Way back in November of 2012 while doing coverage of my Spacecab build, I posted a picture of my Coot ATV that I planned to get back to work on someday (the Spacecab, and life in general pushed the Coot project to the cold back burner). After the wife started turning up the heat to "get rid" of the Coot, I decided to blow the dust off (literally) and clear out the collection of stuff that had gotten piled on and in it.
I'll start with a repost of the picture from 2012, then add a little history of COOTs and THIS COOT.
Coots kind of made their debut in a Popular Mechanics article back in the mid sixties. As a kid, it inspired dreams. The Coot idea originated with it's inventor cobbling a vehicle together from an air cooled "lawnmower" engine, and a bunch of off the shelf agricultural gear boxes and components. When actual production started, they supposedly made about 1,000 per year and production ran from the mid sixties to the early 80s. The highest serial number seems to be about mid 8,000.
This Coot came into my life about 1982 when a friend returned from a trip and said "You have to see the strange vehicle we found at a golf cart shop". A week later he takes me up there and when I see it i say "That's a Coot". it was for sale, not running, for 500.00. I didn't have the money (or a trailer) at the time, but my best friend, Will, was always looking for new toys. 2 weeks later, he owned it. FWIW, the design criteria was that they would fit in the bed of a standard full size pickup.
Because of complications, it took about a year for me to get it running. We used to use it here and there, but never really got it to "completely functional" (it had electric start, but we always started it using a rope wrapped around the flywheel pulley, It, like most Coots, ws originally equipped with a cast iron, 12HP 1 cylinder Tecumseh air cooled engine. This drove through a snow mobile type pulley system, to a 2 speed forward, and one reverse Apex transmission. The tranny had a chain drive to the 14:1 worm gear axles. The front and rear axles are coupled by an automotive type driveshaft that runs down the center of the inside of the vehicle. There are NO differentials, so it is a true full time all 4 wheel drive. The body / hull is split and the front pivots independently from the back (They were also called "Articulated Coot". Each half can rotate about 45 degrees from the other.
After about a year of use and abuse, we managed to break a drive gear. we had 4, maybe 5 of us in it, and were driving across a series of dirt mounds where dump trucks had dumped their loads. We probably had never bothered to check the fluid levels in the axles, but we stripped the teeth off the rear drive gear. I had to disassemble the input shaft to get us out of the mounds and back to the trailer. My friend Steve, who first told me about this Coot, said "you won't believe this, there's ANOTHER one of those about a mile down the road from where that one was. It's in real bad shape though". There was our parts supply (125.00) The 1984 picture is right after I finished the axle install (tool box is in the back ground) This is all for the first installment. Dennis
I'll start with a repost of the picture from 2012, then add a little history of COOTs and THIS COOT.
Coots kind of made their debut in a Popular Mechanics article back in the mid sixties. As a kid, it inspired dreams. The Coot idea originated with it's inventor cobbling a vehicle together from an air cooled "lawnmower" engine, and a bunch of off the shelf agricultural gear boxes and components. When actual production started, they supposedly made about 1,000 per year and production ran from the mid sixties to the early 80s. The highest serial number seems to be about mid 8,000.
This Coot came into my life about 1982 when a friend returned from a trip and said "You have to see the strange vehicle we found at a golf cart shop". A week later he takes me up there and when I see it i say "That's a Coot". it was for sale, not running, for 500.00. I didn't have the money (or a trailer) at the time, but my best friend, Will, was always looking for new toys. 2 weeks later, he owned it. FWIW, the design criteria was that they would fit in the bed of a standard full size pickup.
Because of complications, it took about a year for me to get it running. We used to use it here and there, but never really got it to "completely functional" (it had electric start, but we always started it using a rope wrapped around the flywheel pulley, It, like most Coots, ws originally equipped with a cast iron, 12HP 1 cylinder Tecumseh air cooled engine. This drove through a snow mobile type pulley system, to a 2 speed forward, and one reverse Apex transmission. The tranny had a chain drive to the 14:1 worm gear axles. The front and rear axles are coupled by an automotive type driveshaft that runs down the center of the inside of the vehicle. There are NO differentials, so it is a true full time all 4 wheel drive. The body / hull is split and the front pivots independently from the back (They were also called "Articulated Coot". Each half can rotate about 45 degrees from the other.
After about a year of use and abuse, we managed to break a drive gear. we had 4, maybe 5 of us in it, and were driving across a series of dirt mounds where dump trucks had dumped their loads. We probably had never bothered to check the fluid levels in the axles, but we stripped the teeth off the rear drive gear. I had to disassemble the input shaft to get us out of the mounds and back to the trailer. My friend Steve, who first told me about this Coot, said "you won't believe this, there's ANOTHER one of those about a mile down the road from where that one was. It's in real bad shape though". There was our parts supply (125.00) The 1984 picture is right after I finished the axle install (tool box is in the back ground) This is all for the first installment. Dennis