Made a transmission crossmember and questionable mount. The transmission only has 2 bolts to mount the bushing so I'm a little worried that's not strong enough. We'll see. Not sure what kind of stress/movement the transmission has at the back.
Just like my other buggy, my driveshaft interferes with a skidplate that would extended fully between the link mounts, so I have to make a V cut in the front. Things are certainly tighter with the 2.0 than the 1.3. I'm also a little concerned about my intermediate shaft angle. It turns fine with no interference, but it's probably at the limit of it's angle. We'll see!
I got a couple radiators to choose from. Both a smaller than the stock radiator but they are 2 row (I assume the stocker is a single-row). Not sure if this will be adequate to cool the Zuk 2.0 motor? May use an electric fan and relocate it. I also plan to use the heater core with a small fan for extra cooling. The small rad is a 3rd party Honda and the short wide one is for a Spitfire.
It's at tight fit with any of them, but the stock rad is too big to fit up front. Would much prefer not to plumb all the way to the back but I might.
I run a scirocco style radiator in mine so that the inlet and outlet would be on the same side for easier plumbing. You can buy one off of Amazon or ebay for fairly cheap and run an inline filler. Been pretty satisfied with mine so far.
Update. Added some poo-pipe to get some shape. Next job is to place the brake booster, pedal assembly and steering column. As with my first build, it's tight cuz I like to maximize visibility. I was tempted to angle the mustache forward to get make more room for a rad or something but I just found I liked the look better angled backwards. Might bite me in the ass down the road trying to stuff a rad in there - may put a rad in a more creative location, though. Updates might be real slow for the next few months as a whole new round of diaper-duty is starting soon. 😄
In other news, for some reason I was under the impression that the 2wd manual tracker transmissions were shorter than the 4wd, but no, they are not. I bought it anyway in case I need it down the road. Yes, they do fit the samurai intermediate shaft a bit more appropriately, but I'm not sure if it would make any significant difference. Here's a photo of my spare Samurai trans beside the tracker 2wd manual (Sammy on the bottom). The actual difference is about 2.5 inches, I think.
I wasn't happy with the front so I redid it today. The rails were higher than they needed to be for maximum visibility and I didn't want to lower the existing rails as they might interfere with the shock placement. Also, the previous rails would have required some sort of shock hoop anyway to protect/mount the shock. So, the following design is what was dictated by those constraints. Seems to have worked out... I'm finding mounting the brake booster and pedal assembly fairly challenging. I may slightly offset the steering wheel to fit the booster and pedals better.
Front shock mounts. I had made some extra hoops to mount the shocks, then realized, right after they were finished, that they were 100% unneeded - so I just made some mounts off the existing hoops. That was 3 hours wasted. Live and learn.
Need to do the rear shock mounts mounts next, but can't do that until some more chassis work is done. This truck is significantly bigger than my previous buggy which could just fit a Samurai gas tank while this buggy will be easy to fit a Track/kick tank. Hopefully don't have to redo this, but it's possible. I'll porbably pull a wheel from the current buggy to check for fit.
Been a while for updates, but I'm still pecking away at this project. Not sure if this is a great way to do the intake, but I had to put it somewhere. The aluminum ducting is only temporary, unless it holds up ok. hah. The other mounting option is up top in front of the engine - which is still a possibility. I don't really like the MAF sensor so low (it's in between the white pipe and aluminum ducting).
Rear-mounting the radiator. Cut up some coolant hoses for the tight bends and used some conduit and galvanized SHC40 pipe for the rest. Can only bend the thin conduit so much. (I think it's actually aluminized pipe that you'd find on a Wal-Mart trampoline cuz I looked around at electrical conduit and the sizes weren't the same). This stuff is perfect size.
I welded a threaded chunk of pipe to the engine coolant pipe in case I needed to release some trapped air... Not sure if that will work, but might be able to fill from there, too, if need be. Hoping it doesn't leak... I think I gummed it up pretty good with the welder.
And finally, I mounted a dual radiator from an Accord. The fan on the passenger side is small and louder, and since the radiator isn't as wide as the fans, about 1/3 of the smaller fan is not covering anything so I blocked it off hoping the air flow thru the radiator would be better than keeping it open. U can see the plate I made on the lower photo.
Hoping I can figure out how to install a temp sensor to automagically switch on one or both of the fans. Also hoping I don't need the second, smaller fan... we'll see...
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