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I pick up the old girl Saturday morning 4 hour drive but at 1000.00 US for the tractor, deck, tiller snow blower, and blade I think I got away cheap. They only made the 1556 one year and it fits into my collection. I sold one of my Simplicity's to fund this acquisition, but I wanted an older Simplicity anyway

Thanks to all. I'm sorry but the Bolens 1254 is not mine, I used the picture for reference, all my tractors are 14-16hp. If you look closely you will see the hood on the Homelite is an upside down version of the Allis/Simplicity hood. This particular Homelite was built in South Carolina by Allis Chalmers for one year only (1973), and it is different thn the Homelite models built by Simplicity. It has been estimated that fewer than 500 Homelite T16H's were built before the factory closed and production returned to Port Washington, Wisconsin to the Simplicity plant. Allis Chalmers was sued for being a Monopoly business on 1966, one of the results of that suit was the diversification of many of its businesses such as Simplicity. In 1967 they opened the plant in South Carolina and continued to make virtually the same tractors as Simplicity until 1968 with the introduction of the HB series. In 1971 they introduced the the Homesteader series and 300 series Garden Tractors and in 1973 they introduced the 400 series. The 300 series was dropped in 1972 and the 400 series like the Homelite was only built in 1973 as the federal monopoly lawsuit was reversed in 1974 and Allis closed the plant, Interestingly there are very few 14hp 414 Allis tractors as 1973 was the year the 16hp kohler k341 was introduced and Allis had committed to a certain number of those new Kohler 16hp K341 engines, but since the 14hp k321 was an older production engine they had no such commitment. Upon finding out production was ending due to the lawsuit being overturned, Allis put the 16hp Kohler k341 in many tractors that were originally slated to be 414 tractors. In the end Allis produced around 1500 of the 416 hydros and shuttles, hard to say how many 414 tractors were produced, but suffice it to say, very few, maybe only a few hundred.

The steering wheel is the quickest way to tell. The 1973 and older Bolens wheel is a 3 spoke flat all the way to the center, the 1976 and up have a removable tall center cone. Without hydraulic or electric how do you lift any implements? lol, I don't have a "armstrong" lift.

My valves still haven't arrived, so its not running yet. Hopefully soon. I did however pick up a reproduction cart to put under the engine, and I must say, its very nice to be able to move the engine around by myself! I'm very pleased with the cart, and it appears very well built. Matt

Thanks Iain, happy to of brightened up your Monday.. Well, the steering saga continues.. But not for much longer Although the steering kinda worked, it had two main problems. One of them was the Ackerman angle thingy, being not quite right.. A play with moving the track rods a bit higher got it better.. But the main problem was all down to the gearing in the 90 degree steering box thingy.. Lock to lock was only an 8th of a turn of the steering wheel, which of course made the steering very heavy! The only other 90 degree box thingy I have is this odd shaped, very heavy and totally unsuitable for the job final drive from the Honda SilverWing which donated it's engine to a higher cause So a bit of a rethink was needed.. This steering arm was made from 3 bit's of 6mm thick steel.. It fit's here, under the left hand steering pivot hub thingy.. It's on tacked on in this photo.. The steering box thingy was rotated 90 degrees to the right, tilted 90 degrees to the left, reunited with it's original base, and bolted to the flat grey plate that was moved from under the chassis rails to above... I hope you followed that If you did manage to follow the above then you will of guessed by now that Why Not is going lever steer A rather long rod connecting both sides together.. Lock to lock is now a tad under half a turn of the steering wheel which is much better and the steering turns much easier.. Which is nice I think I may well move the connecting rod bit's to behind the hubs which will stop them getting bent should a tree ever be foolish enough to get in the way Oh.. And the steering column needs to be shortened

Looking at it this far, i guess another day will be worth the wait Matt

How about building the port up with weld, and then machining back to standard size ?

Thanks for the pics, All very good. The inverted Hoods on the Homelites do not look at all out of place and a wise economic manufacturing decision. Yes, they certainly made it over here to UK, as I picked up a Steering wheel several years ago from Auction Site , probably came off a scrapped T8 Model........ ended up on one of my Wheel Horses-

Excellent variety and examples in your collection, would like to see pics of some of your others too. Homelite T16H I believe has a good style and colour scheme if I recall correctly.

My concern also. Using steel would require a greater interference fit, as the coefficients would mean Ali expands with heat at a greater rate and therefore would loosen the sleeve. Have you considered machining the Sleeve and Flange complete from Billet Aluminium and set the sleeve diameter to just break into the threaded Stud holes?. You can then insert the Sleeve and recut the Stud hole threads so they cut into the sleeve wall for greater strength when bolted. If then, the sleeve loosens in the future, you only have to make another Sleeve insert.....just a thought

I have just seen your 1254, be great to see some more photos of this model as I have one myself. Is that the original engine? As Iain remarked in his post that exhaust look good.

That is a really useful bit of information, many thanks. I can only get to one of my H16's at the moment which is the one I thought was older. It has the later steering wheel so it is likely they are all newer ones. I love that exhaust (muffler?) you have on that 1254 I bet that sounds cool. Iain

Progress is embarrassingly slow not helped by having to use a lot of my workshop time over the last couple of days to climb onto the workshop roof to refit roof tiles that had moved in the wind, that's my excuse anyway. I have done lots of measuring of the head and my options for milling out for a sleeve are very limited however I have worked out the exact location and depth that I can safely work to. The flange that I am going to weld onto the sleeve is critical so I started my making that out of a scrap bit of 4mm plate I had kicking around. Assuming the wind does not move any more roof tiles I am hoping to do the milling on the head tonight. Iain

More than worth the long drive I say.. A very nice find

They'll not mate you know.