Carrie Beasely was right. Powdered metal. I won't weld to powdered
metal. Back to 2 pieces 4130 sheet metal. Hard as heck. I ruined a
band saw blade on it. It came with all this stuff inside for $37.
Hack saw in the lathe does not work well.

Schabs Parts 12715 old plank road New Lenox Il 60451

Paul Lamar

This fixes the clitch. New 4130 welded sheet front coupling. The
4130 2.75" OD tube .120" wall clears the big nut and keeps the rubber
from getting chewed up by it.

This is what I will build. No welding to the powdered metal spline
plate. Separate 4130 front coupling weldment.

Paul Lamar


Paul,

That looks good to me. How do you plan on making the silicone
dampers?

If you can get the pieces cut to size and send it all to me, I can
weld it up and then test it.

Mark

No welding on the spline plates. Too risky. New 4130 front part
instead.

I was thinking we could buy fabric reinforced silicone rubber sheet
from McMaster or AC spruce and cut it to shapes. Then glue them
together with red RTV to form crude 3D shapes..

OK I'll do that Mark. I think I have located mild steel tubing of
the right sizes. The tube parts are lightly stressed so you can weld
it to the 4130 parts.

Paul Lamar

Paul,

Sounds fine to me. Will there be holes in the silicone to allow for
compression? I guess what I'll need is a sketch.

Mark

I think the crudeness of the 3D shapes will give the rubber enough
room to expand. Paul Lamar

Paul,

Something I need to add to the mix. My rear psru seal has worked its
way out of its bore more than once resulting in damage to the seal
and loss of oil. The fix I came up with was to install three
button-head screws into the flywheel side of the psru adapter plate
in order to retain the seal. These screws may interfere with your
"stacked bearings" solution to the flex hub adapter. I just wanted
to mention this as a possible problem area as we proceed with the
design. As far as I know, I'm the only one that's had this problem.
So, I'm keeping my fingers crossed on whether or not the double
stacked bearings are necessary, hopefully not.

Mark

They can stay there. The spline plate can be turned down on a lathe
so the spline plate bottoms out the splines short of the screws and
clears the screw heads.

As it is now the seal surface on the input shaft extends back beyond
the lip of the seal to the splines which start some where on the
back side of the adapter plate.

The rubber coupling expansion will tend to reduce the force on the
helical gear thrust bearings.


Paul Lamar


We might be able to adjust the spacer to get a few more thousands
seal lip clearance before the start of the splines.

This is what it looks like on the RV4 with the old 2.17:1 gear box.
The splines go into the seal somewhat.


Paul Lamar


We can fix that several ways. Depending on what thrust bearing you
have. If you have needles we can change the thickness of the
spacers. If you have the roller version with out spacers we can shave
off the back side of the sun gear. If you don't have a lathe you can
send it to me.

Here is a picture of a new spline plate with just the drums cut off.
We have to machine on it anyway as Tracy does.

Paul Lamar

True. The half inch plate is plenty thick enough.

Here is a dwg of the box and how to get more room for the rear oil
seal.

Paul Lamar


I woke up with the solution. A tac weld or two filling the spline
grooves will keep the female spline plate away from the bolt heads.
The reduction in spline length on the input shaft will be on the
order of point one inch to point three inches. Inconsequential.

Super simple.

A chastity belt so to speak :)

That does not solve the seal problem of course so the methods
suggested above still apply.

Paul Lamar


Here is how it looks.
If you want one of the couplings prepare to send me a spline
plate. Either new from ebay ($37) or the one you bought from Tracy and your
input shaft. I can add another pin to the gear and cut the drums off the new spline
plate and machine it to fit. I will mod the input shaft. Very little heat
will be required as braze will work.

You will have to drill out the 1/4 inch bolts holding the ring gear bulkhead
and replace them with 5/16th bolts.

This will fix the gear box problems showing up in the last 5 years or so with
the higher power rotaries. Turbo, p-port and 3 rotor.

Mark. I am buying the material today. It will take a few days
to water jet cut some of the parts. When they are done I will
send you a kit for welding and testing.

Paul Lamar

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