Steiner

Hey there, I was googling for some information on a different brand GT and stumbled upon this thread. I have a old Steiner as well. I have no idea what model or year but the briggs 18hp has a manufacture date of 1982. My father in law bought it back in the late 80s from the original owner and he ran it hard until the late 90s when he started having serious motor troubles so he junked it. Later I found it in the steel scrap pile and pulled it out and cleaned it up. The motor troubles I dealt with for years. Blown head gasket, plugged carb, bad valves. Regardless it tested way low on compression test and had no power at just over 3k hours and then last summer the motor seized and then it broke a rod. This winter I pulled the motor and rebuilt, machined the bores 20 over, crank 20 under with new pistons rods and all new valve train. Basically everything is new except the crank and block which were machined. Before it ran like it was a 5hp and would bog on any load, now it runs like a 20hp and the motor hasn't flinched yet. When I rebuilt the motor I made a new wire harness (proper) with fuses and accessory attachments. I also added a new hour meter with tach. The old is still there working continuing up from 3k, but the new one tells me how many hours are on the new motor as well reminds me of service intervals and shows RPM while running which is handy as the rototiller I made I cannot run past 2.5k RPM or it starts to break. It was made for a 5hp not 20...

I have done other work. I painted it about 8 years ago but you wouldn't know it. Just like some one else said earlier, unfortunately it never spent a day covered in its life so the paint never lasted long, plus I work it hard. It is my snow blower, rough cut mower, manure hauler, garden tiller, driveway grater. One of the aluminum wheel hubs failed this winter and I made a new one out of steel because I couldn't find a supplier. I put a coupler on the rear 3 point hydraulics so if I put the rock box on and cannot use the rear 3 point, I can use the same lever to run the box I made up front. I also made a rototiller for it (belt driven) using an old rototiller that had a blown motor. I could go on an on but I will just show off some pictures instead.


If you want to see more pictures of some of my attachments you can click this imgur.com link and look at a photo gallery I have a box scraper, disker(not pictured) chisel plow, cultivator, drag, and rock box for the back. Up front I have a blade, mower, snow blower, rototiller and box.

If anyone has more information on this steiner I own, like model I would sure be glad to know. Also you said you were getting new decals for your steiner. Where were you getting those from? I would be interested in getting some for the day I re-paint again.

No it wasnt a bushing that failed it was the hub. The axle on mine is not tapered but a 1" keyed with no bushing. I got two 1" sprocket hubs, welded them together and then I had a 1" keyed shaft. I then took a 6" sprocket and drilled the holes for the studs and pressed in studs. I got the geometry perfect so no wheel wobble. I welded it all together with gusseting and kept the reciept for a parts list as I am sure another will be breaking. In all it cost me about $55 and I figured that it I couldn't buy the part that cheap even if I could find it. Just to clarify this is the part the wheel bolts to and this part is slipped over the axle shaft and has a nut on the axle holding it on.

"I see you have the rear mounting rod for the loader. It makes a good steering pedal for when the steering piston breaks off or tears out of the floor board."

Are you talking about the rods stick out the sides just behind the front wheels? I put my feel on them occasionally. What are they meant for exactly? I guess I don't follow.

"I have a hydraulic three-point hitch mounted rototiller if anyone's interested. It runs off the auxilary power pack for the loader, not the secondary hydraulics. The valve lets you run it backwards for fine tilling, or to throw out a rock. The front tiller tends to go straight down if you hit a soft spot, because of all that weight on the front."

I thought about doing this but decided I wanted to use the engine to drive it. I also have a float for the front forks so I just set the forks to float and slowly drive backwards. If I am feeling a bit adventurous I will turn left and right as I go back increasing my worked soil area but found this can knock the chain off the tiller in the chain case. So running it like this I haven't had any troubles other than the motor is way to powerful for this little tiller.

"It runs off the auxilary power pack for the loader,"

This sounds very interesting, I have no idea what this is. I have all the factory manuals (mostly hand written) and there is nothing in them describing this.

EDIT: You got me thinking. I pulled the service manual and while it doesn't say s18 in print someone hand wrote S18 and some other numbers on the cover so I am thinking this must be an S18.:thanku:

I knew about the neutral trick. I used it many times before I rebuilt the motor unfortunately. :crybaby:

As for the deck, it is a bit of a PITA and since it spent practically a decade in a scrap pile needed a ton of TLC to get back up and running. I still need to adjust the blade heights as they have a set screw on each shaft for height adjustment and well it is a lot of work tearing it apart setting, re assembling and trying just to find one blade is slightly off. My deck is in bad shape so I mostly only use it to cut where I am not trying to make it look nice and is more a rough "ditch" mower for me. It is on the todo list to get the deck back into "new" condition. But I have two other mowers that do a fine job. a 08 JD LA145 and a Gilson both with very large decks so having a 3rd would just be greedy.:1287:

The hubs on this unit are a 1 piece so that must be where the confusion is.

I am very curious to see this loader, I think I saw a picture of one on a much newer 430. The bucket I made that you see in the picture is a design I saw on a much newer Steiner that I copied and it works amazing but I could improve on the design.

As for the tiller I do have mine kicking towards the Steiner. I did it this way because as you described I did not want tire tracks. My tiller weighs maybe 80~100#. Cant be much because I man handle it to get it attached to the Steiner very easily. But like I said before it used to be a self propelled unit with a 5hp, very quickly I learned that 20hp was way to much and was breaking shafts on the tiller. I found if I ran the motor at 1/2 throttle RPM less than 2.4k it worked fine and nothing broke so that is what I do.

I am a little concerned about the motor as when rebuilding I got the factory briggs rebuild book and it specified that two dippers are required for loaded operation under WOT. Mine only had 1 dipper and that is how I rebuilt it. Tempted to add the 2nd dipper but it ran 3k hours on 1 dipper and IMHO with the hydraulics this thing was loaded often in part throttle. Any thoughts on that?