Best laid plans...

Spring is here, or at least it was.  The temporary warm spell has been replaced by snow and 30 deg weather.  Spring yard work took priority over recent history - mulching, raking, putting the plow away ( oops? hopefully not ).

Mounting the deck - Last post was the basic deck fabrication.  Adding a cutout for the alternator mounting necessitated another frame modification.  Initially I had planned on skipping the alternator and adding it later, as such I hadn't put the detail into mounting it.  Coupled with not having made a decision on exactly how to mount the deck, or whether it was going to have adjustable height or not - led to a lot of thinking, not too much progress.

So, here is the result of the thinking, not quite done, but there is now a plan to follow.

On the deck, there are four mounting points tack welded for alignment.  One on each side in the front and two in the back.  The rear ones will double as alternator mounts and there will be hanger bolts drilled through the middle crossmember.  In the front, there will be two tabs made to hold the same type of hanger bolts.

Since the alternator wants to occupy the same space as the middle cross member, I need to cut it - about six inches worth.  To avoid weakening the frame, I decided to add a replacement cross member up about 10 inches higher than the rest of the frame.  The uprights are 1/4 steel plate 2 inches wide.  They are repurposed from a driveshaft safety loop from my son's car ( a former race car ).  It was almost perfect, only a little tab needed to be welded on at the bottom to make it fit the bolt spacing.  At the top is another piece of 1 inch tube, and if you look close you can see the temp bolts are wayyy too long ( ran out of short bolts - HW store roadtrip... )

You can also see the marker outline of the engine projected onto the deck.  This was used to help with the location of the tabs and the alternator *AND* to help avoid stupidity if I'm not paying attention to interferences.

The crossmember's extra stiffness may not be necessary, but it also provides a potential mounting for the electronics.  They will be in a plastic enclosure for radio reception, and up high will allow for better performance and ease of access.  Later...