I tried fitting the jackshaft assembly and engine into the frame together for the first time. The throttle and governor assembly is mounted to the rear of the crankcase, which is a bit problematic. As I stated previously, having to move the engine back that inch or so really impacts the space available behind the engine. In the end, everything fits, but I have literally fractions of a millimeter clearance for the pillow block castings. In order to leave room for the throttle arm to move, the left side has to sit juuust inside the frame. On the right, I actually had to cut away the lower right corner of the throttle arm bracket to get enough fore-aft clearance.
If the big cast brackets hadn’t fit, it wouldn’t have been a complete show-stopper, but I’d have needed to redesign my mounting brackets to take pressed flanged bearings directly into the bracket. I’m glad that’s not required, because besides the added cost that would be involved, I like the self-aligning feature and the extra mass of these cast pillow blocks. (given how much the engine is likely to vibrate).
I ran into a snag I should have expected, considering I had the exact same issue with The Bride: the order of operations for assembling together various parts that were conceived separately ends up being quite nuanced and persnickety. I must have installed and pulled the engine half a dozen times. And then, when you get everything in place, access for hands and wrenches can be very limited. Fortunately, it looks as though I can make this work.
Next up, I need to make up some spacers to replace the stacks of washers and extra nuts I used to figure out all the spacing.