I have to say that the fan just looks like an accident waiting to happen. If you could find/make a shroud for it, not only would you have significantly less chance of it slicing off a finger of catching a bit of shirt (or that fuel line that is dangling precariously close to the spinning blades), but the cooling effect would be much improved pulling air through the radiator. My '95 Chevy 350 has a fan shroud so you could probably find a similar one at the junk yard.
A little progress here. Got the brake drums off, and started mocking up the location on the frame.
Learned a couple of things about mirroring and rotation… Serious chair-sit and head-scratching time Wayne. Won’t bore you with the details, but it turns out you can’t reverse the axle by swapping left / right hubs and pointing it backwards. Too many mirror-flips, they cancel themselves out. So I ended up with it upside down backwards. Think it should work OK if I slightly overfill the oil.
Going with a 6" and 12" double pulley, 2:1 reduction. That puts the axle higher up, leaving room underneath for a brake drum flywheel. Axle center is 37" off the ground. Higher than usual but plenty of room for wood collection.
Need opinions - better to work on left or right side? Reasons to try and lower the cutting height?
Chris, I thik I would like it high and work with a straight back after bending to pick up a length. Better yet, pick the lengths off a trailer and stand up straight the whole time. Maybe bending doesn’t bother your young back:-) Another advantage of high you already mentioned - a bigger pile underneath the chunker - maybe a chute / bagger? As far as left side or right side - I think it is a personal preference - right brain or left brain.
I’m right there with Don on the operating height… Unless you are into developing a bad back, it really needs to be at the right height.
Mine is at 37" off the ground, and it’s comfortable… No back fatigue… If I’m organized… I back up the truck to the chunker and chunk it right off the truck. I have no desire to be one with wood :-), I handle it as little as possible.
Rotation… I would orient the axle so it is turning the same direction as it would going down the road…
My axle has a scraper that picks up oil and sends it to the pinion gear and the planetary’s, if it’s rotated in reverse long term, there is going to be an oiling problem.
I would mount the Brake drum on the Pinion as Wayne did… Yupp thats putting the CG way up there… Might have been better if the axle were left a little wider? Depends on you’re driving style
If you are going to find yourself Chunking by the side of the road… I would feed it from the passenger side rear of the trailer. That keeps ya out of traffic and leaves the residue where it’s easily moved to the ditch. I see lots of wood on the back roads, I could pull over for a few minutes, Chunk a few buckets and move on to the next pile.
Are you gonna run a Genset off the drive shaft?
Thats it for now.
Sorry for the poor focus, Raining cats and dogs.
TerryL
Hi guys, thanks for the input. Marvin, the flywheel I think will go very close mounted to the tail shaft on transmission. This way I pick up a few RPMs and therefore more flywheel energy. The drive shaft will then go into a pillow block, terminating in a 6" dual belt pulley and PTO connector. The pulleys I’m looking at are a quick disconnect style, so if I need to upgrade it (triple belts?) for whatever reason, it should be no problem. There’s plenty of room there for belts chains or whatever. That whole angled section is reserved for belts pulleys etc.
Terry good point on the passenger side chunking. Not sure I’ll be in that situation, but I was inclined to that side anyways. Too many videos of Wayne doing it there I guess. Always copy a smarter guy than yourself!
Towing is not a concern. This thing is very tongue heavy. This is intended to give stability when blocked up. The rear axle is lighter now without the drums, most of the weight is the engine and tranny. If I ever do tow it, I won’t be rally racing for sure, but mostly wheels are for short trips across the yard. Narrow axle is out of my way for working stationary, which is again 99% of the use-case here.
I think the axle is going backwards, albeit upside down. I get confused on this rotational stuff. The tranny output is counterclockwise, meaning the rear input is clockwise. Now they’re both pointed backward, so the axle is turning counterclockwise like the driveshaft.
