Ed Walker – Subscriber spotlight

My name is Ed Walker, and I’m from Jefferson City, MO. I have been a red tractor guy since I was a kid. The first tractor I ever drove was a 1066. Someday, I hope to own one. I was always messing around with lawn mowers and tinkering when I was young. When I was 16 years old, I put on a garden tractor pull in the town I grew up in, Arnold, NE. When I started diesel mechanics school, I had the opportunity to buy a Cub Cadet garden tractor puller, and that kinda started my interest in Cub Cadet stuff.

My garden tractor puller started out a 1978 Cub Cadet 1250 but there is not much left of that, it is powered by a GS1100E Suzuki motorcycle engine with 4 drag bike carburetors and runs on alcohol, that goes into a 4 speed Chevy Chevette transmission and that’s bolted right to a Ford 9 inch reared that’s been narrowed up and has go cart breaks on each back wheel to steer it when the front end is in the air. It is a blast to drive… when everything is working the way it’s supposed to. I was at Troy, MO at a pull in July 2023, and through some unfortunate events I rolled it and messed it up pretty bad. I tore it all apart and started all over again and put it back together.

After a couple of years working on it, I got it all back together just in time for Red Power Round Up at Sedalia, MO in 2025.

Several years ago, a family friend of my back home in Nebraska had told me he had a Cub sitting in a shed and had asked if I wanted it, I had kinda forgot about it till one spring I was home and had a trailer, we went out to his family’s farm and to an old lawn mower shed in the middle of field and opened the doors to discover a 149 Cub Cadet that had been sitting for he figured close to 30 years because the engine had been blown up in it. We pulled it out of the shed, and I loaded it up, and I brought it back home to Missouri with me; that was May of 2022.

Later that year, I started tearing the 149 completely apart to get repainted and restored, my plan was to build a pit tractor that I could use to pick up the front of my pulling tractor and move it around at pulls. By the time I went to the National Farm Machinery Show in February 2023, I had kinda made a tentative goal that I wanted to have it done and take my 2 Cubs to the first ever Red Power Round Up in Nebraska in June. I got it back from a buddy that painted it in March, spent April gathering parts, and started putting it back together in May. I knew I was going to be cutting it pretty close to getting it ready for Red Power because in April my life starts getting very busy…

During the summer, my life is crazy busy; my main job from April to October is running a tractor pulling sled all over the country. I do about 60 pulls each summer from South Dakota all the way to Texas and about every point in between. I do a lot of pulls in Nebraska, Iowa, and Missouri in July and August, usually the last week of July, the first week of August. I do 10 shows in 12 days.

I got my 149 done a week before Red Power and took them to Grand Island; the 2 Cubs together one hauling the other one around, got a lot of interest. It’s unique, and I like something that is different. It’s a 1973 Cub Cadet 149, the restoration turned out great. I built a hydraulic thumb that picks up the front of my pulling garden tractor, it works out well.

The first pull I took both Cubs to was the Troy pull where I rolled my pulling tractor, so I guess I got to restore another Cub, wasn’t planning on doing that, but I do like how it turned out after that rebuild. When I had it repainted, I knew I wanted to spruce up the normal Cub colors, so my buddy who repainted it put gold sparkle in the yellow and blue pearl in the clear coat on the cream white, looks amazing!

You never can have too many Cub Cadets, right??? lol I also enjoy going to plow days and plowing with these little tractors, since I tractor pull I thought it would be kinda cool to have a diesel cub, so after some looking I found a 1772 Cub Cadet when I was down in Texas pulling a couple years ago, my plan is to put a turbo on it and build a little 2 bottom plow for it so I can take it to plow days. A 1772 was built one-year 1989 and was the last Cub built with a steel hood, in 1990 they built a 1782 which I bought one of them from a pulling friend here in Missouri, so now I have 2 diesel Cubs, they both have D640 Kubota 3-cylinder diesel engines. Really don’t have any plans for 1782, just thought it would be neat to have a 1772 and 1782.

My next couple Cub Cadet buys I want to find an original or a 100 and build an ice cream churn tractor, run the churn off the PTO with a platform on the back the churn sits on. I’ve seen a video of one and thought that was cool, and who doesn’t like ice cream!?! Lol.  I would also like to find a Cub Low Boy someday with a mower and plow to push snow, but I’m at the point now that if I buy more Cubs, I’m going to have to build a bigger shed lol.

Thanks for letting me share my story. If anyone would like to see some of my pictures of the 2 cubs I restored, look me up on Facebook.