Get-Around" Cart Great At Farm Shows
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FARM SHOW spotted Zehring and his wife at the recent Farm Progress Show in Indiana. The late 1940s Choremaster garden tractor is powered by a Briggs & Stratton 3 hp gas engine and is equipped with a pair of long handles on back. It's hooked up to a 2-wheeled cart that Zehring made from scratch. A fork-type pivot hitch on the cart allows the rig to make sharp turns.
Zehring used angle iron to build the cart frame and foam rubber covered by naugahide to make the 2-person seat. The floor is ply-wood covered by a rubber mat. The cart rides on 8-in. wheelbarrow wheels, with a length of 5/8-in. dia. steel rod serving as the axle. The hitch was made from 1 1/2-in. sq. tubing. To make a turn the operator simply swings the handlebars over to one side.
"It's easy to drive and small enough that we can transport it in the back of our pickup," says Zehring. "I use a hand clutch on one handle to put the engine in gear and a throttle control equipped with a kill switch on the other handle to control the speed. Top speed is about 4 1/2 mph. It's slow but dependable. A lot of people can't see how such a small garden tractor can pull two people as big as us, but the engine has an 80:1 gear reduction drive on it so it has a lot of torque. It's surprising how much mud it can go through be-fore it'll get stuck.
"I bought the garden tractor two years ago at an antique tractor show for $125. It was originally designed to accept two different kinds of mowers on front - a reel mower and a sicklebar mower - and two different kinds of cultivators on back."
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, William R. Zehring, Rt. 9, Box 195, Kokomo, Ind. 46901 (ph 765 689-5178).
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