Are you referring to the bolt holding the steering shaft together inside? Or, the 21mm nut/bolt nearest to the shaft that holds the rack onto the the bottom side of the van? If it is the 21mm one, you can access it from the backside of the aluminum cradle. It is very difficult to see so you have to basically do it by feel. The angled box end of a wrench should have just enough room to squeeze over the top of the nut and them remove the bolt through the bottom. I didn't show that in the video because it can't really be seen with the naked eye let alone the camera but I did mention how to remove/replace it through commentary. I hope that this helps you. I know that this isn't the easiest repair that you could ever do on one of these vans and I wish you the best.

@@justcallmeboats Thanks, I must have missed it in the commentary with the grandkids in the background. I can squeeze a short socket on it and do have a pivoting rachet. It might just work. Thank you. I have also found my set of stubble box wrenches.

You're very welcome! I hope that this helped you in some way.

I like both of my GT3000'S. They are identical twins born 1 month apart back in 2002. They are great tractors, and they both suffer from the same aliments. Including the plate in the front of the deck. Still, that is infinitely easier to put on than the snowthrower attachment. Doing the head gaskets isn't horribly difficult but is a bit time-consuming. Thanks for watching!

The entire system holds approximately 1.2 Litres of ATF+4 transmission fluid. So, make sure that you have that and a little bit more in case of air being trapped in the system as well as for any potential leaks.

@@justcallmeboats Thanks a lot👍

Both of my tractors are identical twins both with the Kohler Pro 23 hp engines. Both are very good running tractors. Thanks for watching!

Thank You!

These tractors were pretty popular back in the early 2000's. I worked at a Sears around the time that these tractors were being sold and I bought mine then. 18 years later I picked up a second tractor that is identical to the one in the video and was built about 36 days apart from each other. They are both workhorses on my five acres and i run them year round, doing everything from simple grass mowing, to working in the garden with a disk harrow, to grading my driveway, and even snow removal, and everything in between. These are not shed queens and I don't treat them as such but they do get there regular maintenance and a bunch of TLC along the way. As for the carburetor, it is a fairly easy part to get to after removing the hood and the air filter housing. If you're having issues with your carb and you decide to rebuild it, Amazon sells rebuild kits for around $15.00 US. I would recommend repairing your old carb as the ones that you can get cheaply on places like Amazon, are IMHO cheap knock offs that are of questionable quality. You most likely have a bad gasket in the carb or a bad O-Ring on the bowl. When I got my second tractor the original owner trashed the carb to the point that I had to replace it. I went with one of those knock off carbs and it was junk. It wouldn't take any adjustments and made the tractor run poorly. I eventually ended up using the bowl and shut of valve from the knock off carb and along with a rebuild kit, I used the original carb to cobble together a good carb to get that tractor running again. As far as your engine smoking, check your plugs to see if they are wet with oil first. That would be the easiest and cheapest place to start. If the plug(s) are fouled with oil, you may have an issue with either your head gaskets or possibly the piston rings. I'm not trying to be an alarmist here, I am just giving you some things to look for before tearing into your engine. If your plugs are fouled with oil, at this point, I would run a borescope (camera) down the plug hole and check your cylinder walls to make sure they don't have vertical scratches. You should see some light cross hatch scratches, that is normal. If everything looks good and you see smoke coming out you may have a head gasket that is leaking. Another thing to look for is smoke coming from the oil dipstick tube after running the engine up to temp. A little smoke on a cold start could be considered "normal" but you shouldn't see an excessive amount of smoke. Now, there are a couple of things that can cause oil burning. Bad head gaskets being one of the possible problems, the other is bad rings. That's where the vertical scratches I was talking about earlier will most likely come from. If you see those it may be getting close to a tear down and rebuild job depending on how bad the scratches are, if you have any at all. If your plugs are black, dry. and sooty looking that could be a fuel issue and not necessarily a head gasket issue and could cause smoke but it would likely be black smoke and not a white/gray smoke, that would be from oil burning. When I decided to change my gaskets I was putting a ton of gray smoke into the air while I was mowing. What I showed in the video, the engine was cold and only had a small amount of smoke being produced then. As the engine warmed up, the smoke would begin to roll out of the exhaust. As far as my five year reference it was more of an off hand comment thrown in there in reference to this isn't a job that anyone would want to repeatedly to do over and over. I was stressing the importance of keeping everything clean at that time in the video. Allowing dirt or oil to be on the mating surfaces between the cylinder and the head could potentially create a situation for premature failure of your new gaskets. Sorry for the confusion. Thank you for watching my video and taking the time to drop a comment. I hope that the video and this extended reply was helpful in some way. If you have any questions about your tractor, you can drop another comment here or contact me through my email address: [email protected].

