I got quite a bit done on the mower over the weekend and President's day. The first manner of business was the rear tensioner. I decided to use Skeeter's idea of using a Skateboard wheel for this. Since I didn't have a skateboard, I had to buy a couple at the local skateboard shop where I was asked about what kind of board I had and all this other stuff. I finally had to tell them it was a racing mower. " cool" was the reply.
Anyhow, I got the fattest ones they had. Pretty stylish too. Here's where I ran into trouble. At first I did what Skeeter did, which was to cut a slot in a piece of 1x1 tubing and weld it in linear fashion with the frame. This created two problems. The first was that there wasn't enough room to slide the tensioner back and forth to get the chain off. Secondly, I couldn't get to the bolt on the frame side easily at all. I could imagine this would be problematic if the chain broke on race day. So I decided to mount the tensioner to go up and down instead. I also mounted a couple of lock collars that served to push the bolt on the frame side out enough to get at with a wrench. They also held all the washers together so they wouldn't go all over the place when the tensioner was removed.
The space was so tight that I had to weld in place one of the brake master cylinder bolts and grind off the head. The build again is so small that there's not a lot of wiggle room.
Neexxxt... The tensioner for the RAGB to engine. I wound up using what was at one time the mower deck hangers. They were bent just the right way. I drilled a hole through the bottom of the foot rest, slid in a lock nut, and stacked up a few washers so that the nylon pulley would line up properly with the chain. Originally, I had the spring attached to the piece sticking out on the far side. But the pull of the spring wasn't direct enough to the chain. I instead put in a much longer bolt, drilled a hole in it, and then welded a bolt directly across from it on the underside of the pan. That way the spring was pulling directly towards the chain.
This seemed to work pretty well until I had to remove the RAGB later. For some inexplicable reason, the chain seemed to be much looser when I reinstalled the RAGB. This made the distance between the two sides of the chain uncomfortably close. Either I will have to compensate and install a bigger sprocket for the RAGB or install a second idler for the other side that would work just to make sure the two sides of the chain don't touch.
Next up, I decided to start tackling the less imperative stuff. The seat was up next. I'd seen a build for sale on here that had these sort of padded "bumpers" on each side. It was pretty simple, so I decided to use that idea. I welded angle brackets on each side made out of 1/8" steel, drilled holes, and cut and attached two pieces of wood for the bumpers. Me and my wife were walking home from the store the other day and somebody had thrown away a bunch of vinyl covered conference chairs with foam padding. Sweet! So we grabbed em' and later she will sew on the covers and foam to fit the seat. So I finished it up and painted it so it would dry in time for her to start on it.
Next up was to get the battery and stick it under the seat... or so I thought. the battery was too big! crap. Where to put it? Well... the ONLY place it would fit was right between the engine and the RAGB. It fit so well it looked like I'd built it to go there. But having it so close to the engine had me a tad worried. I conferred with the forum.... All replies were that it would probably be ok... so that's what I decided to do with it.
But to make it stable, I welded in two pieces of angle bracket on the pan. So far so good. Next was to weld the seat stand into place. After that. I measured the distance between the battery and the bracket. I then cut the piece of diamond plate aluminum to fit. I left enough space between the aluminum and battery to allow the insertion of a piece of thick rubber against the battery so that the aluminum wouldn't eat through the battery. I drilled holes and used self-tapping screws to install the diamond plate. I wanted it to be easy to remove in case some of the components below would be easier to work on from above. The rubber will be glued to the battery. The battery now fits very snugly. I'll just drill holes to bungee cord the battery in. Otherwise, it isn't going anywhere.
