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finally figured out the new carmera and resized the pictures of the gearbox. Guy that formed the shell casing did an ok job except he n'tget the .50 radii for the bear plates, I so I had to contract the work out to someone else.

The drawing pictures are the production version patterns designed for casting. You will notice that aluminum around the bearing housing has been cut out for weight reduction - hopefully the casting folks can work with this before i get it cnc milled. The dimensions for the production version are 6.28" (H) X 4.77" (W) x 7.5 (L)

I may change the radiii for the corners from .50 to .375 (3/8") for the production bearing plates, that way I can use my local sheet metal guy - his pricing is very reasonable.

Kinda down and out about the covering for the reverse box.. I received the parts from out-of-state with the so-called right bend radii and it still doesn't fit!. i will sent the parts back along with one of the bearing housing plates and hopefully the machine shop can get it right!!

Notice the 1/4" gap on the top and bottom pieces where they are suppose to meet and the on the top where the covering isn't coincident with the bearing housing plate. Setbacks, Setbacks.. I never intended for it to take soooo long... Got to be patience though..we'll prevail!!


Notice where the seem (top and botton meet) would be welded and grinded to smooth/blend in to make one part. The seem is more that enough higher than the oil fill level. Overall, long-term I would use this as a pattern to get a one piece Alumn casting (no welding and grinding smooth)

Yahshuatwo

I got the new shell casing parts back yesterday and they fit a lot better than the first ones. I'll post some pics over the weekend after I weld the two halves together.

I also order the engagement shaft used for puttin the box in forward or reverse. I need to figure out how to aluminum cast the reverse ilde gear fork and attach it to the engagement shaft.

see if you can repurpose one from the motorcycle tranny (or wherever the gear was sourced from).

Pics of the new casing, it needs to be welded together.

I received the gxxer-1000 shifter rod this afternoon and begin to work with it. I cut off most of the rod leaving the end with the splines matching the gear lever. I will begin brainstorming how to incorporate the rod with the fabricated forward/reverse fork. As mentioned in previous posts, I plan to cast the fabbed fork using aluminum or brass.

I went to visit a local machine shop nearby to see if they could machine some o-ring grooves on the bearing plates. I sought this method to seal the casing to the bearing housings, keepin the the oil from leaking. The owner of the shop said it wouldn't take too much time to machine in the grooves so next week I'll take the bearing housings over to get the work done. In the meatime, I need to visit McMaster Carr online and determine what size o-rings to purchase. I was told to measure the circumfrence of the housing mating edge to help find the proper o-ring.

Below is a photo recently taken displaying the inside of the reverse box. Take special notice where the shell casing mates with the bearing plate housing - we'll need a large enough o-ring to assure oil isn't gonna leak. Given the current design, this will be the most challenging aspect of the build. Longterm, I will machine both the housing plate and shell casing to get tighter torelances to better assure no leaks.

Keep in mind whatever oil and air is in the box will expand with temperature. Sealing it up won't prevent the pressure from trying to push the oil out past the seals, so some sort of vent will probably be needed, one to which a hose can be attached and run up high. As I recall, the reverse box on some BEC Sevens have this issue, spewing much of the oil everytime they heat-cycle.

Thanks for the insight Kurt. I thought about drilling an air release hole/passage throught the oil fill bolt.

I have these on my ATV. I'm sure they would work for this application too. It's called a differential bellows. Commonly found at almost any ATV shop for under $5.00.

I was able to weld the two casing halves together and trial fit the second hawk prop adapter. I purchased these adapters on ebay for $50 each. The next step is trial fit the o-rings I purchased from McMaster-Carr; I expect the o-rings to arrive quickly from Atlanta,Ga in a day or so.

the first photo below displays the new box side-by-side with my current box - Eurotech FR2000. The FR2000 is an old box that has issues, but its been effective in the short-term.

below is a quick take of the box on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psIlef3TFqA

Wow

Almost completed the forward-reverse engagement mechanism. For weeks I was trying to figure out how to metal cast the sync-fork I made from pressed wood board and JB weld. the part dimensions are kinda of akward and it seemed impossible to cast. But this past weekend I fiinally decided to make a replica from metal by bending and forming it. the metal is about 3/16" thick and it should be strong enough to engage/disengage the reverse idler gear. I will attempt to finish of the engagement stuff this weekend upcoming.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TEzUptuMbs

I was anxious to finish off the sync fork engagement mechanism before the weekend arrived. I was able to hook it up and make a quick "dry run" using my hands to test forward and reverse. Suprisingly, I managed to engage from reverse-to-forward fairly easy, however forward to reverse was somewhat challenging. Overall, I'm happy with the test, and I'll tweak the forward-to-reverse - no big deal. I need to gather the some rubber washers for the lower socket cap screw bolts and thread the oil plug to seal the box before filling with oil.

I 've posted another youtube video demostrating the engagement test:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-4wBiZNuwQ


Yahshuatwo