Want to see the real potential in your Cub Cadet? Then take a look at what Dwayne Lowe did. He turned a 1982 model 1582 hydrostatic Cub Cadet into a walk-behind "dump cart" that's a cross between a loader tractor and a utility cart.

Instead of a seat, it has a 30 by 48-in. dump bed with forks on front. The bed is tilted up or down by a pair of hydraulic cylinders. The rig can pick up, haul, and dump loads weighing up to 1,000 lbs.

He bought the tractor, minus an engine, at a mower salvage yard. He removed the seat and shortened the hood, and also added a pull-start Briggs & Stratton 8 hp engine. He unbolted the steering wheel and re-mounted it on front of the tractor, reconnecting it to a pair of rebuilt tie rods. He also remounted the hydrostat control lever next to the steering wheel, inverting the lever to reverse the gears.

The deck is built from angle iron and expanded metal and is tilted by a pair of small cylinders that act on a hinge. The deck is operated by a booster pump driven off the tractor's hydrostatic transmission. The lever that was originally used to lift the tractor's mower deck up and down, is now used to operate the dump bed.

To operate the tractor, Lowe walks in front of the machine and drives it backward. With the bed tilted to a vertical position, the forks can be slid under the cargo. Then the bed is tilted back to the horizontal position for transport.

"It gets a lot of different reactions from people. I hear everything from, 'you ruined a perfectly good Cub,' to 'that's pretty cool,'" says Lowe.

"I have a small amusement ride business and use my dump cart often to pick up inflatable bags and set them down on a trailer. The bags roll up like a big tarp and weigh up to 1,000 lbs.

"If I want, I can replace the forks with a metal box and haul dirt, rocks, plants, small bales, and so forth. I mounted a fold-down step on front of the tractor and use the weight of my body as a counterweight when picking up big loads."

Lowe had to make some other modifications to the tractor to convert it into a dump cart. "I bumped the hydraulic line pressure up from 500 to 1,500 psi, which provided enough hydraulic pressure to operate the cylinders. I also had to reverse the output of the engine in order to operate the hydrostatic transmission. The throttle is still on the dash. I grab the hydraulic deck arm on one side of the steering column and push on it to dump the load. Pulling back on the lever brings the deck back down to the horizontal position."