Clutch Idler Pulley

This thing is easy to make and assemble but drilling the hole for mounting it is another story.

This is the tool we used along with an electric drill to hone out the spring tube.

We did like the instructions said and we were still a bit out of alinement when it was all said and done.Were not sure if the engine settled or we just plain ole screwed up.

What we ended up doing is fabricating a long pipe welded to a short one in the shape of an L.

We slid the pin into the pipe and bent the entire unit a bit to fix it. Hey now!  I can hear you giggling but what else were we supposed to do lol. This idea wasn't home grown, it came from Tom Smith himself. Seems we weren't the first ones to make this mistake and this was a method several people used to remedy the problem.

One key thing we ended up doing later was grinding out more metal on the bottom of the spriing tube

where casting meets the large tube when the clutch is fully engaged. We had it right but somehow later after we began running the ship we noticed the plunger was going in further and the two parts were binding. This may be a result of the engine torking on it from the belts running up and down during flight or perhaps the spring lost some of its tension were not sure.

I cant help wondering if that isn't a contributing factor in the swing arm breaks.

END