At this point, I wanted to see if the combination of the motor, the transaxles and the tracks would actually work before I spent too much time and money on this project. Rather than waste a bunch of time and money on building a steel frame, I decided to prototype it using wood 2×4’s as my frame. Wood has fairly high strength, is easy to cut, easy to screw together, and best of all, cheap! I wasn’t exactly sure how and where I needed strength in the frame, nor how I was going to route belts and other items. So out came the miter saw, the cordless drill, some torx drive wood screws, and a bunch of 2×4’s!
After a bit of work, I had this!
Continuing the wood frame, I got the motor mounted, and some initial belts, pulleys and tighteners assembled.
Note that these are just some old belts, a crappy pulley drive, and best of all, a C-clamp to hold it, which would allow me to quickly change as necessary. There’s still some work to be done, but the proof of concept was looking decent!!!
Next>> Part 5: Proof of Concept
