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Old 10-15-2020, 07:51 PM   #2675
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Old 10-16-2020, 07:53 AM   #2676
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You people that can lay a bead down like the disgust me! What art work.
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Old 10-16-2020, 08:04 AM   #2677
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Big Lar,

Thanks for your detailed posts!

There is nothing wrong with mounting the Watts pivot to the H-frame. I have done it both ways with equal success. It appears you have done a very workmanlike installation and your welding skills are much better than you claim.

I can offer one suggestion as to why your results were disappointing--RIGIDITY. My learning experience on many installation taught me that my initial assumptions were wrong on two points--1) the amount of movement the Watts link is trying to control, and 2) the amount of force involved to constrain that movement.

1) It turns out that the amount of movement that the Watts link is trying to prevent is very small, perhaps as little as 1/16". I originally guessed it was 1/8" - 3/16". Earlier in this thread, Bob Nodine offered a geometrical perspective as to how little movement is required to cause wandering. You might care to read that post again.

2) The amount of force necessary to eliminate that movement I assumed to be relatively small, perhaps less than a couple of hundred pounds. I think it may easily be as much as 10X that.

I think those two factors might point to the problem with your installation. Even though your end posts appear to be massive and easily up to the task, the entire bulkhead that forms the front compartment is made of very light gage tubing. I suspect your sturdy posts may be easily flexing that framework, causing you to lose a good bit of rigidity.

On most of the Dynasty and above installations I made, I mounted the Watts pivot to a 1/4 x 6 piece of flat stock welded across the vertical generator supports, in addition to adding 1-1/2 x 3 tubing to those vertical supports, making the entire assembly quite rigid. And in that case, with the Watts pivot mounted to that plate, the side forces were exerted only and inch or so from the face of the flat stock, not cantilevered high above it, as in your installation.

Two possible solutions would be either to 1) reinforce the bulkhead with a piece of 1/4 x 6 (3/8 x 6?) run all the way from one end to the other of the bulkhead or 2) to make the Watts pivot mount high enough that the connecting links are parallel to, and very near the surface, of the bulkhead. I have made just such an "elevated" Watts pivot mount for several coaches. It is fairly easy to make the higher Watts pivot mount a very sturdy one, using heavy-wall rectangular tubing.

Try to imagine a force of 2000# pulling at the tops of your bulkhead mounts, and I think you might see that it is easy to get them to "bend" the bulkhead enough to negate what you are trying to accomplish with the Watts setup.

Again, congratulations on a very workmanlike installation, and for thinking "outside the box".

If you are ever near my neck of the woods (southeasten NC) stop in for a visit. I have 50A, water and a dump station for guests.
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Old 10-16-2020, 09:09 AM   #2678
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Big Lar,

Congrats on your project and we admire your skills. I have two things to add to what Van has mentioned.

The first is that if you have the Shepard Steering sector you need to swap it for the TRW. A sloppy Shepard can add to wander.

Second I want to emphasize how critical it is that there be no movement in the bell crank pivot point and ,as Van has already pointed out, in any tie point or arm of the Watts link. The first ever Watts link application on a Roadmaster chassis was on our coach. When we first started this project we did not understand how much force would be applied to the bell crank pivot. Subsequent designs have addressed this oversite but the first one Van built had the pivot pin welded in place. In 2016 on our way back from Alaska we started noticing a significant reduction in handling performance. After some head scratching we discovered that the weld on the pivot pin had broken. The following YouTube video demonstrates how small this movement was but it definitely caused a handling issue.



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Old 10-17-2020, 06:37 AM   #2679
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Originally Posted by YC1 View Post
You people that can lay a bead down like the disgust me! What art work.
In all fairness some of the welds underneath are disgusting looking and I purposely excluded those pics...lol. The pretty welds on the rod end tabs was done on my work bench with a tig welder. As you can imagine I took the best pics possible....lol.
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Old 10-17-2020, 06:52 AM   #2680
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Originally Posted by Vanwill View Post
Big Lar,

Thanks for your detailed posts!

There is nothing wrong with mounting the Watts pivot to the H-frame. I have done it both ways with equal success. It appears you have done a very workmanlike installation and your welding skills are much better than you claim.

I can offer one suggestion as to why your results were disappointing--RIGIDITY. My learning experience on many installation taught me that my initial assumptions were wrong on two points--1) the amount of movement the Watts link is trying to control, and 2) the amount of force involved to constrain that movement.

