Earlier this week, Monday to be exact I received the Curtis gearbox. With 90% or so of the needed parts and lousy weather, I decided it's now or never. Wednesday and Thursday evening were spent splitting the frame and yanking out the Nesco. No big deal. Everything came apart nicely. I bolted the Curtis to the Ranger and stuck the assembly on the bellhousing and bolted everything to the block. There is no clutch, yet. Everything is a mockup at this stage.
Using three Sawzall blades I amputated the rear crossmember. I coulda used the smoke wrench, but I figured I may be able to reuse it and didn't want to booger it up too much. Waste of time. It won't fit the reconfigured swingarm mounting plates. Chucked it in the weeds. Buh Bye.
The new plates for the swingarm were cut from 1/2 plate. I picked up two 3/4 inch four bolt flange mount bearings from Grainger. Appropriate holes were drilled in the plates and the bearings bolted in place. I was a bit dissapointed that the housings for the bearings are die cast. They are rated for around 3000 lbs (I forget exactly). I'll be keeping a close eye on them. If they give me any grief, Browning and others make them with a cast iron housing. I may go ahead and change them out anyway before I put it back on the road. These will be good for the time being.
Tomorrow I will weld up the plates and work on the crossmember. I hope to have the mounts all done and good before next weekend. I'll be fabbing a new swingarm after that. By the time I get through cutting and modifying the old one, I could just go ahead and build one from scratch.
So far, it all looks good. Everything fits as well or better than expected. The bike will end up less than 2 inches longer than stock, about 50 lbs heavier and I'll be able to hammer the crap out of it in first and second. Whooo Hooo
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