Rototiller Restoration!!

[Smithers]

Alright the perfectionist in my is coming out again with a little restoration of a BCS rototiller that me and a friend scored a deal on. When you need one you need one! None of our friends owned a tiller that we could borrow so we scored a super deal on this used BCS tiller that is basically worth an easy $1,000 in its used state. It wasn't used very much and everything was there, it started with less than 4 pulls so we took er home!

A friend of mine spotted this tiller on the side of a barn sale and told me about it and if I needed one. I assembled these for a showroom floor when I was a kid. They were big bucks I remember so when I asked my friend what color and if it had reverse he said it did. I told him to go back and get it ASAP!! These tillers are tough and hand built in Italy.

So basically what sped up the restoration of this BCS rototiller was my acquisition of some dirt and my need to blend it in with some other soil at a house. So I grabbed the tiller from my friend and tried to knock the handlebar adjuster loose but it was froze up from years of never being used. Well I broke it and decided to tear the bars off and weld up a couple of cable mounts and fix the problem. While I had it torn apart I had to have the parts coated by my favorite company which is over the hill from me. What great results! I love powdercoating stuff.




And here is the machine looking pretty all together and ready to use!

[Smithers]

Those cables were really built to last from the factory. They have adjusters on then ends that all slide off so that they can be serviced and re-assembled. So I just put some grease on them and shined them up with WD40 before I put them back on the machine. Now the safety handle (red) actually works so it won't just take off when you let go. The machine has 3 gears and a hi and low selector which gives you 6 speeds in all. It really goes 15mph+ if you put it in high gear!

All sort of attachments can be added on in place of the tiller tines. I've seen snowblowers and sprayers on them. I even believe the whole handle assembly can be rotated 180 degrees when needed.

Next I'll clean off the tiller chassis/ body, powdercoat the rims, new tires, fab up some brackets for the fuel tank and muffler and that should be about all it needs.