66 Teeth

 

In my quest to clean up and/or tie up some loose ends, I dug out some parts I made for the small Ducatis when I had access to a CNC mill many years ago. These are going to get passed along to my buddy who's going to rebuild the motor on the Rickati. 

The two round pieces at the top of the photo are for taking the side play out of the swingarm. Those I made on my old South Bend lathe. The steering dampener knobs below them have the old Ducati logo inscribed in the top and are pocket milled on the bottom side. I made those after gaining some experience on a few simpler jobs.

When the school got the mill it was right before the machine tool program got shut down. The instructor was going to retire at the end of the year, so the boss let me sit in on the training session. I tried writing some programs but figuring out the points where arcs intersect to four decimal points using old school math didn't work real well so I signed up for a night school CAD course. A bit of a learning curve on the CAD but it made drawing the parts and locating all the X,Y and Z coordinates much easier. 

The long, narrow pieces are frame connectors for the wide case singles. Easy-peazy on the CNC, not so much on my Bridgeport.

The motor mount plates were made by Surly. I wrote the program and made the fixture and he cut them out and did the engine turning. I wish I still had access to a CNC mill. It would make engine turning the dash for the jitney project pretty simple. It's real easy to work a repeat function into a program so you get identical offsets on all of the swirl patterns. I made a dash for a little midget car years ago and it was a pain in the ass stepping over all those moves by hand.

The rear sprocket for the Rickati showed up yesterday and it's a thing of beauty. I measured the hub before ordering and it was .010" larger than the listed size. I told the lady on phone the dimensions and she told me to hold on. She came back on the line a few minutes later after consulting with someone in the shop and told me they'd add .005" to my dimension on the hub diameter and that they'd cut the bore that afternoon or first thing in the morning. I wasn't expecting all the lightening holes or the reduced thickness around the bore. 

The sprocket fits like a glove and looks totally bitchin', as they used to say. It took less than a week from when I called to when the UPS guy dropped it off. Fast, friendly service and a quality product. Real happy with Rebel Gears.

Busy day on tap - dog to the vet, cut some grass, bicycle ride, start cutting pieces for the side hustle job, and since it's Cinco de Mayo, get the Missus and I a couple of big fat burritos.