Buggy Pics from the weekend.

[Rippthrough]

Just in case you don't venture over to the 'other' place any more

[puglove]

Sweeeeeeeeet makes the sort of off roading im use to look a little tame

[4WayDiablo]

Not enough coal :-P

[mark_airey]

Saw them on bookface as you well know

[Jenkosowls]

then it broke........ like the 1.4........ still least it made on to the trailer this time

[Rippthrough]

Could be worse, could start a 10 minute job and have to leave it in someone's yard for 2 days....

[Jenkosowls]

could have been the person who encouraged it all then stayed at home on day 2....



Part timer

[Ben Jay]

i am so jealous of you right now...i want one so badly. miss my vitara for ragging about off road!

[Rippthrough]

[kingy]

looks so much fun

[Jenkosowls]

iv had the pleasure being in this and when your jumping 4/5ft in the air with no harness it suprisingly comfy when it lands!

[Rippthrough]

Be even better if we could stop dicking about with the engine and fit the suspension upgrades!

[Jenkosowls]

As ever you know where I am

[Rippthrough]

You gonna come rebuild the engine are you?

[HDIkyle]

I want a ride

[Jenkosowls]

Plenty of notice and I can not 5 minutes before like the usual lol!

[lewisdmz]

Anyone else thinking their weekend seemed a little dull?

[Rippthrough]

I want a ride

I bet you do!

You want a go in the buggy as well?

[Matt]

Looks fapping epic! Love the shots o it getting air haha

[Rippthrough]

[Rippthrough]

Right, we had this up for sale for a while, had a guy come to have a look, decided he wanted it if we could stick a cheap 2-litre 4-pot in it for him, so we sold off some of the rotary bits, did a bit of research, bought some parts and started chopping the frame...
...A month after that, he came by to say he was very sorry, but he couldn't afford to do it after all, and could he have his deposit back....:/

Anyway, since we'd done the research, started chopping, and bought some bits, and we had a bit of spare time over winter....it seemed rude not to give the old girl another chance
She's had a bit of plastic surgery courtesy of Mister 9 Inch (angle grinder, get your mind out of the gutter):





As the new engine is longer than the rotary, we chopped out the centre of the beam tube so that we can push the transaxle forwards into the cabin a couple of inches to keep the rear overhang similar, we don't need that reinforced part there any more anyway because it was what the old torsion bars used to run through/work against, so it was basically a great hunk of steel tube and plate doing nothing.
Free weight saving!

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Anyway, one immediate issue was the new engine used a pull clutch, and there's no room in the transaxle to make that work, so we needed to convert to a push clutch somehow. We found a plate that was a similar size and a diaphragm that would fit, but the spline for the Renault transaxle was wrong, so we nipped up to CG Motorsports to see if they could stick us a Renault spline in the clutch we'd found (or a paddle version of it).
We used to just weld centres in off-the-shelf paddles for the VW clutch setup, but the splines never last that long as they soften a little from the welding heat no matter what you do to keep them cool, so we wanted to do it 'properly' this time.

Anyway, Mick had a good look, and decided he'd got an even bigger paddle and push diagphram already sat on a shelf that would go on the standard flywheel - provided we gave it a skim to take the raised surface off it - so we came back with a nice 230mm setup:







Which looks a little more promising than our old lash-up of Renault/VW/RX-8:



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Due to a bit more weight/leverage and stress being anticipated this time, we went with poly mounts for the transaxle instead of the old solid strap system, there's no real movement in them for the engine torque, etc, they're simply to reduce shock loads on the gearbox from landings/frame flex.
And as you can see, moving the transaxle forward proved to be quite a tight fit....





Then we mocked up an adaptor plate for the bellhousing to the new engine, and bolted it up just to see how it fitted:





Which, as it turns out, is almost exactly where the rotary was after the alterations.

That big chunk of steel holding all these tubes together in the middle wasn't important, was it? I'm sure it wasn't. It'll be fine. Maybe.



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Yeah, one advantage of the rotary was the flat sump needed very little in the way of oil control, not the case with this.

Anyway, whilst we were at it, we thought about maybe going a touch wider on the rear tyres to compensate for the additional rear weight bias, might need a rethink on that one, not a whole lot of room left




And we checked the new clutch, after chopping a hole in the middle of the adaptor with the angle grinder, everything fits okay, but we've got loads of spare room in the bellhousing - there's a good 30mm of wasted space there, maybe more with a tweak of the release bearing, which makes the clutch quite snatchy as the lever arm is at an angle, so we might have a little rethink there, we stuck 2 release bearings back to back for the minute just to test the pedal feel:



And, after a bit of a trawl around scrapyards and ebay, we accidentally might have bought this, an Eaton M112 supercharger from a Jaguar 4.2L V8....it was so cheap it seemed rude not to...

[Rippthrough]

Anyway, that seemed to fit so nicely just by the inlet manifold it seemed a shame not to use it:



However, the more we looked at the space in the bellhousing, the more we wondered...so we bit the bullet, chopped the new front mount for the gearbox back out, took the angle grinder to the bellhousing, and started moving things again...

