Souped-Up Lawn Mowers Turn Work into Sport

Anyone who has sat on the back of a riding mower and chugged along at five miles per hour has felt the itch.

Neat lines in the grass meld into course boundaries. Why settle for chore when sport lurks? Why accept turtle when rabbit is within reach?

A few dozen Traverse City men lived that dream recently when they turned formerly unassuming lawn-care equipment into racing machines at the Northwestern Michigan Fairgrounds.

Kingsley Speedway owner Darryl Wiggins organized the lawn mower races — the first of its kind in northern Michigan.

"Our rules are pretty open at this point, because we're just getting started," Wiggins said. "These guys don't want to be all that technical and stuff. They just want to have fun."

The dirt track event looked a bit like a chase scene from a "Mad Max" movie, with a motley crew of drivers dressed in T-shirts and snowmobile helmets kicking up clouds of dust and bumping tires as they tipped up on three wheels and leaned hard into turns.

Most of the participants were first-timers, and learned the sport riding with friends and relatives in hayfields and on ATV trails.

Traverse City resident Jon Goethals, 17, has raced for five years in an annual competition against relatives at a family farm.

His mower dates from the 1950s, but after disconnecting the governor and giving the machine a tune-up, he's clocked it at 35 mph. Goethals has never been hurt on his mower, although, like many of the drivers, he's rolled it on several occasions.

"You can feel it starting to go," he said. "I always jumped off."

Bill Heiges and a group of Lake Ann men started taking lawn mowers off-road as a way to pass the time between snowmobiling seasons.

Heiges transformed a 10-horsepower Craftsman from Sears into a 40-horse brute by dropping in a snowmobile engine.

Tim Heiges took that concept a step further, hooking a tank of nitrous oxide to the back of his mower, effectively doubling the power of his engine.

He ran into engine problems on the track this week, but said he's pushed the machine upwards of 50 mph at the Northern Michigan Dragway.

His tricked-out mower was a hit among the several hundred spectators in attendance.

"We're just out here to put on a show," Tim Heiges said. "We're not really worried about winning."