What a groovy and swinging cat Carl is.......

The swingarm is mostly complete. There is a bit more finish welding and grinding to do, but it looks like it'll work. There could be some chain/belt clearance issues later on, so there may be some minor notching on the left side. We'll see. I did a quick and dirty wheelbase measurement and it looks like it'll be about 82 inches. I will bolt everything up, later today, and drop it down on it's wheels to have a look-see and to sit on it and make VROOM VROOM sounds

Metallurgy for Dummies/Carl/John

Some concerns about my use of mild steel for my swingarm have been raised. There are terms that always bring a knowing smile and a nod of the head to most people. Terms like "Board Certified", "Micro Brewed", "Heliarc" and "Chromemoly". While I have no problem with the last two, I believe them to be, at times, buzz words. I'm a lousy TIG welder, so that's out the window on this build. Cars, bikes, high rise office towers and a myriad of other stuff has been built out of mild steel, with success for a hundred years. They have been gas, arc, MIGed TIGed, bolted, rivited, furnace brazed and even glued together. I believe my swingarm will be just fine. I don't know what BH uses, but the induced hydrogen embrittlement from the chrome plating would certainly negate some of the advantages of using chromemoly. I'm gonna run it and like it. If it fails, I doubt that it will be catastrophic. I will be keeping a close eye on all of the modifications for signs of failure. Just ride in front of me so the parts falling off don't hit ya.

Don't mock my mockup

Here are a few more shots of the bike mocked up. The overall proportions look good. I don't want the stretch limo look. I welded up the swing arm mounts last night. Next, I will connect the two swingarms with a crossbrace that loops under the Curtis box to keep the wheelbase as short as possible.

No huge errors or problems.........yet. I did have a slight problem with one of the mounts. I didn't properly brace it and when I finished welding it in, it drew about 1/4 inch from the heat. A bit of heat with the rosebud tip and a judicious application of the BFH eliminated that screwup. Yes, I knew better, I thought the laws of the universe would change just for me. Man plans.... God laughs.

Stay tuned as I continue to create problems and attemt to solve them

Light at the end of the tunnel, dim but perceptible

Today I made up the swingarm mounts. There will be two on each side rather than the one that BH uses. No real, solid, engineering reason why. I just thought it would be better, or at least no worse. Tomorrow is Saturday, so I'll be able to spend all day in the shop. I hope to have all the welding done and maybe take it off the jacks and see how it looks.

I've been thinking about final drive options. The Gates belt that we have on our bikes will be way too short. They only come in a few sizes and, evidently, there isn't one that will fit. Gates makes a belt called the Eliminator. It is supposed to be stronger than the GT, but it won't fit the BH pulleys. The pulley for this belt are only (I think) available in steel. A 70 tooth weighs 50 lbs!! The last option and the one that I am considering is chain. I will be running two 630 chains side by side. It should handle the power and look bad ass. I need to look at a double strand sprocket and see if there is room for the two chains. These sprockets are made for a special double strand chain. The regular bike chains may rub against each other which doesn't seem like the hot setup to me. More research. The devil's in the details, but it's been done before.

Swing arm

Today I started on the new swingarm. I used 2 inch, 1/8 wall mild steel tubing. It was a tiny bit off from the stuff BH uses. I had to take a few thousandths off of the slider blocks before they would fit inside. Thanks to my trusty old 1925 Dalton lathe/mill combo machine, everything went charmingly. Tomorrow I'll do it again. I may be up on two wheels by this weekend. There is still the clutch and final drive issues, but I'll address those later. So far it is fun since there have been no problems that weren't easy to solve.

In the past few days, I have tacked in the extended swingarm mounts and cut out a rear mount/crossmember. The crossmember will bolt to the rear of the Ranger where it bolts to the Curtis. I will weld ears to the frame to bolt the crossmember onto so the entire thing will drop out. This will make splitting the frame easier later on. To those that may have noticed the pitted appearence of the new crossmember, this is due to my being a scrounger and a tightwad. It's a piece of 1/2 plate that was part of a target at the shooting range at the jail, where I work. A little flat black and you'll never notice the bullet holes.

I picked up the square tubing for the new swingarm today, so as soon as the welding is done on the frame, I will start building the arm. It will be a shortened version of the stock item with a few changes to keep the wheelbase as short as possible

So far, so good. Minimal bloodshed, no hurling of tools/parts, one minor temper tantrum when I realized I had built two identical swingarm mounts. They should be mirror images. DOH !!!!

And The Beat Goes On.

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