@@justcallmeboats Thanks a lot. If you ever need any Chiropractic advice, let me know.

I do not repair these professionally, I'm a DYI kind of person. I discovered that the chip failure was the cause from a Google search and from talking to a few car stereo repair shops. They advised me of what to do to repair this radio and I decided to share that info. Not having seen the inside of an RHB radio, I couldn't tell you that it has the same issue that mine did. When my RES died it would make a popping sound through the speakers and if I inserted a CD it would play music but would cut out every 3 seconds or so. The same with the AUX port.

Those Craftsman tractors are beasts! I love both of mine. My second one needs the steering gear repaired, and I am going to fix it like I did on my first one. I had a machine shop bullet proof it, and now I'm waiting for warmer weather to get out there to install it. It may be a month or so, but I'm planning on posting a video on it. Thanks for watching!

Good luck!

Thanks for the comment. I had to go back through the video to find that part and I think that I had removed those while the camera battery was dead. Anyway, If you coat the studs with some PB Blaster, Liquid Wrench or, whatever your favorite penetrating oil is before you begin it will go a long way in helping to ensure that you don't snap off a stud. Once the throttle linkages and brackets are out of the way you will have complete access to the exhaust manifold bolts. Lifting of the engine is not required. This entire repair can be done with the engine remaining in place. You do have to remove the muffler first. It is held in with two bolts if I remember correctly. You also have to remove the shield below the muffler and then slide the muffler off of the pipes through the bottom. The exhaust pipes are held in place by two studs/nuts on each side. Good Luck with your repair. If you have any further questions, I will be happy to help you as best that I can. I can also be contacted through email at [email protected] Thanks for watching!

Yes, I have had issues with my TPM. I had to replace it a few years back. Mine had collected a ton of salt and water in it from Michigan winter driving. The salt had caused so much corrosion that it had literally eaten some of the connectors off the bottom of it. I grabbed one out of the junkyard and threw it in. I was lucky that the one I grabbed worked with zero issues. That is until one winter we had blowing snow and the snow impacted the engine compartment and the problems came back. Luckily, the problems went away after it had dried out and there wasn't any corrosion this time. What I did to resolve this problem was to make sure everything was clean and then I applied dielectric grease to all of the plugs and exposed areas where water could get in. It has been several years since I did that and I haven't anymore issues. I re-check it periodically to make sure there is still grease covering everything. I'm not saying that this is the correct thing to do, or even if it's the smartest thing to do, but it worked for me. Don't over do it though. If you go to a website called Car-part.com and put your vehicle info into the search box it will give you a listing of every junkyard in your area and beyond that has the parts that you're looking for. Good luck in your repair and Thanks For Watching!

Thanks for the info. I also live in Michigan. Our salty winters sure do eat up vehicles. After watching your video changing the rack and pinion I now know why garages charge $900 - $1,200 to do that job. Yikes.@@justcallmeboats

You should be able to adjust the pull of the cable at the plow end of the cable. There should be a threaded part on the end with two nuts. One of those nuts is a "locking nut" used to hold the adjuster in place after the adjustment has been done. The other nut, is the adjusting nut. In actuality, both of the nuts work together to adjust the cable. Because the cable will stretch over time, periodic adjustments must be made. To adjust the cable so that it will disengage the locking bar far enough to swivel the blade you will first loosen the bottom nut a turn or two (you may have to loosen it a little more depending on how much you have to adjust the cable). You will then tighten the top nut. At this point you will be basically pushing the cable shielding in the up or away from the connecting point. Turn the the nut 1/4 to 1/2 turn and then test to see if you can disengage the locking bar. Repeat this process until you can retract the locking bar enough to rotate the blade. You don't want to go beyond this point because you can over tighten the cable causing it to fail. When you have just enough tension on it to disengage the lock, tighten the previously loosened nut to lock the adjustment in place. You may have an adjuster at the handle as well. Both of these work in the same fashion. Good Luck and I hope that this helps you out. If you have any other questions you can always ask through email at [email protected] Thanks for watching!

