Thread: Questions about building a West Coast Drive with VersaChassis
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Unread 22-05-2014, 18:13
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Re: Questions about building a West Coast Drive with VersaChassis
1. On the Toughbox gearboxes, the output shaft is usually tapped to 1/4"-20 at the end so that you can put a washer and button head screw on to retain the pulley and any spacers you might add. However, most "west coast drives" have the drive gearbox directly driving one of the wheels, rather than via an additional belt/pulley stage.

2. If you are running a West Coast drive, you'll have to design this bit. The most common options are to either copy the toughbox output shaft, by tapping the wheel shaft and retaining the wheel with a washer, or to machine a retaining ring groove on the end of the shaft.

3. The half VersaBlock gets bolted to the gearbox face rather than to another VersaBlock half. This is so you don't need to machine a bearing hole in your frame, you can count on the VersaBlock to hold the bearing in place for you.

4. The WCP side bearing block is another bearing block that takes up less space around the frame rail. It can be used in the same places, however, it requires a square slot machined in the side of the tube which it slides in. This requires some more sophisticated machining than the the VersaBlock.

5. You are correct, the WCP Gearbox Bearing Block is a half bearing block that attaches to the drive gearbox around the tubing to support the bearing on the main drive shaft. This is just like the half VersaBlock you mentioned in #3, but using the WCP block instead.

6. Yes. In the case of a WCP block, this large hole has to be a square slot for the block to ride in, but for a VersaBlock it just needs to leave room for the shaft to not hit anything, and can be pretty much any shape.

7. The WCP Belt calculator is designed to show you the WCP/VexPro belt/pulley options that will work for your desired center to center distance, and unfortunately does not go the other way. The SDP/SI calculator Gregor linked is similarly limited to SDP/SI's selection of belts and pulleys (which is larger), but it does the calculation with any set of inputs, filling in the missing numbers, so many of us find this one more useful.