I have a 140° on / 125° off sensor in the head above the exhaust port, which seems to trigger just fine by itself once it comes up to temp. I'm going to swap the one in the radiator, bring it down from 170°/155° to 150°/135°. I want to keep the radiator fan off above the pump off trigger, otherwise I'd end up with the pump cycling while the fan ran constantly



Excellent info, thank you sir! Happy belated Birthday btw



Well thank you and Methodical for figuring out which one. I definitely like this setup, and plan to leave it alone save periodic maintenance. I'd also go with cylinder on up to the head personally.

Now a question for ya'll. How would you go about pulling this thing back down? I'm thinking about just lashing it to one of the d-rings in my driveway and then put a jack on either side and lifting up. Anybody else have this beat to death?

Could this be the motivation to switch to power steering? Anybody know if I did that, if it would get things moved up a bit down the midline there? Are there power steering kits even still available?

Talk to methodical, he just posted pics on fb and Instagram of his power steering setup for pilots I believe. I think MForbes has one of methodicals ps kits in his odyssey.
Bob

Any excuse to switch to power steering is a good one!

However, it will not help with the bent part you posted a photo of. The yoke remains in the same spot with methodical's EPS. In my experience, they are all bent up like that. It s a big job to fix & best to remove foot tub if your going to use heat & hammer or try to pry it. Cut it out an weld in a new piece is best.

Maybe make an aluminum skid plate from the very front & then mounted to the cross section with spacers to get it down lower and protect the Yoke.

April 11, 2020

It's been awhile, however I have been budging the needle on this project.

When I was picking up the buggy cradle after powder coating, I had asked Adam (the fabricator/machinist) if he had any suggestions on how to fix the guard on the underside. I had the Honda with me on the trailer and let him take a look. He recommended welding some heavier tubing in place around the factory stuff that was all beat up, and adding a skid plate.

So, as my belated birthday present to me, that's what we did! He had me over that Saturday, and after bracing the cross bar/guard, he made me two identical skid plates. Why two? Adam is moving to Georgia :( So in case I beat to death the original, I have a backup

The skids are 1/8" aluminum plate, with dzus fasteners holding them in place. Two in the back on the reinforced cross bar, and two up front on the bottom half of the clamp there. So I should still be able to disassemble everything if needed.

I'm super happy with how it turned out

Here's some shots of the process, it was nice to get out of the house for awhile.











And finally, here's the aluminum cut out and ready to rock.

Here's the rest of the shots of the process. After Adam got things bent to shape, he tacked in the dzus weldments and then it just went together like it was supposed to be there.

I was blown away Clearly this was his first time doing this sort of thing.













Once I get it home, I take it out for a rip because reasons! Surely the skid plate needs to be tested.

I don't go very far since I have to get back to make dinner at a reasonable hour, but still was able to get my fix in

CONTENT....YES.

No good deed goes unpunished.



https://youtu.be/xSpZ77C5m_g

Let me know what you guys think is wrong.

In my opinion:
1) Nothing a driver can do will blow a gearbox unless he jumps it and lands with the power on. If the gearbox does blow, then it was just a standard mechanical failure. After all, we just put it in gear and go. If it blows up then so be it. It's a mechanical weakness and failure.
2) I would pull the belt and turn the driven by hand. See if you can feel the jam. If you can't then it was and Engine issue. If you can feel the jam go to #3 below.
3) Now you must pull the axles and do the same thing. See if you can feel the jam now. If not then it was an axle issue and not a transmission issue. Edit: or a wheel bearing.
CO

CO,

I agree, I don't think he would have failed a part that wasn't on it's last leg anyway. I specifically asked he be nice to it, since I had so many hours/$$'s invested.

Like you said, the gears aren't synchronizing on launch, they are fully meshed from when we push the selector to 'F', and besides, aren't these gearboxes supposed to be fairly grunty?

I'll pull the belt and wheels on the next video, once my camera batteries get here. I have a old contour+2 (failed battery) I'd like to use, at least to see if I can make it work.

As far as the axles, I'd rule them out by the fact I have a smooth operation in neutral. I only get the abrupt halts when it's in either forward or reverse. As I dig into it obviously they are coming out, but I'd consider it a safe bet they are fine.

Anybody else have something like this happen? The only reason I'm all finger-pointy at the gearbox is because of my experience with the kids PowerWheels. When you chew a tooth in a gearbox in those, this is the exact behavior.

Absolutely agree with you here. My point being that I would rule everything else out before you get rammy on the pulling the gearbox. Like you said these are stout units. Guys run skidoo engines in these things. But I'm a dogfkr and hate to do unnecessary work so I spend a lot of time "looking" at things before I get rammy. I have a completely destroyed gearbox sitting on my shelf that I got with a bunch of spare stuff. Almost every gear was busted. The guy lost an AB bearing and ran it until destruction. If you did bust a gear tooth then I will look in that destroyed gearbox to see if I got a gear that you can use. It's also possible you lost an AB gear or AB bearing. My money is on an AB.
CO

PM me if you want.
I have several numbers of people who were trying to sell stuff on craiglist.
I copy and paste to wordpad names #'s etc of people selling stuff when ever I see oddy parts come up for sale on craiglist. Sometimes they still got the parts and have not sold them. I keep tabs.
Unfortunately you live in Arizona and the info I got is for parts in Washington/Oregon/Cali.
CO

CO,

Much appreciated, I'll reach out once I triage this thing further and figure out what I need.

I did get my camera batteries, and discovered/remembered it's a 170° wide angle camera. So basically a fish eye lens, not very good for trying to record me break stuff in my garage.

But I'm sure it's great for what its intended for, action videos. So I'll have to take one of the buggies out and test it out, post the results. Give ya'll a ride along

In the meantime, I'll just use my phone, it's a pixel 4. I also ordered a lapel microphone/stand combo, that should hopefully let me be heard as well as seen as I go along.

It should be fun, and I've wanted to figure out OpenShot for awhile. https://www.openshot.org

So far all I've used it for is to stitch videos together into one, evidently it's got some cool features.

I would have to agree with CO on the AB gear/bearing failure. You can hole shot goose it all you want on the dirt but not on pavement. It is known to cause failure. I am curious what the inside looks like. I have had a gearbox that was awful chewed up on the inside, it had a hairline crack through to the outside. It never leaked oil but was visible and I had it welded.

After the repair