@justcallmeboats thank you!

Thank You! My tractor is a 2002 model year. The original head gasket number 24-041-40 S was superseded with the part number (24-841-02 S) that I used in the video. I have the CV674 engine on my tractors. If you go to Searspartsdirect.com and enter your tractors model number it will give you a complete breakdown of all of the parts for your tractor. Scroll to the section listed as "Cylinder head/valve/breather diagram". Look at the parts diagram and find the head gasket and the associated number, then scroll down until you find that part. At that point, jot down the part number and search for that part number. It may be the exact same part number as the one that I used. I don't know if there are any differences between the engines that would make major differences, but double check to make sure. If you would like to contact me through my email for further questions my address is [email protected] . I hope that this helps you out! Thanks for watching!

Thanks for your reply. I sent you an email. Keep the videos coming!

Thank You! I'm glad you liked it!

Thank You! Being a one person operation during this particular video, it was difficult to get every angle but I tried to do the best that I could. I hope that it helped you out in some way. Thanks for watching!

I am glad that I could help out! Thanks for watching!

You say, unfortunately, I hope that it went well for you. I lost all of my crows foot wrenches when I moved here. I did break those lines loose with a line wrench, then finished removing them with a regular open end wrench. This was the second time I had done this job, but the first time, I made a video on it. The first time, I removed the lines from underneath, and it took forever. I hope that my video helped you out in some way. Thanks for watching!

I hope you got through that repair well. Yes, I am a retired Navy man. I am a Boatswains Mate, and I retired after 20 years of active duty.I was not aware of that organization, but it sounds interesting. Thanks for sharing that with me, and thanks for watching!

Sorry, no, I wasn't able to track one down, and even the vans that I looked in at the junkyard had the same issue. I didn't think to check out the local Chrysler dealer, but if it's available from them, it's not going to be cheap. Thanks for watching

I figured that if I was going to dig in this far to do one, I may as well do the other while I'm there. They both have the same amount of hours on them and if I did only one side the other would eventually fail. This way I have to tear down the engine only once and be done with it.

Thanks! I hope that this video helped you out in some way. Thanks for watching!

Very cool! Both of my tractors are 2002 models. This repair is the first major thing to happen to them.

Very smart thing to do and it’s a fact it pays off in the long run 😊

Thanks for watching! Sorry, I do not have the part number for the O-Rings. Generally, the steering rack comes with new O-Rings in the box. If you need new ones you can always take the old ones to a parts store and they should be able to help you out with new ones.

You're very welcome. I hope that this helped you!

Thank You! This repair is fairly easy once you get past the power steering line situation. Thanks For Watching!

Thanks for watching! Hope this helped in some fashion.

Thank You! My goal from the beginning was to put together a truly helpful video. There are so many videos out there that only go half way in helping a person out. That's why I made sure to include the part numbers. Thank you for watching my channel.

Thank You!! I have found that going through the floor for those lines is way easier than dropping the cradle. The trick is not tightening the rack to the body until after getting those lines attached and tight. Otherwise, there isn't very much room to move a wrench around. Thanks for watching!

@@justcallmeboats I found no way at all to get the lines re-installed (and removal was indeed a nightmare). The van still sits and now it has a ray of hope to come back!

I do still have my van. It's around 326,000 miles right now and still a daily driver. Unfortunately, Michigan winter weather is beginning to take a toll on the body but it keeps on running. I'll drive this until it's no longer safe to. Then I'll patch it up and drive it some more! Thanks for watching!

Thank you for watching

Your Welcome! Safety is the very most important part of working under a vehicle. I was a witness to failing jack stands on a neighbors vehicle. That mini van crashed to the ground in literally a blink of the eye. Luckily he had just crawled out from under it moments before the collapse. Two or three more seconds and it would have crushed him. You can never be to cautious! Thanks for watching!

