Lary, These are forward rotating tine machines, not counter-rotating tines. All of the old Horses were this way. Bill, The number you posted is just a casting number, not the serial number. Look below the T-handle and clean all the gunk off to find a serial number. Parts that you need are readily available from a bunch of sources, including MTD (who took over for Troy Bilt) Jenice, If you have the 6HP Tecumseh engine, you dont have all of the model number. What you posted is the "spec" number. Your model number is most likely HH60. Use that model number, and you shouldnt have any problem finding the carb kit. The recoil starter may be a little bit harder to find.

To install tubes in the tires, you'll have to break the side-walls away from the rims. to do this, it can be done with large C-clamps, by tightening the clamp against both side walls, and turning it in until they pull away from the rims. To get it all the way off, lubricate the tire bead and rim with oil or grease, and carefully pry the tire off the rim. After cleaning and priming/ painting the inside of the rim, and its' dry, lube the inner bead of the tire, and force it onto the rim, using a rubber hammer. Now, with the one bead inside the rim, and the other bead not, spread the tire out and stuff the inner tube inside, spreading it out all around the rim. Stick the valve out thru its hole, and tie a string to it. Before installing the tube, you should pump the tube up enough to get the wrinkles out of it, then let the air back out of it!, and install it, as above. Then, after its inside the tire, carefully get the other bead of the tire onto the rim! Be careful the valve doesn't slip into the rim!(The string) Now, pump the tire up to seat it on the rim, watching that no part of the tube is caught between tire and rim! Then leave the air back out until it has gone down well. Using the rubber hammer, pound on the tire so any wrinkles in the tube will be gone, then reinflate it, and you should be good to go! (With the rim off the machine, we used to bounce it on the pavement) All of the preceding is a tried and perfected method of replacing tires and tubes, as taught to me by The Gulf Oil company service station schools, way back in 1946! We had no fancy tire repair machines, nor tubeless tires, no Flat-fix, Slime, nothing except hard work! HTH: Rustyj

Toro bought Wheel Horse in 1986, but the Toro name didn't appear on the products until 1990. The old Wheel Horse plant in South Bend, IN was sold early on, I don't know the exact year but in the late 80's I believe. I think the story on the Classic is simply that Toro has been hugely successful with ZTR's (which Wheel Horse actually had in the 80's, by the way) while their traditional lawn and garden tractor sales have been slipping. They are also losing traditional consumer oriented dealers, as many of the ZTR sales seem to be from commercial oriented dealers who may have never even heard of a Wheel Horse tractor. So I guess the bottom line is they have made a business decision to just about kill off all their traditional lawn and garden tractors. While I can't agree with the decision, it's not mine to make, and I have to say a big "Thanks!" to Toro for keeping the traditional Wheel Horse alive for as long as they have. I will add that Toro has a long tradition of making all sorts of turf care related products, and they seem to have always adjusted and altered their product mix to the demands in the market they sought to serve. Perhaps because their specialty early on was in the commercial side, many people do not realize this company goes back to before 1920. Turf care has always been their business, not agriculture, and I think Toro was a bit uncomfortable with even touching into agriculture with their garden tractors. Why else would they have designed the otherwise very capable 5xi series with no provisions for a rear pto, no added hydraulics, and no 3-point hitch? Various ag type attachments that WH had offered were also dropped. There's no question that modern design l&g tractors have more engineering in them today. Engineers are good at figuring out the least material that will perform the intended function, and safety factors today are obviously not the round 2 or 3 times like they used to be. So today's l&g transaxle, for instance, is built to a relatively tight tolerance for HP and torque, and is expected to handle the loads for "X" number of cycles. It's kind of like "battery science" - if a Sears battery claims a "4 year" life, by golly that's usually pretty close to what you'll get out of it. On the other hand, the Wheel Horse uni-drive was designed in the days when iron was cheap, things weren't supposed to break, and owners of garden tractors expected them to not only mow grass, but to really be more of a small tractor and not just a lawn mower they could ride on. The first tractors to use the modern style, 2-piece cast housing WH uni-drive transaxle were the 5.5HP 551 and the 7HP 701 in 1961. While the design had changes and revisions over the years, most major dimensions did not change, and the fact that some of the later 6-speed transaxles are handling 50+ HP in competitive pullers is a sure sign that they were built to last a lifetime in the intended application. Todays thin-wall close-fit aluminum castings and powdered metal gears may be very cost efficient and are probably well suited for most of today's purchasers, but they are nothing like the old cast iron gearboxes that Wheel Horse, Cub Cadet, Bolens, Peerless, and others used to make. I can't do much about today's realities in terms of lawn tractor purchasers, economies of scale (the box store "make 'em cheap and sell millions" syndrome), and manufacturing economics, but I'll sure do what I can to preserve the remaining thousands and thousands of Wheel Horses that are out there! Ed

Happy New Year! Looking for some help from you veteran WH owners: I'm in the middle of a full frame-off restoration of the '89 312-8 I inherited. These machines are so well put together that most of my work will be paint, wiring and replacing some worn out bushings, etc. Question for you or any other WH owner out there: on the rear wheel mounting flanges there are two set-screws that hold each flange to the axle. The head of the bolt is square, then there is a hex nut between that and the flange casting. Is this a lock nut or is it welded on to the flange as part of the attachment? Before I go putting too much torque on these things and breaking something I'm trying to figure out how they're hitched together! I've got some play in one of the flanges I'd like to eliminate - maybe replace the woodruff key? Thoughts/tips/pointers, please?