1976 Sears Suburban SS/16 Restoration

This is a very familiar site for me when I started on my GT/18. Practically, same tractor. If you need any info, let me know. I went over that tractor with a fine tooth comb. It's beyond me why Sears opted for plastic dashes during those years. Couple that together with the shotty, weak hood hinges they put on them. I had to fix both. My dash was cracked around the throttle, not as bad as yours. Replacement looks nice! I never popped the shaft on one of these, post pics when you get around to doing that!

Whenever I'd be working on the tractor, my girlfriend would be studying(she was finishing college up this time last year). So having her come in to check on me was pleasant, but I also knew she was trying to lure me out of the garage! Good luck on your project, looks like it's coming along.

Despite what anyone will say to you if you post too many pics(like I did), the fact remains, you can never post too many pics, we love em!

PS: your can of PB blaster looks like it met the same fate as mine. I ended up backing over mine when pulling the tractor out for paint :biglaugh:

Not alot of pics tonight, just finished tearing it down and trying to get all the old oil/grease/dirt combination off it.





I'm waiting till tomorrow to buy some sand for my sand blaster and plan to blast the whole thing, piece by piece. I managed to scrub clean and sand the rough stuff off the gas tank. Shined up nice with armor all and a new gas cap.



I got tired of working so I brought out the SS/18 and played in the dirt.


Hope to be able to show yall some pics of sanded and primed metal after this weekend:goodl: .

Well I've restored a few dirtbikes and an old Suzuki quadracer 250 and quadrunner 230, so this sears is a walk in the park with most of the bolts being the same size, so not much labeling needed. Sorry guys, I left my camera at work 45 minutes away so no new pics till monday night. I started sandblasting and got the top of one fender done and ran out of sand. The 4 bags of glass media I bought at Tractor Supply clogged my sand blaster so I took 3 bags back. The tool rental places here that you can buy actuall blasting sand are all closed today (sat.) so I won't have any sand till monday afternoon. I plan on have some pics of the frame getting sand blasted.

As far as the closet you can get to factory color is the Valspar Cattepiller yellow at Tractor supply (that I have found anyways, I think thats what Smallfry used on his, not sure).

I should have gotten the sand on friday but my father in law gave me a free bass boat so I've been working on that most of the weekend.

Again, not pics till monday!

Also the best thing I have found for getting all of that heavy grease off is to scrape as much as you can off, hit it with carb cleaner, then soak it with simple green overnight without rinsing it off. This morning, most of the grease had dissolved off of it. Worked really well.