I tore my odyssey apart last month getting ready to rebuild ,replace and upgrade everything I can this winter.
I want to put the front A-arms off a 2006 Honda 450R quad on the odyssey, I figured since I want to paint the frame I should get the A-arms on first.
I need some ideas on how to mount the a-arms to the frame, PICS please , I have seen some on other FL350's and for some reason I could not find them when I did a search.
I was thinking of a piece of channel iron welded vertically, 1 in the front that both upper and lower arms would mount to and another one for the rear mounts.Then I could drill a few different spots in the channel iron to raise or lower were the arms mount to instead of mounting the arms with tabs to the frame and not have any adjustment on the arms
I see I will have to cut off the front shock mounts, the old mounts for the front arms and the fender mounting points, I don't see the point of having the front fenders on with the wider front end and I need fenders for the odyssey that I'M going to build for my son when I get my FL350 redone, his odyssey will be getting a bunch of stuff that I replace on my odyssey

any input would be great.

Thanks
Bob

Another pic

Another pic

1 More

There sure is alot of parts once it's all disasselmbled.

Bob

Here are a few pics. This isnt my work but I have done it a few times. I can help in any way possible.

The arms will be easy to atatch to the frame. The trickey part will be the steering setup. You will need a bumpsteer kit. There is no way around it. Because of 2 reasons first the tie rods will hit the frame on full compression and second you wont be able to dial out the bumpsteer. You will want to mount the lower a-arms lower then the lowest frame rail. This makes the steering later easy to develope. Your arm distance at the frame must be the same distance apart as the spindel (height wise) You also will want to mount the arms with about 7 degrees of kick up( a-arms slightly higher on te front mount then the rear mount) Doing this will take alot of time. Do one side at a time. Do one side complete except for the steering then copy all your parts and measurement and duplicate it to the other. Just in case you have to do it over. Also TACK weld everything before you fully weld it up. I have found yfz450 shocks work really well for this conversion. I'm also running a set of them on my LT pilot Heres a pic. Now as far as mounting the arms you can do tabs like the pics I posted but it will require welding some more tube braces or you can run some channel to connect the arm set together then weld that to the frame. Its less pretty but it works.

Thanks for the info and the pics


Bob

Strictly out of curiousity, why wouldn't you guys run different spindles and disc brakes if you're doing a front-end conversion anyway? Seems to me it would be quite easy to do so at that point...

A front end conversion is intruiging. I am now the owner of two FL350s (must be a sickness...), and was contemplating a Pilot (for substantially more money). But it might be fun to just run wild with a 350...

I will be using the 450R spindles and disc brakes on mine, some people like the drum brakes, they work great if they are setup properly, My old front arms and brakes will be rebuilt and put on the odyssey that I will be building for my son.

Bob

Mostly cost. Its way cheaper to use the stock spindels and brakes. Also the odyssey weight 607 lbs a quad weighs 350. If you compare them the quads shafts are thinner then the odys. More of a risk or breakage. I do allot of jumping So I don't want to worry about breaking the spindles.
But whats awsome about the trx a-arms is they will work with your stock spindles so you could convert to a-arms now and change to disc brakes later with a set of trx spindles and brakes.
This is what I'm going to be doing to a fl350 I picked up a few weeks ago. Check in on my post under projects "$130.00 project".

I've been reading your post (and I'm local to you in La Verne--heading to Glamis again this weekend--maybe we can meet up sometime) and yours, along with others, are what are motivating me. I've always liked the idea of an Ody; couldn't afford one as a kid, and now that my Banshee has me convinced that all things 2-stroke are not necessarily all evil (well, almost anyway... ), I took the plunge...

Keep up the modding, guys!

Hey Bob,

When you change the drums to discs, will that change the lug pattern from 4/110?? If so, what to?

Yes, they will be 4/144, much easier to find wheels for ,that is what is used on most honda 4-wheeler's/QUADS.

Bob

Sure that would be cool. Are you planning on making the east meets west glamis trip? Check out the thread in the trips section. My buddy nick (Nick rnr) and I will be going with others from socal if you want to go. The more the better.

Looks like a fun project. Since your arms are stock and non adjustabe. You should try to keep the front arm set up the same as the 450. I did the disc conversion on mine and can tell you it will out brek any other. My set up even out breaks my buddys YFZ 450. There are pros and cons to having this set up. Look forward to some r&d and do not get locked into one idea. It's a differnet animal. The rake that comes with the new front ends works very well and takes most of the harsh hit feed back right out of the front. With my set up on my pilot I get 13.5" of travle and I,am very happy. Theres a lot of good advise on this board and will provide a lot of feed back to help solve issues if they arise. If you have a 450 to measure up front end to make set ;up it will help a lot. Plus its just fun. Please post up pics as you go I for one relly enjoy them.