Thank You! I'm glad that I could give you a little insight to what you could be facing when doing yours. A shop near my house was trying to charge me a bit over $800.00 to do this repair. My cost was around $300.00. I bought the part cheaper than this guy was going to charge me for it and he refuses to install customer supplied parts. I wonder why???? I used to work in a transmission shop when I was just a young lad. I know how this stuff works and I wasn't going to allow this guy to make hundreds of dollars profit off of my bank account. Thus, the reason for starting this channel. My puppy IS awesome! She is actually a fully certified service dog. She loves her Kong disc and I love that she unknowingly gets exercise while playing.

Thanks for the advice! Stainless steel would work just as well if you don't mind the added expense.

Thanks for subscribing! The disconnecting of the emissions system was not necessary when I did my repair other than the couple of bolts that held the vacuum canister in place. Those bolts were attached to the reinforcement plate. I try to include as much information in my videos so that my viewers know what they're getting into. The hardest part of this repair is getting the power steering lines back into the new rack without stripping the threads. Doing this part is easier from the top as you have a lot more wiggle room for your hand. Make sure that you tie your steering wheel in place before disconnecting the linkage so that you don't risk damage to your clock spring. Good luck with your repair.

@@justcallmeboats i emailed you my progress! Thanks again!!

Thank You!

I would love one but I have to have a building to put it in first... Someday...

Your Welcome! Thank you for your kind words! Safety should always be a first consideration when it comes to working around any vehicle. I have seen jack stands collapse under a vehicle. My neighbor had just gotten out from under it when it happened. You can never be to careful.

I believe that the high pressure line is the lower hose on the steering rack and is an 18mm bolt. The fittings on the rack and hoses are different sizes and will only go in the appropriate holes.

Thank you for the comment! The Kennedy Space Center is a very interesting place to visit. Get there early in the day and there a lot more things to see and do than what I showed in the video!

Shane, In all it took me around 7 hours as I recall. I didn't really time how long it took me but if I recall correctly, it was around seven hours or so.

@@justcallmeboats thx boss

Michael, Thank you for your comment! Unfortunately, I don't think that you can gain good access to the steering rack without removing that plate. After removal, you have to re-install it due to it being part of the suspension system as it holds the rear joint of the lower control arm to the body as well as reinforces the sub-frame. Also, without that plate you run the risk of the aluminum sub-frame (that holds the engine and transmission in the van) from cracking and breaking. I performed this repair showing that simple hand tools can be used to do it. You could get a cheap impact driver from say Walmart (not endorsed) to speed up the job. Good luck on your repair!

@@justcallmeboats yeah I actually just got done replacing this transmission and did it without removing the frame, but looks like I'm not going to get away with it this time lol, I'll give it a go, thanks again

@@SDPP992 You're very welcome!

Thank you for the comment! I did consider a single piece of angle iron but ultimately decided on this style so that I could change the width of the flaps without unbolting the entire piece of rubber. Instead, I only have to undo only the bolts that are holding the outward angles. This style works well if you have multiple trucks so that you can adjust for the different wheel tracks.

Great to hear! Glad that you enjoyed your visit there.

Thanks for sharing and yes this can be put on any draw bar as long as you have the correct size U bolt to fit around it.

This should also fit your draw bar as well as the adapter that I show in the video as it should be the same size. Sorry for not including this in the video.

This could be bolted to a hitch extender. I have an argosy that already had busted drivers side glass when I bought it.@@justcallmeboats

Thank You!

Iloveglocks Thanks! Here’s what you’ll need to build this: Two pieces of 1 ¼ inch angle iron, One 36 inches long and one 48 inches long. 2 - 24” x 30” rubber mud flaps. The same style that you would find on the back of a semi truck and I purchased them at my local auto parts store. 6 - 5/16 - 18 bolts, washers and lock nuts 10 - ¼ - 20 bolts, and lock nuts 10 - ¼ x 1 ¼ inch Fender Washers 1 - 5/16 inch hole punch 1 - Hammer And to tie it all together you’ll also need One 7/16 x 2” x 3” square U-bolt. Get a square U-bolt not a round one. This will go a long way in the stability of the finished unit. One 2 inch receiver adapter