Holy cow you guys are killing me.
Looking at an Odyssey in 1985 it’s freak’in state of the art ATV design.
Looking at one today it’s an antique, if it where street legal Ohio would let you get ‘historic auto’ license plates for it.
I’ll take these in order:
Dave-co said
Quote:
“I can say after driving it at Barstow I could not imagin putting a snow mobile
Engine in one except for the sand dunes, the suspension is just not good enough for anywhere else in my humble opinion”
This is spot on.
The thing was designed for a set amount of power / speed, exceeding that will upset the balance of the vehicle.
Not just the suspension stroke but the drive train, brakes and safety gear are set up as a matched set.
If you change one part of that equation you need to anticipate the impact to other parts of the equation.
Some people seem to realize this, other are starting to look like the guy on Craigslist that has a 1000RR street bike Engine stuffed in the back of a FL250.
“Geared for a bazillion mile an hour” yea, good luck with that one.
Another great quote from Hoser
Quote:
“sounds like them Polaris RZR pussies that complain about the steering in a RZR until they install the 800.00 power steering on their RZR's.”
Then again any quote disparaging company P is a good quote in my book (yes I’m biased, but you already knew that).
One small point, the EPS unit acts like a steering damper, as the tire pushes on the tie rod, the electric m0tor will push back trying to maintain what the driver is requesting on the steering wheel side of the equation, as the steering wheel kicks, there is a higher demand on the EPS to resist.
Steering damper would be the cheap way to do this and I have a Bilstein unit I might get around to installing on my FL350 one day, but the damper just increases the steering effort, EPS would make it easier.
The Odyssey is really at the limit for steering stability.
Ride a FL350 and FL400 (in stock configuration – stock wheels and tire size) and the Odyssey will seam twitchy, especially at high speed in rough sand conditions ( I think Randman mentions this).
Then Dave-Co has a revisionist history lesson:
Quote:
“The rear end sure does waky things thasts for sure. I bet the jap that designed that rear end killed himself in shame lol and the one who stamped OK also with a giant sword”.
Don’t get me wrong Dave, I think your LT Pilot suspensions are a work of art, but you have the advantage 30 years of advancement in the technology.
The guy that designed the FL350 suspension is retired, and he did quite well in the company.
Certainly, if he could have peered in to the future and seen what you fabricate on a day to day basis
today he could have done better, then again if he could see the future he would have been looking at the stock market and made some real money.
When the FL350 was designed, there were no ATVs on the market to copy (Suzuki released the first one the same year as the FL350 release).
Some SCORE class 1 cars
at that time still used forged VW trailing arms, coil over shocks where the new ‘trick’ set up with much more stroke than the front torsion leafs could ever produce, stock trailing arm where good for what, 9” max stroke? (assuming you knew to lean the front beam forward).
The CPSC was cracking down on ATCs and no one knew what the final regulation would be until 1986, two years after the end of 3 wheeler manufacturing ended (how dose an industry invest money in new vehicles when the rules are changing year to year?).
Because of this the FL350 was considered by Honda to be an ATV and maintained the 600 pound max weight rule, this caused some stuff like the rear axle working as a suspension link, reducing the weight of 2 links.
There seems to be a lot of carping about the U-joints in the suspension.
Yes when they let go it is bad.
However the vehicle is 30 years old, if you went out and replaced it after 5 years – the expected life of the vehicle – you would not be having this issue (and the Pilot would have sold better and stayed in production).
I get it – many are not satisfied with this set up.
At the time swing axle VWs where doing something similar, with rear suspension loads fed in to the transaxle side cover, and they seemed to work OK.
This was rectified on the Pilot, the drive line doesn’t take any suspension loading.
But at the time no one in the ATC/ATV industry had any idea what would work or not work off road.
Look at the early 4X4 ATVs, the 1985 TRX350 had 4 wheel drive.
The rear suspension was a typical single swing arm ATV axle.
The front axle was a reverse swing arm similar to the rear but pointing the other way.
So the axle could go up and down, both wheels together, but for one wheel to go up the axle bushings, swing arm or the frame had to flex.
This was a horrible idea.
Dave-Co on the rear suspension:
Quote:
The last 1 to 1.5 inches going down the wheel lays in A LOT. Mine going up will touch the bottom of the tank with the axle.
There is a definite limit to how much droop you can have, max length eye to eye (with the stock mounting locations) is 15.25”.
Any more travel than that and the U-joints will bind.
There are tricks and dodges like adjusting the upper link or clerancing the U-joints but these are not recommended.
I think there may be some possibility of more bump travel.
Typically Honda limits bump travel based on the frame not hitting the ground in certain situations.
Usually the drive line limits the droop travel as the U-joints (or CVs) reach their limits but the bump travel is limited by the frame clearance to the ground.
I have not investigated the FL350 rear yet, but the axle hitting the gas tank is not going to be stock Honda (as Rarerat pointed out).
An aftermarket shock with a shorter body could allow some more bump or remounting the upper end of the shock could maximize the axle angles.
A size up in the wheel / tire can fix any frame to ground clearance issues and a retune of the clutch will restore the off the line acceleration.