Ready to heat the gear for assembly. The gear, its cradle, and "weed burners" are in place, but stop collar has not been bolted in position. About this gear, which is the best pinion of the lot: this thing cannot have been used more than one trip, as the teeth are almost in the virgin state, But there was a huge proplem that appeared when it came to rounding up the hole in it.........it had been bored 1/8 inch off center relative to the teeth! A quickie job not as anticipated. While being held internally by a three-jaw chuck and cone center in preparation for turning the end hub for a chucking lug, the gear teeth cammed over 1/4 inch! To remedy the situation, a four-jaw chuck was used to hold the gear with the teeth running true, so that the hub could be turned central to the real center of the gear, so that a three-jaw chuck could then be used to hold the gear for the re-bore job. By the time the off-center hole was corrected, the resulting bore was about 1/4 inch above factory size. Consequently, the near 7 3/8 inches of the gear shaft in the photo is much larger than the rest of the shaft, which is weird, but works.

Photo by Rick Brigger