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Some people here will have read about and/or heard about the absurd mower I made about 15 years ago. It was designed to be able to cut acres and acres of grass in a short time. Something somewhat larger than a lawn-tractor, but not quite as cumbersome as a tractor PTO mowing deck. It used an XUD engine as a power source, had three hydraulically driven cutting decks and was beyond dangerous. It would cut a 2M wide swathe of grass at 20mph and fling the cuttings about 20M away from it. It would also cut down an entire hedge at 10mph if you asked it to. It was built when scrap was on it's arse, meaning cars were free. XUD-engined BXs couldn't be given away, even with an MOT. That meant the mower cost about £20 in materials. It was referred to as "Mega-Mower" I'm now looking to make Mega-Mower MkII. Mega-Mower MkII (hereafter referred to as MMM2) will be designed for the FoD, as it needs something a little more effective and powerful than the 8hp ride-on that currently tries it's best to keep the camping field, orchard and entrance route under control. I'm not making something to do the main 10-ish-acre field. MM would have done that. MMM2 is not intended to do that. It's meant to be somewhat more manageable and significantly safer than MM. Mind you, that's not hard.. juggling flaming machetes while dodging traffic on the M25 would have been safer than MM. The expectation is a machine that can cut grass at a decent speed (faster than walking pace.. maybe 8-10 mph) and have a cut width of about 1.0 to 1.2 meters. It will also be quieter than a normal lawn-tractor, as I hate having to wear ear-defenders when mowing. It will also have a towbar and be a useful shunting engine up at the FoD. If it can cut the entire orchard, the camping field and the access route in an hour, that seems ideal. Anyway. What I need is the donor vehicle for this. As I do not need 70hp of an XUD9A or even 62 hp of an XUD7, I'm looking towards the TUD engine as a basis for this mower, possibly the early Ford 1.6/1.8D engine, or similar offerings from other stables. I do definitely want to stick with a mechanical injection engine as that will be massively easier to set up for mowing (speed regulated rather than power regulated), and it needs to be pretty much the smallest diesel engine available. Another XUD engine'd one is overkill. Petrol is definitely out, as it would be good to have this running on Red Diesel or similar (heating oil cut with used engine oil maybe.. something like that) So I'm looking for a TUD, and most of the front of said TUD-engined car. I would rather it not be a complete and roadworthy car, as that's a bit of a waste. Ideally I need something that's either completely and utterly rotten, or has been crashed/rolled/otherwise fucked (maybe both?), but the engine still runs and the front isn't banana shaped. So I'm looking for: Citroen AX Diesel Citroen Saxo Diesel Pug 106 Diesel Rover Metro Diesel Ford Escort/Orion Diesel from the late '80s/'90s Vauxhall Astra/Cavalier Diesel from the late '80s/'90s Anything else with a small mechanical diesel engine. I guess I could look at XUD stuff again, as that does open up the range of available vehicles somewhat. I could go as modern as something with a DW8 in it, as it's very easy to shove a fully-mechanical pump on them and make them ECU-free. If going down that route, my preference would be for a BX Diesel or an early Xantia Diesel, as on MM I used the Citroen hydraulics as the cut-height control, and it worked beautifully. MMM2 could just have mechanical height-adjustable cutters, but where's the fun in that? If I do go XUD, that does make it somewhat more familiar to me. I will likely also need a second front subframe and suspension/brakes/struts etc. from the same car. That could possibly be scrapyard sourced, but the more popular the car is, the easier it will be to get. MM used all BX components as I was given about 3 BXs back then, so parts were plentiful. I know it's just not like that any more. I will also need the differential from a couple of RWD Mercedes, along with about a foot of the prop and at least half (or hopefully all) the rear driveshafts. Candidates for that are 190s or C-class. E-class diffs are getting a bit big. I think I can lay my hands on exactly what's needed from a W202 C180, so might only need one more. Knowing the Merc specialist I do, this might be the easier of the parts to source. The diffs do need to be the same (or at least similar) ratios. The other parts that will be needed are PAS pumps. Definitely four, maybe more. These are used as pumps on the engine and then with the pressure regulator removed as the hydraulic motor for the cutter blade. Very effective, and it means you can hydraulically engage/disengage the cutters. Far more elegant than slipping belts. Likely to need two larger ones for the pumps, with then smaller ones on the cutter blades in order to get some up-gearing and make the cutter blade spin fast enough. Citroen HP pumps were ideal for the "motor" ones, as they tend to be small-volume-high-pressure pumps, which means the output from a higher-volume pump gives an excellent "gear ratio". There is no hurry for this. I'd rather wait and find a rotten Pug 106 / Citroen Saxo that has had a nasty rear-end shunt for cheap than attempt to use something I'm not familiar with, but we'll see what turns up.