Posted 29 April 2005 - 04:13 AM
Baker's chairs 3 and 4 have (or had, in 4's case) Ford Industrial motors with a tractor transmission. This is the type that had five forward gears and a reverser, which meant that you also had five reverse gears. We normally had a plate mounted on the tranny that prevented the reverser from engaging, but every once in a while we'd remove it to run the lift backward and test rollback devices. The clutch on those two was so stiff I had to stand all of my 140 lbs on it to make it disengage. Chair 1 has a Chevy aux with a four-speed tranny; the cluch pedal was replace long ago by a lever arm which makes it much easier to run the aux. Both of our other gasoline engines had standard automatic trannies with the reverse gear blocked off, so that you only had N, D, 3, 2, 1. Can you imagine trying to put the lift in park, going through reverse to get there?
Matt- there are several ways to connect an auxiliary to the drivetrain. Some sit off to one side, and are coupled by means of belts or chains. Some sit in line, and have a coupling which consists of two sprockets end-to-end connected by a double chain. Doppelmayr has a set of belts around a large disc on the high-speed shaft, which can be connected to another disc with bolts. Poma has a splitter box on the gearbox's input side with several levers to select which engine/motor one would like to use. Poma also had (may still have, I haven't been inside a new Poma) a cross with pins on a splined shaft, which could be slid into a corresponding cross with holes for the pins. Yan and, later, Riblet, placed the prime mover and aux on either side of the gearbox. One would loosen one and transfer the belts to the other to switch modes. Most aux engines these days have a torque converter, but as you've heard there have also been automotive transmissions of both manual and auto varieties.
Member, Department of Ancient Technology, Colorado chapter.
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