1) It turns out that the amount of movement that the Watts link is trying to prevent is very small, perhaps as little as 1/16". I originally guessed it was 1/8" - 3/16". Earlier in this thread, Bob Nodine offered a geometrical perspective as to how little movement is required to cause wandering. You might care to read that post again.

2) The amount of force necessary to eliminate that movement I assumed to be relatively small, perhaps less than a couple of hundred pounds. I think it may easily be as much as 10X that.

I think those two factors might point to the problem with your installation. Even though your end posts appear to be massive and easily up to the task, the entire bulkhead that forms the front compartment is made of very light gage tubing. I suspect your sturdy posts may be easily flexing that framework, causing you to lose a good bit of rigidity.

On most of the Dynasty and above installations I made, I mounted the Watts pivot to a 1/4 x 6 piece of flat stock welded across the vertical generator supports, in addition to adding 1-1/2 x 3 tubing to those vertical supports, making the entire assembly quite rigid. And in that case, with the Watts pivot mounted to that plate, the side forces were exerted only and inch or so from the face of the flat stock, not cantilevered high above it, as in your installation.

Two possible solutions would be either to 1) reinforce the bulkhead with a piece of 1/4 x 6 (3/8 x 6?) run all the way from one end to the other of the bulkhead or 2) to make the Watts pivot mount high enough that the connecting links are parallel to, and very near the surface, of the bulkhead. I have made just such an "elevated" Watts pivot mount for several coaches. It is fairly easy to make the higher Watts pivot mount a very sturdy one, using heavy-wall rectangular tubing.

Try to imagine a force of 2000# pulling at the tops of your bulkhead mounts, and I think you might see that it is easy to get them to "bend" the bulkhead enough to negate what you are trying to accomplish with the Watts setup.

Again, congratulations on a very workmanlike installation, and for thinking "outside the box".

If you are ever near my neck of the woods (southeasten NC) stop in for a visit. I have 50A, water and a dump station for guests.
When I started on the installation part of the project this week I thought about the mount points on the body frame (front jack) looked kinda flimsy. Adding the 4.5" standouts to mount the rod end links only makes it worse I would imagine. The tubing surround the jack mount did look pretty stiff but again the cross pieces are light. I can see where a previous own moved the RV with that center jack leg down and it bent that frame which looks easy to do. I have a ton of left over 1/4" plate from a project from years ago. I may have to fab up some support pieces to see it I can stiffen up that mount. I think might be best if I take some pics and post them up and get you opinion as to where some braces might be helpful.

On thing I can say is the bearings are not budging. The bearing are very close to what an axle bearing set up on the front wheel of an older vehicle would look like except it does not rotate constantly so the bearing preload can be made much tighter unlike a bearing that is constantly rotating. I did pack the bearing with grease but I seen no need to add a grease fitting to add grease later. It's going to rotate the most when I dump the bags or raise the front jack to the max.

Thanks for taking the time to help Van. You and others have helped a great deal in this thread and I have learned a lot. Still hoping I can improve on it some more. I have two more weeks of vacation starting next week and we canceled our trip (for other reasons) so I will have some time to make some changes. And also thanks for the invite. We were out that way in 2018 and plan on returning soon.
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Old 10-17-2020, 07:00 AM   #2681
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Originally Posted by nodine View Post
Big Lar,

Congrats on your project and we admire your skills. I have two things to add to what Van has mentioned.

The first is that if you have the Shepard Steering sector you need to swap it for the TRW. A sloppy Shepard can add to wander.

Second I want to emphasize how critical it is that there be no movement in the bell crank pivot point and ,as Van has already pointed out, in any tie point or arm of the Watts link. The first ever Watts link application on a Roadmaster chassis was on our coach. When we first started this project we did not understand how much force would be applied to the bell crank pivot. Subsequent designs have addressed this oversite but the first one Van built had the pivot pin welded in place. In 2016 on our way back from Alaska we started noticing a significant reduction in handling performance. After some head scratching we discovered that the weld on the pivot pin had broken. The following YouTube video demonstrates how small this movement was but it definitely caused a handling issue.