There’s no slinger or scraper in my diff, although I might be able to add one… Wouldn’t a slinger work backwards as well as forwards? I guess it depends on the shape. Also note that Wayne’s axle is definitely going backwards and he’s chunked more wood than I’ll ever dream of, with no apparent issues.
Yes I intend to have two PTO outputs, one 540 and one 1000. I already have both speeds sitting there, just need to weld on PTO stubs and plug in a gen head, water pump, wood chipper, anything really.
Feeding the left side or the right side may depend if your are right or left handed . Being able to stand up strait is important and being comfortable When my wood starts getting short I have to lean over but I have a rest that my left arm fits in to hold me very study and it is comfortable .
When your wood gets short make sure you have some type support for your hand . Kinda like writing or typing , the back of your hand is on the something solid so you can be more accurate with your fingers .
If your flywheel is prior to any belts or chains most likely you will slip belts and break chains .
I’m thinking you’ll need at least double 60 or 80 chains with the weight on the driveshaft. I know its not the most effective but I think I’d get some rims for flywheel weight on the other side of the axle.
Thanks all, this is why I ask for opinions. Like I said I try to follow advice of people smarter than me. Enough of you have said to put the flywheel past the belt drive, I’ll do that.
Hi Chris…I was thinking like Wayne, any slack in the system will cause your flywheel to be a little behind the chunking action. Probably causing belts and or chains to be jerky and whipped. Also the tail shaft on the trans has a brass bushing to help support the input yoke of the drive shaft and with the weight hanging near the tail shaft and the slack of the splines it will probably be trying to jerk the input yoke all around inside the brass bushing, it is really not intended to support side loading caused by the flywheel {weight} hanging there…Just my 2 cents worth.
Gary
Ah! Ha! Thanks for the jolt CarlZ.
My mind jumped up and said NO! Don’t cut it off! You will need that other side!
Why? Why? Why?
One of the Finn chunker pictures shows the axle opposite side having one of those “conical screw cone splitter” attached to long split out round stock into sticks to fit the chunker end.
I’ve never used one of those cone splitters. Just watched the vidoeos. Any real users input out there in the DOW woodchuckers experience bank??
The North American names are thestickler.com and theatomsplitter.com
UK it is HyCrack.co.uk
REgards
Steve Unruh
I have gotten a little complacent the last couple of years with my chunker . For a long time I always had a clutch cable ran back to the rear of the chunker for instant kill.
With your gasoline motor it would be very easy and wise to have a kill switch located in the area you will be working .
Wide is OK, but like Steve said, I don’t want to literally cut off my options. Many possibilities for a slow turning power source.
Wayne, kill switch is very smart. I can set up something easily.
The diesel walk behind tractor I used for many years had a “dead man’s switch” - if you let go of the tractor it shut off fuel and died. Only problem was working away from the handlebars! I used a PVC pipe to override it when necessary.
Steve I have a unicorn cone splitter that had the side arm shaft to keep the log from rotating. I was never happy or comfortable with that setup. I since changed it to the table top type and that makes a world of difference. I feel much safer with it this way because the center of the cone is only about 5 inches above the table and the logs are fed vertically into the screw. Large logs can be fed with the point entering at the 10 o clock position and small chunks split off until the whole log is split. I put a rope safety to the pto lever so I can kill the power with a quick jerk on the rope.
Upside down is the only way to reverse the output without changing the input direction. I was planning to over fill and hope for the best, but as Peter has pointed out to me that will overheat the gears.
Solution then is to change the input direction. Either a rub wheel or (better) actual gearing. Still need the 2:1 or better reduction step.
There is such a thing as a “divorced transfer case” (not part of tranny), and on at least some Fords this reversed the output. One of these would do me quite well. Still researching my options.
Hey ChrisKY
Aslo do some reading on marine V-drives.
Marine is usually expensive “hole in the water” stuff . . . but never know what you stumble into, set-aside free to cheap. Then you’d know, seeing.
S.U.
Chris, I know an obvious way to reverse direction would be reverse through the transmission. I know the pinion isn’t designed to take reverse loads though.
