Welcome to ModelEngineMaker !If you have problems registering or logging in, please use the contact menu option to request assistance.
Crueby:Regarding why they used a "dog clutch" to hold the inner hemisphere in place. Maybe they found out the hard way that the deep grooves in the hemisphere by themselves aren't enough to allow the full up and down travel of the tracks without things being ripped apart. There might be some sort of travel limiter inside the hemisphere casting that only allows it to move a fixed distance laterally, then the "dog clutch" takes over and allows the rest of the required movement. I'm assuming that you haven't taken one of these apart to see what's inside? Have you moved the tracks to the full up and down positions to measure how much travel you need for these shafts? Don
Letting it freewheel would make sense for track repair. Hard to be sure without a look inside.Maybe you could send the Ninja elves out for a little midnight reconnizence, reconnoyter, look-see? Don
Dog those family shots are so cool I get the chills. Damn son that looks awesome..... Don
Would it help to turn a corner better if they could manually disconnect one drive shaft?
Whew. My last reply was some 230 posts ago.After a 37 day road trip, and two weeks of trying to recover a toasted hard drive (I'm still not done), I thought I'd be seeing a Marion trundling down your driveway. Can't you go a bit faster? Are your elves slacking off?But I can't add much more to what all has been said here. Fantastic project.P.S. I saw your post about your elves maybe getting hold of my Stinking Hoppie recipe. You'd best warn them...that recipe is what toasted my hard drive.
Chris, since Zee’s National Lampoon vacation is over, perhaps you should invite him up to assist and get you caught up , he is retired you know .. BTW Zee, how did the steam cooking thingy work out for you? Now, back to the build. I’m thinking the “half-shafts”, with u-joints, would be just for the “up and down “ movement of the tracks, because, all tracked vehicles turn by one track turning and the other not or at least not as much or in the opposite direction. See, that’s how if you want to do it really quick, one track goes forward and the other back. Grandpa Reid put me on a D8 Cat dozer when I was 15 and wouldn’t let me lower the blade until I could “drive it “ . After I got the feel, it made sense. If any of y’all have a “zero turn” lawnmower, it’s exactly the same; hence my thinking that the half shafts were for power transmission and vertical movements. Ok, back to the elves Eric
Well excuuuuuuuuse me. I guess your Marion is different than any track driven piece of equipment I’ve ever operated. Of coarse I’ve only ran those built in the early 50’s or so