Mobilera Trailblazer

[kghills]

No problem Larry. I have spoken with Jesse the new owner a couple times now and hope to get more pictures and info about his Trailblazer. He needs a driven clutch I understand and as you can see from the pictures he is missing the control levers and pod that mounted under the dash for them. I have pointed Jesse to this thread and made two offers. One to help with information and parts as I think I will at some point have the extra parts he needs to get his Trailblazer more correct and a second to purchase his Trailblazer. Either way I will be happy to see another Trailblazer come back to life.

Keith.

[kghills]

Red Mobilera Trailblazer

Jesse sent me a few great pictures of his red Trailblazer. He is doing an awesome job of cleaning it up.


Here you can see a little of the drive stick modifications. I hope to get more detailed pictures later to see how his drive is actually modified to work.


Great job Jesse!

[jpswift1]

Wow, that looks great!

[kghills]

Well I broke down and pulled the belt drive system out of the Trailblazer. It was very simple as the entire system came out as a unit. Four bolts on the bottom of each leg bolted through the frame so removing them allowed me to simply lift it out as a unit.


The auxiliary drive shaft hangs from a bridge that is welded to the frame. It originally just hung from two spherical rod ends with 4 tensioning bolts pressing against it. It appears a plate with slots was added so the auxiliary drive shaft assembly would be locked in place after adjusting. Moving this one assembly up or down is all the adjustment the entire system has. This is probably a very poor design. With all the slop in the chains I can see why the plate was added to tie the assembly to the frame bridge so it did not get ripped off when trying to turn.


The lower mounts for the Hagen had never been removed so I was able to place it back in its original lower mount. The secondary clutch is mounted backwards to be aligned correctly with the primary clutch. It will need a clamp style spacer to hold it about 1.5" off the tranny for proper alignment. I am hoping Larry can get me an exact spacing from his transmission then I just need to make the two upper bracket and weld them on. I also have a couple belt numbers from Jesse when he got his red Trailblazer and Larry is working on getting a number from Stephen with the white Trailblazer. I am hoping one of the numbers will make sense.


Keith.

[jpswift1]

Looks great, Keith! Did you come across any pics of some other Trailblazer's drivetrains for reference? If you give Buffalo Bearing a call with some part numbers from old drive belts, they'll be able to cross reference them and come up with one for you. Their number is (716) 874-1720.

[kghills]

Thanks JP, I did not know that Buffalo Bearing was also a source for drive belts. I really want to get the belt number from Stephen also as I think his is original. At least with three belt numbers from different belt manufacturers something should be common for me to order a belt to work with. I got the control pod removed today also. I will try to get the cylinders apart to see what kind of o-rings they use and get them rebuilt and back in. Do you remember which lines go to which fittings on the transmission?

Keith.

[kghills]

Pulled apart the Trailblazer steering/drive cylinders tonight. They are sort of like mini two way master cylinders. According to the patent there are clutch packs in the transmission and as you push or pull on the lever it applies pressure to one of the packs and making that side of the transmission go forward or reverse. Three of the four main O-rings were destroyed. The remnants were hard and brittle. They are easy enough to replace but I am now worried about the transmission. If these o-rings are that bad what about the o-rings in the transmission for the clutch packs is my thought. Maybe I need to be proactive and pull it apart and check out there condition. Or, I guess I could apply pressure to the clutch packs and see if the hold the pressure.


In any case I feel I need to do something before I hit the trails.

Keith.

[LarryW]

Thanks for posting all this stuff. It may helped someday.

[kghills]

Short week but the o-rings came for me to rebuild the Hagen drive cylinders. The cylinders themselves take two #113 o-rings. The shafts take a #012 o-ring and the caps take a #114 o-ring. Sort of clever as the cylinder bores are not true. they are profiled to work as a double master cylinder, applying pressure to one clutch pack while releasing pressure from the other.


Check the clutch packs on the Hagen and they all seemed to engage and disengage freely so I put it back in the Trailblazer to fab the upper mounts. The stock drive belt is a Durkee Atwood 385SD19. Buffalo Bearing said the dimension was 40.5 x 1.188. I was able to cross that to a Dayco HP2021. I polished down some 1" shaft so I could slide the gears around easily to make sure everything lined up on the auxiliary shaft with the transmission and welded in the upper mounts I made.


I have keyed shaft, new bearings and Diamond chain and the new drive belt on order. Once all is fit I plan on grooving the auxiliary shaft for clips to keep everything in place. Its really a tight fit and the set screws that were used originally seem a little problematic.

Keith.

[jpswift1]

Good updates! Glad you and the guys from Buffalo Bearing were able to get the specs on the belt figured out. Those guys are good with finding the oddball stuff. All this hard work will pay off, I'm sure. We're all excited to see some counter rotating Trailblazer videos once its up and running.

[kghills]

The auxiliary shaft was rebuilt with new bearings #MAX-SA 205 16 from Buffalo Bearings and 1" diameter keyed shaft. I did not like the idea of relying on all the set screws to keep everything in place so cut the shaft for snap rings like the axles in my Max IV. Reinstalled the Hagen and hung the auxiliary drive assembly back under the bridge and am ready to run the chains to all the axles.


Figured I would check the axle bearings out closer. The bearings seem fine and I hope they stay that way as the bearings and axles are non-serviceable. The axles have the gears welded to them and they have a larger diameter than the holes in the body plus the bearings have no provisions to be greased.


Keith.

[kghills]

Well I pulled a wheel off the Trailblazer to see if there would be some way to remove the axles for service after finding that the gears were welded to the axle shafts. It looks like the outer wheel flange is pinned to the axle. In theory a guy could drive out the pins, remove the flange, slide the bearing off the axle, unbolt the inner bearing from the frame and remove the axle from the machine by pulling it inward. Yeah, like that would go smoothly. I have enough trouble getting bearings off the shafts using a press.


At least it looks like a guy might have some sort of chance if a bearing were to fail. I find it interesting the machine has 1.5" axles yet they are turned down to 1" for a wheel hub and pinned with roll pins. Seems sort of counter productive to me.

Keith.

[kghills]

Finished up the drive on the Trailblazer today. Hydraulic lines are run, fluids are filled and lines bled, tensioners were installed, and the chains are all adjusted.


Seems to run and drive OK. I need to get used to how it turns. I will try to get a video posted after the snow storm here.

Keith.

[kghills]

Ain't no T-20

The mechanical part of the restoration on the Trailblazer is done and here is a video of it in action

It goes from forward to reverse effortlessly and counter rotates like a dream. Don't really know what I am going to do with it now but at least it is up and running.

Keith.

[Mike]

Now that looks like fun. Thanks for posting a video of it in action.