TheSamba.com :: View topic - riNR's Mid Travel 4 Seater Woods Rail Build

Sun Jun 24, 2007 7:52 pm

Well finally got the buggy up into the trails today.
Nice ride, and plenty of power to boot. The turbo works great for climbing the hills. Seems like it really kicks in once it gets wound up in the revs. It was fun blasting by the 4 X 4s as they laboured to get up hills. The car takes the woops pretty well to. If you time the throttle right it will go into some miny wheelies.
Crappy part: Radiator hoses blew apart where it was joined by a pipe splicing the sections together. The coupling pipe looked as though it had some sort of adhesive that had dried out. I will replace the coupling with pipe with edge on the ends to keep the pipe from comign apart.
I noticed the oil pressure gauge wsn't working too. Other than that, the car is a blast and a real attention getter as not many buggies here.
Best part....my children loved it and can't wait to go again. They jumped into the car and were raring to go:

And they din't mind waiting on the side of the trail while waiting to let the engine to cool down so that we could get back to the trailer:

I think this week i'll take a breather as there is some catching up to do with things around the house and business...plus I'm just plain old fried.

Sun Jun 24, 2007 7:54 pm

Rail looks good. What kind of front tires are those?

Sun Jun 24, 2007 7:57 pm

Yokohamas 7.00 X 15.
You know those tires were originally developed for the train rail maintenance industry. They needed something strong enough to ride on the rails for the trucks but had enough tread for the four wheeling in the bush while doing service.

Mon Jun 25, 2007 6:33 pm

Turns out prvious owner "justme / Aaron" was right. The turbo is throwing off a lot of heat towards the firewall and ECU box which I just installed close to it.
I was thinking of taking a piece of large stainless or aluminium pipe and slicing it in half as a heat sheild aimed toward the rear of the car and mounted by a support welded to the tube going down to the skid plate tube. Do you guys think this will work?
See photos:

Any suggestions. I just don't want anything catching fire or melting down.

Mon Jun 25, 2007 6:39 pm

yes, your idea should work.
actually, if you look around, i think they MAY make some sort of turbo cover for that purpose.

Mon Jun 25, 2007 7:49 pm

Hey Tako.
Are you running a 3.8L in your baja?

Any idea where to get the heat sheild thingy?

Mon Jun 25, 2007 7:56 pm

supercharged 3.8 :D

on second thought, go ahead and make an aluminum shield, these things are over priced..

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Turbo-beenie-Turbo-...enameZWDVW

Tue Jun 26, 2007 7:33 pm

Supercharged!!! What kind of HP does that put out?

I agree on the price of the turbo boot. Little steep...Previous owner gave me some good links for other alternatives:
http://store.summitracing.com/partdetail.asp?autof...toview=sku

And he gave me a good link for the rad hose dilema: ( which may be of interest for others )
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/48-Stainless-Radiat...dZViewItem

Good guy I bought the buggy from. Straight shooter, no BS when I bought the car and in the advertisement for the buggy, and always willing to answer my emails with questions.

Now.....If only these type of items were as easy to obtain up here. Whenever ordering parts from the US there is the whole customs nonsense to worry about. Nope, no Moores Parts or MacKenzies this neck of the woods.

Tue Jun 26, 2007 7:35 pm

i wouldnt waste your money yet on that piece from summit, just use some fairly thick aluminum, and it should help alot, if not enough, you can go from there.

hp is about 230 ish, torque around 330 ish. it scoots :D

Wed Jun 27, 2007 8:11 pm

those turbo blanket things also cook the turbo! if the heat doesn't get out where do you think it goes??

you may also want to look into an aftermarket cooler for the oil? one for a VW(imagine that) with the thermostat in it may help. they are designed to open up when oil gets to a certain temp and then route oil to the cooler. If you can help the oil to be cooler before it goes to the turbo it might help to help keep things cooler there.

I was thinking the supercharged 3800 engines were closer to 280? My brother in law has a injected 3800 that was suppose to be a bit over 200 by itself??

-Aaron

Wed Jun 27, 2007 8:46 pm

turbo's like to be hot, to a certain extent... the later gm 3800 series is a lot more refined, and puts out more power, i have a ford 3.8 with less hp, but the torque makes up for it :D

edit, the gm puts out 240-260, dependent on year

Thu Jun 28, 2007 3:39 am

I ended up ordering an asbestos wrapping tape for the manifold and a refelctive heat shielding material meant for keeping the manifold from frying the starter on street rods ( good to 2000 degrees F). Picked it up from a shop nearby where they have a top fuel drag car. These guys know there stuff as opposed to NAPA where all I ever seem to get is perplexed looking stares. :shock:

Sun Jul 01, 2007 3:41 am

Pulled another late nighter on Friday until 2:00 am to get some work done on the buggy before taking it out yesterday. I found a piece of scrap aluminum plate for $10 with pretty much the bend in it that I wanted. Cut it to shape and it does the trick perfect. No more overheating the back of my firewall and ECU.

