Well Mother nature and the medical community conspired against me. Had planned on being at Mom's place this weekend into next week however with winter storm warnings on Saturday as well as this coming Tuesday and Wednesday decided not to risk the travel as I need to be back on Wednesday morning to allow the Hospital staff to draw some blood for testing. Oh well I'll have a chance to visit Mom in March when I go to part time status for my last month in the Military. However staying home allowed me to do some more work on the Overhead drive which we'll talk about now.

First I finished mounting the casting. I noticed during testing that if the casting was tight against the upper plate then the lower leg came at an angle to the lower plate. By inserting a couple of 1/8" spacers between the upper plate and the upper casting arm it now allowed the lower casting arm to be flat against the lower plate. So first thing we did was take some flat stock and make two spacers. Once they were done we placed them on the studs and hung the overhead casting. I then quickly drilled my extra hole in the casting and into the plate. Removed the casting so that I could remove the plate and finish drilling the hole and then tap the hole with 1/2" by 20TPI for a Hex bolt. Once that was done we reinstalled the plate and reinstalled the casting for hopefully the last time until we need to disassemble for moving. Here are a couple of pictures showing the two spacers being made and then the plates and spacers awaiting the casting. As well there is a picture showing the final mounting with all bolts installed.

After bolting the top two nuts there was still a very slight gap between the bottom right casting and the plate in that location. So since the casting has threaded inserts to adjust to the lathe body I needed to thread this one insert out a little to compensate. However with the casting installed on the studs I needed a special little tool with two nubs on it that would go over the stud and match the indents on the insert. So we bought a 11/16" socket which was close to the right diameter, cut and ground the top to get two nubs and then filed a little of the outside diameter so it would sit over the stud and into the area of the insert. Grinding out the inside of a hardened socket is not easy. However got it done so that we could thread out the insert. Here's a picture of the socket being modified. Once it was done it worked quite well.

 Once the casting was installed it was time to start putting it all back together. First thing we installed was the transmission. This is a shaft with two sprockets on it that are engaged by a sliding mechanism that locks either of the sprockets depending on which way the slide is moved. Move it left you go to high gear move it right you go to low gear. I had spent some time earlier making sure it was all cleaned up and ready to be installed. When doing this I also adjusted the locking tabs on each side of the slider to ensure positive lock when gear engaged. I discussed this in an earlier installment. When I reinstalled it I added one new oilite washer since the old one looked worn down and badly scored. In the pictures below you will see it on the left side as being a little oranger than the rest. Otherwise all the rest of the original parts looked in good shape. Once the transmission was installed I could install the shifter arm and it's bracket. Here are some pictures showing these items. First picture is a close up of the transmission showing the two sprockets and the slot where the selector arm rides that moves the sleeve left or right. Second picture shows the complete assembly with the selector arm installed. The bottom two pictures show the selector arm from front and side view.

When I disassembled the Overhead drive to clean it we found that the two end caps of the transmission had a paper gasket underneath them. So bought some gasket paper and carefully cut some gaskets to match. Installed them under the caps before final assembly. After they were tightened down I carefully cut away the protruding parts so it became a nice clean install. Here is a picture showing some of the gasket sticking out before trimming.

You'll notice in the above picture that only two screws are installed. When the assembly came to me it was missing some hardware. This was part of it. So over to the #39 lathe and carefully machined two replacement screws to match the ones that were missing. Here is a picture showing original screw and newly made one.

Pretty close match however mine is a little bit longer. This is not an issue as there was more hole than original screw. These were 5/16" by 26TPI screws. I still have to make two 1/4" by 26TPI screws for the bracket at the top of the casting that holds the selector arm to the casting. You can see the bracket on a previous picture of the transmission on the top of the casting. I'll do those tomorrow when I get back to work on it.  After the two screws were made installed them in the caps one per side and installed the Gits oil caps at the same time. Heres a picture showing the screws installed along with the screwdriver malfunction mark on the casting which I'll have to touch up when I get the spray can out next time.

Well that's all for this installment. For those football fans out there I hope you enjoyed your Superbowl parties. I won't be watching the game however I will be checking out the commercials when they come on Youtube. Until next week stay warm and enjoy life.

Harold