Bob
Believe it or not Bob your post is one of the reasons I decided to go the way I did. I just could not see how just one small pivot pin could support so much force without eating up a brass/bronze bushing. That reason alone is why I decided to go with the cone bearings. I can put as much or as little preload on those bearing with the threaded 1/2" bolt that captures the bell crank in the fixed bearing races. There is absolutely zero movement/deflection with the bolt tightened down fairly tight. If this application was to rotate on a constant basis those bearings with that much preload would be destroyed in short order. With that being said traveling down the road I don't see much movement or enough to hurt the bearings. I may be wrong though. Only time will tell. Thanks again for all your help as well.
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Old 10-19-2020, 08:25 PM   #2682
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Good Job on the build BigLar. I wimped out and bought a kit from Mike. It must not matter or Bob or Van would have said something but Mike's install says to lay the bell crank 15-20 degrees from vertical as I remember.

The only other thing I would be maybe concerned about is that the Rod end socket may wear and loosen over time? They are also exposed to road grime since they don't have boots on them. I thought about building my own X bars for the rear using rod ends but I was concerned about the Rod ends loosening up. I wimped out and bought those too....
I am not knocking your build at all just "wondering."
Less body roll is awesome!
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Old 10-20-2020, 05:02 AM   #2683
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Originally Posted by Rusty Kramer View Post
Good Job on the build BigLar. I wimped out and bought a kit from Mike. It must not matter or Bob or Van would have said something but Mike's install says to lay the bell crank 15-20 degrees from vertical as I remember.

The only other thing I would be maybe concerned about is that the Rod end socket may wear and loosen over time? They are also exposed to road grime since they don't have boots on them. I thought about building my own X bars for the rear using rod ends but I was concerned about the Rod ends loosening up. I wimped out and bought those too....
I am not knocking your build at all just "wondering."
Less body roll is awesome!
I built the stabilizer bars in the back and have over 10K miles on them so far. None have loosened yet.

On the watts build I used chrome moly rod ends with teflon in them. I doubt we will ever drive enough miles to wear it out. After reading Bob and Van's comments I began to start thinking about what they said about any little movement is too much. When I adjusted my watts link bars I kinda set them up in a neutral position meaning I did not tighten them real tight. I will go back and tighten those bars tighter but I am not sure if I should tighten them to push out away from the bell crank or pull in towards the bell crank. Van or Bob if you read this let me know what ya think.

Rusty....no shame in buying parts. I do it all the time. If I would not have had a lathe and mill I would not have been able to make these parts.
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Old 10-20-2020, 06:22 AM   #2684
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Big Lar, nice work on the Watts Link fabrication and installation.

I mounted mine in the same configuration with the pivot mounted to the H-frame and the rod ends connected outward to the body. For the body mounts I constructed a vertical mount with multiple attachment holes in which to add just a bit of vertical adjustment for the outward end of the links but found once I set the original position I haven't needed to move them.

I noticed a slight difference in my coach but mine was not having the wandering issues to the degree that most are due to my coach being an S-Series with the tag axle. The biggest difference on mine was noted when going through those long constant radius curves and not having to add any more steering input.

I would also suggest looking at your steering gear and if it is not an adjustable TRW box, I would recommend sourcing one and installing it. My Dynasty already had the TRW and I had tweaked mine years before building my Watts Link and it did help with some slight wandering issues.

To be honest, the biggest improvement I saw in the handling of our Dynasty came after I modified my drive and tag axle trailing arms to correct the thrust angle. That alone corrected a fairly consistent pull to the right that was annoying and tiring to drive with. After I corrected the thrust angle I was 99.9% happy with the way my coach handled and only built and installed the Watts Link to satisfy my own curiosity. I was pleasantly surprised that it now is a 100% pleasure to drive and 650-mile days are a non-event, even in high winds which we recently experienced coming back from South Dakota last month. I would put our Dynasty up against any of the high end coaches as far as handling now.
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Old 10-21-2020, 05:44 AM   #2685
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Originally Posted by zmotorsports View Post
Big Lar, nice work on the Watts Link fabrication and installation.

I mounted mine in the same configuration with the pivot mounted to the H-frame and the rod ends connected outward to the body. For the body mounts I constructed a vertical mount with multiple attachment holes in which to add just a bit of vertical adjustment for the outward end of the links but found once I set the original position I haven't needed to move them.

I noticed a slight difference in my coach but mine was not having the wandering issues to the degree that most are due to my coach being an S-Series with the tag axle. The biggest difference on mine was noted when going through those long constant radius curves and not having to add any more steering input.

