Seaview

[greenman407]

Do you remember what a mess of little scrap pieces of foam that I had in this thing before. Today I set out to remedy that. I went and bought a 1" sheet of pink foam and cut two pieces and made cut outs in them so that they would sit right down in place without having 163 giblets of foam all siliconed to one another.

[greenman407]

Todays progress. I lengthened the drive shafts and put them in place. Re-siliconed the previously opened thruster panel. Attached the pushrod holders and installed these plastic sheet foam supports. Before, I needed to get all the foam into that area as I could. This meant attaching the foam to the floor. Not Good, as this takes away from the stability of the submarine and this boat is especially sensitive to that because of its lack of depth of section. So, with these supports I will attach a smaller amount of foam to them , getting it up off the floor and allowing water and the resulting weight of it down low where we need it.

[greenman407]

So what am I trying to say here? Check your drive shafts periodically because they wont last forever. The greater the angle, the greater the wear. I dont know If grease will help or not.

[greenman407]

Today, I started reducing the length of the drive shafts by cutting off one end of it just behind the Dumas coupler. After I got it all completed I happened to look at the other end of them. I couldnt believe the amount of wear on the tabs of the Nylon coupler. What to do, what to do. You see, its a difficult thing to get the old one out, seeing that its CAed in and cross drilled with a brass rod thru it also CAed. So we will cut the end and replace the bad coupler and then a trip to the Hobby store will provide a aluminum tube that will slide within this one, so that we can adjust its length and then we will cross drill and pin that. Otherwise I wont have enough of the Dumas connectors.

[greenman407]

Yep, the drive shafts are too long and will need a trim job. Also the motor shafts center to center are now wider so I took out all of the foam so that I could modify the angle at which the shafts exit the propulsion pod and get it all closed back up again. The pushrods are also wider center to center. Wow! Without all the foam it looks cavernous back there.
You can see here where the propulsion pods are attached to the outside. Well you used to be able to stick your hand from the inside open area into the propulsion pods, to easily access the empellors. The only way I could get reverse was to close all that up and vent the flow of water out the scoops at the front end of the propulsion pods. Hence the flat plastic sheets siliconed over the openings. The slots that you see that are horizontal going away from you are for the exiting drive shafts on there way to hook up to the back of the WTC. They are purposely large to allow adjustment in the location of those shafts. Once in place , additional slotted plates are put in place to close that area up.

[greenman407]

giving this thing a couple days to dry.Saturday Ill put the motor bulkhead into the WTC and move it into position to see If I need to make any changes to the length of the drive shafts or change how they exit the propulsion tube.

[greenman407]

In between work on my Moms house(patio stones) I got a little bit done. Im building a stress member that will attach to the servos and the equipment tray to stiffen everything up. I salvaged some motor capacitors from a garage sale WTC. Ill attach them next. I was going to wait and hopefully get some new ones on there but, I need to get that out of the way so that I can continue because its all in that area fighting for room. Pictures soon.

[greenman407]

Itll be another 2 weeks before the two speed controls get here. Once they are in this thing will be answering the call. I can still install the servos and pushrods after I get some supplys from "Phils Hobby" shop on Monday.

[greenman407]

As far as the equipment tray is concerned, I needed to add another piece to it. A section that would help hold up the thin aluminum sheet. So after marking, hacking, trimming , swearing, drilling, screwing , and finally re trimming, I think that it will do for now.

[greenman407]

Todays Ramblings! Next thing to do was to take the pine WTC holders and thoroughly coat them with Polyurethane and after dry, install some brass hooks on the side of them. Using "GOOP", they were promptly affixed in there proper places. After dry then I could take the 3" endcap and the 3&1/2" endcap and prepare them to be joined. I sanded them real good and drilled some holes in the smaller one so that the CA would be able to penetrate out to the middle in a plug weld fassion. Since I wanted perfect alignment, the only way to do that was to take and strap down front and rear sections, push them together and wherever they touch, thats it. I hit her with a little CA and allowed it to set up. Then I pulled it out of the boat for a proper Adhesion session.

[greenman407]

Here are the two new pine Subdriver holders for the rear section. Very thin to get the driver right down as low as I can. With this, space for lead weight is limited, therefore the following picture shows my Ace in the hole. This mountain of foam was needed to keep the stern up. Now that we have more floatation(larger diameter WTC section) but less room for weight, all we have to do is remove some of this foam.

[greenman407]

You can see the ny rod that I ran all the way thru the bulkhead for the antenna wire.Then I started attaching some of the componants, BEC,SL-8 and APC.Heres a closeup on the BEC and the ny rod that I used to insulate the feedwires where they run thru the tray for hookup on the otherside.

[greenman407]

The brass dog bone drive couplers are not shown in the picture, due to the fact that I dont have any. The shafts are 1/8". I ordered some from Caswell. If I use the 3/16" ones ,then I would have to bush them, too much trouble for so little return. Also, it might not spin perfectly, therefore setting up additional vibrations, that I dont want.
Also I am now free to start cutting the alluminum sheet into equipment trays, now that I know how long my rear portion of the Subdriver will be.......7&5/8" long. That will keep the overall length where it was. Only the Diameter of the rear section will change.

[greenman407]

Then on to the twin motor bulkhead. As you recall, the decision to go direct drive was made and modifications had commenced. Here it is with motors installed and a fancy 1/8" shaft seal that is spring loaded installed. Kinda pricey. We will see how she does. The positive and negative threaded connections are in place but in an unusual location as I wanted to free up space for the equipment tray mounting area. Also in place are the 1/8" pushrod seals. These are 12 volt motors but they dont come factory suppressed. Ill have to obtain some capacitors and solder them in place.

[greenman407]

The extra space up front that I could have utilized by putting in a longer Subdriver, but decided not to. The black box looking thing is the AA Battery box and foam to counteract its weight. It powers the sail marker LEDS. The Subdriver holders. Wood blocks carefully shaped to fit the shape of the bottom inside of the hull. I cut these down to a lower height. I also replaced the old rubber band hooks with new ones.