Half Track - First Night

I got permission from SWMBO to spend one night a week with my kids, ages 6 and 8, to build together. Our first project is a Half Track vehicle. Tonight is the first night, and we will probably take about a year to build it.

The first order of business was to get the engine running. I got this engine along with a turbo charged lawn mower that I bought from a guy in Kaysville, Utah a while ago. (I've since sold a few parts for what I paid for the whole bunch and traded the turbo mower to a guy for a box of big bearings.) We had to dig the engine out of the weeds and add an ignition coil. Bubba and Jo helped me pull the coil off of an engine that had a cracked block, and they installed it on the new motor. We test fired it with a little bit of Gumout sprayed in the carb. I don't think Bubba expected it to run on the first try, because he jumped about a foot in the air when the thing fired up and ran. After drying a few tears and handing out ear-muffs, we tested it a few more times and moved on to the axle. I have to point out that Jo was rather excited that the jackstands are orange and pink.

The axle is an old Peerless transaxle out of a MTD riding mower. It is the only one I've ever seen with 5 forward gears and a reverse gear. This one will be the drive axle. I'm planning to use another transaxle for the idler axle at the back of the track. Using a transaxle allows there to be a differential. Jo helped me undo the bolts to pull the axle out of the mower, and once it was loose, both kids helped pull the axle out from under the mower while I lifted. If you look closely in the picture, you can see the axle donor (red mower carcass) in the upper left of the picture.

The final task tonight was to do some fit testing with the tracks. The picture shows Bubba on the left and Jo on the right demonstrating just how "easily" the track is going to roll. We had to do the fit test to measure the track for future design purposes. The track set up like this is 4' long, 20" high, and 9" wide. The transaxle will make the two tracks 3' wide from outside to outside.

That's all for tonight. we worked about an hour and a half, and so far we haven't spent any money. All the parts we've used so far are left over from other projects that have since paid for themselves.