I would also suggest looking at your steering gear and if it is not an adjustable TRW box, I would recommend sourcing one and installing it. My Dynasty already had the TRW and I had tweaked mine years before building my Watts Link and it did help with some slight wandering issues.

To be honest, the biggest improvement I saw in the handling of our Dynasty came after I modified my drive and tag axle trailing arms to correct the thrust angle. That alone corrected a fairly consistent pull to the right that was annoying and tiring to drive with. After I corrected the thrust angle I was 99.9% happy with the way my coach handled and only built and installed the Watts Link to satisfy my own curiosity. I was pleasantly surprised that it now is a 100% pleasure to drive and 650-mile days are a non-event, even in high winds which we recently experienced coming back from South Dakota last month. I would put our Dynasty up against any of the high end coaches as far as handling now.

Right before I started my install I went back to look at your pics and it seems like they will not show up in the thread anymore...lol. Just my luck. I remembered enough though and pretty much used the same area of installation you had used. To make my links as close to square with the chassis I had to make the standouts for the attachment points of the end of the bars 4.5" out. I did remember you making many different mounting points and later saying they were not needed. I milled the slots in the end of the stand offs about 2.5" so I did have some adjustment. When it came time to weld the stand offs on I just tightened the rod end about center of the slot then leveled the bars with the frame at actual ride height.

I really appreciate guys like you and others who post up how to vids and such. Been wanting to pick your brain about wiring up a digital phase converter for my mill and may be later for my lathe as they are both 3 phase and I only have one rotary converter. It's not a big deal right now cause I can only use one machine at a time anyways....lol.
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Old 10-21-2020, 06:07 AM   #2686
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Originally Posted by BigLar368 View Post
Right before I started my install I went back to look at your pics and it seems like they will not show up in the thread anymore...lol. Just my luck. I remembered enough though and pretty much used the same area of installation you had used. To make my links as close to square with the chassis I had to make the standouts for the attachment points of the end of the bars 4.5" out. I did remember you making many different mounting points and later saying they were not needed. I milled the slots in the end of the stand offs about 2.5" so I did have some adjustment. When it came time to weld the stand offs on I just tightened the rod end about center of the slot then leveled the bars with the frame at actual ride height.

I really appreciate guys like you and others who post up how to vids and such. Been wanting to pick your brain about wiring up a digital phase converter for my mill and may be later for my lathe as they are both 3 phase and I only have one rotary converter. It's not a big deal right now cause I can only use one machine at a time anyways....lol.
Sorry about the pictures not being available. Had I known tinypic would have been phased out I would have sourced a different photo hosting/sizing option.

I am glad to see that my videos and information have been somewhat helpful as that's why I post them and I'm sure why others do the same.

Thanks for the comments.

Mike
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Old 10-21-2020, 12:13 PM   #2687
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There are many VFDs that will convert single phase to three phase now. As it's not mission critical you may find a no name / off brand that would be relatively affordable.
Don't laugh guys are running up to 5hp /3ph on this.
https://usa.banggood.com/4KW-220V-20...#jsReviewsWrap

Quote:
Originally Posted by BigLar368 View Post
Right before I started my install I went back to look at your pics and it seems like they will not show up in the thread anymore...lol. Just my luck. I remembered enough though and pretty much used the same area of installation you had used. To make my links as close to square with the chassis I had to make the standouts for the attachment points of the end of the bars 4.5" out. I did remember you making many different mounting points and later saying they were not needed. I milled the slots in the end of the stand offs about 2.5" so I did have some adjustment. When it came time to weld the stand offs on I just tightened the rod end about center of the slot then leveled the bars with the frame at actual ride height.

I really appreciate guys like you and others who post up how to vids and such. Been wanting to pick your brain about wiring up a digital phase converter for my mill and may be later for my lathe as they are both 3 phase and I only have one rotary converter. It's not a big deal right now cause I can only use one machine at a time anyways....lol.
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Old 10-22-2020, 05:11 AM   #2688
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There are many VFDs that will convert single phase to three phase now. As it's not mission critical you may find a no name / off brand that would be relatively affordable.
Don't laugh guys are running up to 5hp /3ph on this.
https://usa.banggood.com/4KW-220V-20...#jsReviewsWrap
I already have the VFD. I was just curious how it would be wired to bypass the 1 and 2 speed knobs and what would be the best gear to leave the mill in.
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