Fred's Minnesota Blog

In 1979, I bought a Roto-tiller 'kit'. It was very inexpensive. It was a combination of belt and chain driven tines with a five Horse Power motor. After about three years of continuous repair of the drive train, my friend, Don Korten, gave me an old Sears Roto-tiller which needed a motor but had gear driven tines. I recycled the tines and motor from my original Roto-tiller onto the Sears frame and drive and went along happily for many years. The motor was multi duty in that when I was not using it on the Roto-tiller I would use it on the kid's go-cart. Not very pretty, as Consumer Reports would say, "Antiquated Technology on an Obsolete Chassis." I would say, Proven and Reliable."
This year I started it up and after about ten minutes it quit running, no compression. After some soul searching about repair or replace, I remembered seeing an ad in the Harbor Freight circular for a motor on sale. Off I went. The new with the old.
The new motor did not line up quite right, I had washers under the old motor, so a search of the material under the workbench I found an aluminum bar the right size, four holes, and a cut on the band saw and I had a couple of spacers.