Continuing with the wood framed prototype, a few things remained to be added before it could work. The motor needed some way to get fuel, and ignition. Short work later with another 2×4, I had a quick mount for a gas tank, and then it was time for some tedious wiring work. Fortunately, the wiring harness was pretty minimal, and soon I had an ignition switch wired into the coil and the starter. I took some scrap rods and rod ends, and mounted them to the transaxles to activate them.
It works, but now it was time to add a few more pieces and test some more. I added a 2×6 seat, and some better control sticks, and made a few adjustments to the belt drive from motor to transaxles.
Now time for another round of testing:
As you can see, the suspension of the tracks is being compressed, so that will need to be tweaked. I added a solid link to stiffen up the back portion of the linkage.
With that complete, this stage of the prototype was deemed a success, and it was time to move forward. The proof of concept of the motor, transaxles and snowmobile tracks worked well, it was able to spin a donut on dry concrete, and while it seemed to move a bit slow, it seemed promising. At this point, I decided to move forward with the steel frame, and replace all of the wood components.
Next>> Part 6: Start of the steel frame, no more 2×4’s!