Bellhousing, meet angle grinder, angle grinder, meet bellhousing.
And bring your friend TIG welder...



Redid the engine and gearbox mounts, which required even more frame surgery:





And as a comparison to where the old engine was, this is the old engine cage:



BIG thanks to Jenks as he's been helping out most days, wouldn't be anywhere close without him lending a hand, sometimes we even let him use the safety scissors.

[Piggy]

looking awesome!
ubber fun too...
is this just for fun or for comp?

[Rippthrough]

Comp.

Having had enough of chopping out old bits of the car, we decided to make more shiny new bits instead, and everyone loves a shiny exhaust, no?



It took quite a while to get the lengths and routing all right, there's about 2 weeks of evening work in this, even though most of it was sorted by the first two nights, tweaking and altering after that/finishing it off took a while!





As the gears are fairly wide in the van transaxle (haven't fitted that shorter gearset yet, needs lots of fettling to make the syncro's work with it), the lengths are set to bolster the bottom end and midrange torque rather than outright peak power.











That should be enough shiny exhaust pictures to keep anyone satisfied for a while...

[Rippthrough]

Okay, one BIG disadvantage over the rotary engine, is the sump being so deep - reducing ground clearance - and needing a lot of oil control/baffles due to the constant jumping around. It being pretty vital to the engine reliability, Ed bit the bullet and spent some pennies on a dry sump pump rather than relying on sets of baffling, and we set about converting it, few issues along the way but we got there:





Yes, the belt is too long, we know. And yes, that is a bright pink mug of tea in the background.
This gave us a good 3+ inches more rear ground clearance, so hopefully the rear of the car won't take quite such a battering on steep/stepped drops like it did at Kirton.

And a shiny chunk of ally billet converted itself into a pulley. Magic, eh?

[Eeyore]

so epic D:

[Rippthrough]

Onwards....after fitting the supercharger on some temporary brackets, and tack welding the silencer up for it's final position, it quickly became obvious that our oversized 165 amp alternator wasn't going to fit in the stock location.
In fact, it wasn't going to fit anywhere we could get the belt drive on it, short of putting a gear on it and running it off the flywheel teeth...which resulted in a slightly poor solution of driving the alternator on a seperate belt that's also driven from the supercharger pulley, this might result in too much belt slip/wear, but it was the easiest way around it.
Well, the easiest way around it would be to fit one of the new starter/alternator all-in-one units, but the aftermarket versions of those at the minute bring a tear to the eye and a squeak to the voice when the invoice appears, so that was a no-go.
Try it and see method
Did a couple of beer-mat sketches after mounting everything of the old bodywork vs roughly where the new will need to sit:





I, err, well, everyone knows big wing = racecar, and it kinda works:




Old rear with Mazda:



Possible new rear end:



And 2 minutes of sketching later....



But everyone knows, if some is good, more is better:




One problem with moving the engine and gearbox so far forward, is it didn't leave much room around the radiator/fan setup, so we ended up chopping those brackets off and moving the radiator up and forwards, not ideal, but cooling takes priority over CoG here:





You can also see how much ground clearance/departure angle we've gained, as that's the old engine cage, which used to have the topmost bar horizontal.

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Okay, another update before you all get bored of seeing it

Bit more of the plumbing and mountings were finished, yes, I know, the outlet on the charger and the inlet to the plenum aren't great, but it's a case of make something quickly that will work well enough for those pieces, as they can be easily upgraded later on when we have more time spare:



You can also see the fun we're having with the alternator...



It was starting to look a bit tight in there even with the old cage on, so we cracked on with making a new one (again, out of T45 tube - you never know if someone is going to give you a love tap up the rear...)
As the dry sump has lots of clearance in the middle between the fittings, we went a little more substantial with the under-engine guards this time, as we were forever beating the old ally sump plates back straight after events, it's only thin-wall tube so it weighs very little and gives a lot more stiffness behind the sump guards:



Oh yes, we mocked up the silencer there too, just about fits

And the new engine cage from the side:



It shows pretty well how much extra clearance we've gained from moving the transaxle/engine/shortening the bellhousing and tilting the transmission slightly (now there's no torsion housing tube in the way).
Unfortunate side effect is the centre of gravity is going to be higher at the rear of course, but needs must.

[Alee83]

Just read all this and if I was wearing a hat, I would take it off to you guys! Looks like you are gonna be getting more air with the recent changes, always loved these buggies.

[JamesG]

1 word.. EPIC!

Absolutely love all the detailed updates can only wish i had the space and money for something like this and that custom exhaust is superb.

[Rippthrough]

Only place big enough for the airbox, means a bit of reworking of the bulkhead though. For the moment it's going to draw from the main roof-fed airbox, but it'll probably get a seperate feed from the side scoops once we get chance:





Jenks entertained himself making a new dashboard with Ed, he didn't swear at it all day at all, not once, honest:





Still needs a rub down with some sandpaper and a brushed finish creating to keep reflections down, plus waiting on a few more electrical/gauge bits, but: