Drop Done
I finished up my chaincase drop. I made a bracket out of 1/8" aluminum plate for keeping the jackshaft and driveshaft 8" on center, and provides good bite for the bearing flanges to bolt to. The driveshaft bearing mounts like original just in new holes, and I rotated it. I found that I was either going to have to slide the PTO side driveshaft bearing outward on the shaft and cut out the original tunnel material the size of the bearing flange(holder) so the bearing flanges could be close enough to one another to hold the bearing or not sandwhich my new plate between the two bearing flanges, and just have that plate between the bearing flanges and the speedo housing. The second option appealed to me, just looks like it will be stronger. The plate has to flex inward between the driveshaft and jackshaft though. Its the thickness of one bearing flange (not even an 1/8") off the tunnel at the driveshaft, and flush with the tunnel at the jackshaft. Sounds half assed, but those flanges allow for angular mounting and still hold the bearing true. It'll work just fine for me. Might not sit well with perfectionists, but I'm not worried in the least. Not to say I wouldn't do it differently were I to do one again, but this one is done now.
I shimmed the jackshaft bearing out to offset the thickness of the plate, so the jackshaft still seats all the way into the chaincase. I had to make a small cutout of the top of the tunnel to clear the brake rotor, but its not much of a cutout. On the PTO side I didn't need to do anything but cut the relocated 2.25" hole for the bearing holders. I thought I needed to clearance part of the tunnel for the PTO bearing but didn't after shimming the bearing out 1/8", so I had made a few cuts for no reason. NOTE: I have always had 2 or 3 thin secondary clutch shims behind the clutch, so I knew I was OK to shim the bearing outward the thickness of 2 or 3 thin shims without wrecking my ability to correctly set clutch offset.
I made sure my driveshaft bearing wasn't getting side loaded once everything was tightened down. Edge driveshaft bearings are press on, whereas Gen I sleds had a drift bearing with a lock collar, so you could get everything aligned with the bearing floating on the PTO side of the driveshaft, then tighten the lock collar down so the bearing didn't float any longer. The Gen 1 sleds didn't eat driveshaft bearings because they only had vertical loads on the bearing, not side loads from misalignment. So I just made sure my driveshaft bearing was pressed on the correct amount so the shaft seated in the chaincase but wasn't being "pulled" there, and so it wasn't "pushing" the PTO side bearing outward to allow the chaincase to seat against the bulkhead.
I did the drop about 1/16" further than I meant to, so the jackshaft was laying on the tunnel...Rather than cut a channel I just used a propane torch and heated the tunnel right under the jackshaft, then persuaded the tunnel to make room for the jackshaft with a hammer. It was a slight trough that I made, dropping the tunnel maybe 1/8", and while this maybe wasn't "the right way" its a 9 year old sled...and this worked fine.
I picked up a lot of clearance on the top of the drivers. Its about 4" and is no longer the tightest point for the track. Now its right where the track exits the tunnel, and there is about 3 5/8" clearance there. This is with 7tooth 3.0 pitch drivers. Here are some pics. Should clear that 2.5" track much better now, and maybe it won't rub so bad on the top of the tunnel.
Oh and yes I did use washers in final assembly.