JD clutch basket

[Robert Luland]

Guy I figured I post this for all to see since a lot of folks are getting ready to run cross country. So here’s Saturdays activities. When I was down at Steve Lippolt’s place in Maryland a few weeks back he gave me a couple of shot JD clutch baskets since I was interested in reproducing them. This whole thing has to do with the outer band that runs around the splines. One of the units had a perfect basket but must have been allowed to lie in water rotting the band. Harley riveted every spline and on the later units only riveted four. It was just simply to keep the splines from deforming under load. Why they riveted them instead of spot welding is beyond me. They had spot weld technology. I know, I ground out 179 of them when I took the side car tub apart. They didn’t have stick yet. Stick welding really didn’t come about until 26 and even it was crude compared to today’s technology. So last week I ordered in a piece of metal two inches wide thinking I would shear it off to 1.125”. Wrong! Totally forgot that our hydraulic shear needs 5” minimum to grip the piece properly. That’s when I got a brain fart. Clamped that puppy in the mill and after 25 minutes of watching grass grow it was perfect. I decided not to rivet it. All though I’m set up for riveting I would have had to machined a special anvil and flame hardening it to have pulled it off and after the way I was feeling from Friday nights activities, it wasn’t happening. I just drilled holes and welded the band to the back of the splines. I feel that Harley drilled the holes after the band was installed since a lot of the holes were not centered on the splines. In the end the strip you will need measures 3/32X1.125X23.125”. When you set it on the basket, the top of the band should be .250 above the top of the spline. I used a dozen little c clamp starting with the center furthest point from the split and worked my way around. I hope this helps someone. I type with two fingers, Bob

[Robert Luland]

Ok now that's fixed

[harleytoprock]

Robert, Nice work. I can think of a few reasons why they were originaly riveted. 1. The Harley engineers just followed there old school fastening technique instincts. 2. To make it rebuildable if the splines wear. 3. Spot welding technology at that time may have not been capable of material as thick. 4. The splines may be case hardened and welding would temper the hardness. Did you file test the splines for any hardness prior to your welding? I would think there was some heat treating done to the splines as my splines showed no wear after many abused miles.

[Robert Luland]

Na! Nothing on that plain. The basket was made of off the shelf carbon steel. If the splins were worn, you would have chucked the thing as a whole. Harley was in the buss of building motor cycles and getting them out the door. In your post you put more brain power into this than Harley ever did. It's just like the statment over restoration. In my book, if you picked up a piece of sand paper. You've already over did it! Remember the 179 spot welds? You could see every one of them clear as day. but what I do feel that holds true, is that just like the side car tub that was built by a sub-contractor down the street from the plant so were things like clutch baskets and once that sub-contracter tooled up for something. It stayed that way to the end except for eliminating 2/3rds of the rivets when the factory decided they wern't needed. Bob L