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Make Your Own Elephant Ears
Page 2 - Patterns Part 2
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1 Patterns Part 1
Page
3 Alternator Mount
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4 Finished Product
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Holding the alternator
in mid-air, it looked like it would be close to alignment with the crank
if it was right against the new motor plate. Remember, the pattern is only
half the thickness of the real plate.
The next thing to do
was find a location on the plate to mount the pivot, so that the alternator
would have enough adjustment to tighten the belt. The hole in the pic was
simply a rough guess from holding the alternator in by hand. Move it back
and forth and try to find a spot that will give you as much adjustment
as possible. Once I made the hole, I held the alt. in there again, this
time with the bolt in the hole. Another rough guess at clearance yielded
the radius cut into the plate. I marked the start and end of the radius
with a marker, and a paint can turned out to be a nice fitting pattern
for the curve.
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Since the pattern
wont support any weight, I used a steel rod to hang the alt. in the approximate
location while I worked out the adjustment. Again, with luck on my
side, I found this old smallblock adjusting strap fit perfectly. Since the pattern is
far from being the actual plate, this is as far as I could go with this
until I made the real plates. I was confident at this point that the alternator
would work here, probably just needing some length of spacer to line up
properly. The patterns were now
complete. |
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So here are the two
finished patterns. From here, it's just trace them out on the aluminum,
and cut them out. I used a hand-held bandsaw
for the big cuts and a SawzAll for the alternator relief. A 4" grinder
with a cut-off wheel is also handy to have.
The holes are simple
drilling and then a quick trip on the grinder to make nice radiuses around
the perimeter.
After the major cutting
is done, run a round file through the holes to deburr them and file all
around the edges. Lastly, run the edge across a fine wire wheel to make
it nice and smooth. Remember, its only aluminum, so the above operations
only take a few minutes. Take care to go slow
when cutting and drilling. The soft metal will quickly clog saw teeth if
you try to go to fast. |
Voila! Elephant ears.
It should be a tight fit getting the brackets onto the bushings. If not,
you might be smart to make new brackets. If you mark and drill
everything carefully, the real ears should bolt right on and the brackets
should rest on the frame rails. The hole for the alternator
was tapped for 3/8. You should make every effort to tap this hole as straight
as possible.
When fitting the alternator,
you'll have it bolted to this hole and it lines up MUCH easier if the hole
is exactly perpendicular to the plate. Since this is only 1/4" aluminum, it's a good idea to use a backup nut on the alternator pivot
bolt. The threads in the plate wont likely hold up very long. |
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The next item on
the list is the alternator mount and pulley alignment.
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Page
1 Patterns Part 1
Page
3 Alternator Mount
Page
4 Finished Product
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