Now I will start prepping the frame for welding in my suppports. Before I trimmed anything structural I welded a brace perpendicular to the frame rails to give it some more support (plus it made a nice handle when moving the frame around). The biggest things I had to trim out were back sides of where the factory bolts attached and a few stamped spots that wouldn't allow my tube steel to sit squarely in the frame. I also trimmed the lower section of the frame where the factory front axle mounted. From what I've read this is a legal cut. I also cut off the old trailer hitch. This is a place where i forgot some pictures for a while but you can see the majority of the reinforcement in some of the chassis pictures.
I decided to use 1"x1" square tubing for my reinforcement (I read later that George Herrin used 3/4" with good results, but it was too late). Everything at this point will be tacked in enough to keep it straight. This way I can easily go back and change something and hopefully keep from getting anything too hot and warping it. I also welded in some 1 1/2" x 1/8" angle iron on the front and rear of the frame. This is some discrete reinforcing without sacrificing clearance for the engine pulley and rear sprocket. I believe you can see some pictures below where I had to notch the rear for my sprocket. After my mock up phase is done, I will tear the whole thing down again and finish my welding.
Now it's time to mount the axles. Reading into the USLMRA rule book I found that for C/P my frame could be 4" off the ground, so I decided I would get this thing as low as rules allowed for a better center of gravity.
So as much as I love fabricating and building everything on my own as cheap as possible, I decided to go crazy with this mower. Plus I was on a 1 month time constraint for this build. Anyways, I bought the front axle from EC. It is a nice quality piece and designed by one of the best so I figured I couldn't go wrong. I also bought the 36" x 1 1/4" rear kit from EC.
Here you can see my rear section (which will change a couple times).
Here is my rear section after some changes. I cut the top tubes out because i was having trouble mounting my brake caliper. Thinking back i would have done some of it differently.
After welding in the axle bearing hangers in place, I had to cut the square tubing out under it so the bearing cassettes would clear. My initial plan was to do some heavy reinforcing on top and to cut the frame and all out directly underneath the bearing hangers, but later decide to leave the frame intact for more rigidity. It may be a pain down the road removing the axle after it rusts and wears but I will deal with that when the time comes I guess.
So on to mounting the sweet front axle. Initially, as you can see in my pictures, I had this genius idea of mounting the tie-rod facing to the rear. My engine pulley had to mount at the lowest point of the crankshaft output, which in turn would have made my steering linkage sit about an inch off the ground. So needless to say, I notched my frame for the tie-rod and mounted my front axle.
This was the end of my night, so I took the chassis home. Just for fun I sat the body on it to see what it would look like.
So, with EC's design, fixing the steering was easy. I could just unbolt everything and flip flop it. Only problem was that as you can see in the pics below, my frame was sitting about a half inch higher in the front. Doing the math for mounting the axles, taking into account the tire size and all that to get your frame at an exact height is a little difficult. Expecially using a "scientific" tape measure.
The front end was cut off (thankfully it was only tacked), and rewelded a half inch higher, which oddly enough was level to the top of the frame (you would think maybe it was designed like this).
Unfortunately I don't have anymore frame only profile views after I corrected the front axle, but I got it spot on and it looked much better.
This is where i will leave the post this morning. More to follow!
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