I also installed a cover on the rear of the cage to keep fingers out of the belts and pulleys and I got my ORV plates too. I am now riding legally in the trails and the car is registered and insured:

Took the buggy out yesterday with my 8 year old son. First I had problems with overheating as the radiator fan was not coming on. After an hour of screwing around I figured out the fan had a bad ground and got it running and off again.

We tooled around in the sand pits for a while and then hit the trails. The trails rock! and that is where this thing shines! Love the power of the 2.3L on the hills and the coil overs are awesome on the rough terrain. I found if I hit the woops with enough speed that the car won't oscillate through them but skip along the top.

Unfortunately the day ended with the preverbial last run of me wanting to jump a lip in the sand pits only to have the tranny let go. Luckily I was able to get back to the trailer, but the tranny is definitely boffed. Now I have a whole new project to deal with.....and I was hoping the rest of summer would just be "add gas and go"....NOT!

Time for a six rib change....not looking forward to pulling that heavy block out of that cage :cry:

Sun Jul 01, 2007 6:57 am

Sorry to here about the trans. :cry: . But atleast you can say you did have some seat time in it. It looks like I going to go the 6 rib route too, I should be picking it up next week. It will be overkill for my 1600cc, but will work great for a furture Ecotec swap. Well, back to the garage for me. I'm in the middle of building a chassis table (it will be nice to have a level surface to build from) so I can hopefully get started with this build very soon.....Good luck with the transaxle swap

Sun Jul 01, 2007 7:29 am

Unfortunately I already have a 6 rib in the buggy. I think I'll pull it and get it rebuilt instead of buying something new. That way while it is out I may take the time to throw some front brakes on it and make it street legal......there's too many goofball kids with dropped down Hondas with fart mufflers that need their doors blown off.......... :lol:

Sun Jul 01, 2007 2:22 pm

you REALLY need to redo those upper seat belt mounts!!!

i would not want a sharp peice of metal poking at the belts. I am not sure the aluminum would be strong enough to hold things in place in a severe crash. You have got those holding in some pretty precious cargo back there, no need to take even a remote chance a severing a seat belt.

at the very least splist some 1/2 fuel line and cover the exposed metal edges taht are in contact with it.

-Aaron

Sun Jul 01, 2007 6:37 pm

Actually the whole back seat and belt support thingy was over kill. My friend even questioned the extreme that I went to. ( BTW if anyone ever needs some fab work done up this way...I have a friend who is more than capable and quite the perfectionist. He's building himself quite the 5 seater)
To mount the back seats I installed on pipe that runs under the bottom of the seats with a 1/4" thick steel plate that has 1/4" thick tabs welded on for the lap belts. There is a 1/4" thck plate that goes down to the torsion housing that has the crotch strap bolted to it. Behind the seats the is another horizontal tube that has another 1/4" thick plate that has the shoulder belts bolted through it. The whole thing is then tied toghether by the 1/8" thick aluminum firewall that runs behind, under the seat, and in behind the ankles to the floor pan. You can see in the pictures that the aluminum does not touch the belts. The only change I may make is to put some piping / door edging in the holes for the belts and to put a large washer behind the should belt mount so that it is easier to adjust the belts for larger pasengers.
Here are some more detailed pictures:

Tue Jul 10, 2007 6:51 pm

Now this is depressing...just got it all together and blew up the tranny.

Still poking around with going to a 5 rib and swapping the bell housing (guy has it all built and ready to go) tempting or getting the 6 rib rebuilt new.
Any advice?

Tue Jul 10, 2007 6:55 pm

While the tranny is being worked on I'm thinking of getting the brake on front and back.
Currently have 914 Porsche rear disks with no E brake / front calipers on it:

Tue Jul 10, 2007 7:01 pm

Have the following parts:
E brake / rear brake caliper 914:

And the existing rotors on the car:

I notices that the calipers are not floating type but that the mounts are rigid which would require adjustment periodically.
I need to have Emergency brakes to make road worthy.
Any suggestions on setting these up or am I better off with aftermarket?
If so, suggestions would be great.