Netheads, The good news it that after two years of not working on my KR (job changes new business start-up blah blah blah) this weekend I took some acton. When I left off working on N52BL I was finishing up firewall forward so I could take off the engine and finish up the boat. Specifically, this weekend I was trying to finish up the alternator installation. I've got an alternator that will run out of the mag drive of my engine. I've gone with electronic ignition so the mag is no longer necessary. I had already machined the alternator case to fit into the mag drive boss on the back of the engine. This weekend's task was to machine the alternator drive pully so that I could weld on a magnito puck drive from a bad magnito that I got on E-bay for cheap. I had looked up an old KR buddy that built a KR in the late 1980's that had a lathe that could do the machine work on the pully. After several weeks of clashing schedules we finally were able to get together this weekend.
The bad news is that I didn't accomplish much. I had ASSumed that the pully was mild steel which we could easily cut down on his lathe. As it turns out the pully is most likely a cast unit that is so hard it wore down a carbide cutting tool on the lathe. We didn't even take .001" off the pully diameter. The alternator shaft is splined so I need to start with a pully that has the correct spline to match the shaft. My wife was a good sport about it, she took me to Jonnie's Pizza last night and bought me two draught Fosters. I cried in my bear and now I feel better. I've learned another way NOT to make progress on the KR. We tried anealing it but that didn't do anything to soften it up. On Monday I'll make a trip to the Alternator Rebuild Shop and see if they can come up with a stamped steel pully that I can get the spline out of but if that doesn't work I'll need to figure out how to make the one I've got softer. Does anyone know of a technique to soften cast steel so you can machine it? Regards, Bob Lee N52BL KR2 Suwanee, GA 91% done only 65% to go!
