Peppy
18-06-2012, 11:28 AM
One of my mates is a retired cop/mechanic/everything else and has built his own boats, and rebuilt/modified several cars. One of the more fun ones is his shooting buggy. It was a Suzuki Sierra originally, but now it's a pair of chassis rails, two axles, four wheels, a transfer case, two seats and a tray with rails around it to lean on while shooting. Oh, and the oldest, worst, carby fed little 1000CC engine that still runs (on a debatable numer of cyilnders.. Generally two or three. It always drops one while under load). He decided to run it down into a mostly dried up dam recently, and during several of the attempts to reverse it out, I was watching dark smoke and orange sparks fly out the exhaust pipe.
I was thinking about this recently, and while they're not the best performing engine, the D16Y4 is cheap as chips, reliable, and can still throw my GLI around the place pretty well. With the extra torque available from the lower gearing of having at least two diffs, as well as the possibility of 4wd-Low, it'd pull that little beastie through anything.
My main concern with doing that would be the wiring. I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to weld up the diff, run a single shaft to the transfer case and just link it in like that. The entire EFI fuel tank could be attatched somewhere in the back, and the ECU could get a nice little housing somewhere on the sheet metal dash, with maybe some of the cluster to keep it company
Now, that's all in my head. Does anyone have any experience/theoretical knowledge in how the wiring would work, particularly referring to what sensors/parts would be missing, and any other likely issues. (Plus ways of fixing that cheaply would be great!)
If a different, cheap, relaible engine would be a lot easier to put in there, I'm open to suggestions, but I would love to see a honda in that thing....
I was thinking about this recently, and while they're not the best performing engine, the D16Y4 is cheap as chips, reliable, and can still throw my GLI around the place pretty well. With the extra torque available from the lower gearing of having at least two diffs, as well as the possibility of 4wd-Low, it'd pull that little beastie through anything.
My main concern with doing that would be the wiring. I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to weld up the diff, run a single shaft to the transfer case and just link it in like that. The entire EFI fuel tank could be attatched somewhere in the back, and the ECU could get a nice little housing somewhere on the sheet metal dash, with maybe some of the cluster to keep it company
Now, that's all in my head. Does anyone have any experience/theoretical knowledge in how the wiring would work, particularly referring to what sensors/parts would be missing, and any other likely issues. (Plus ways of fixing that cheaply would be great!)
If a different, cheap, relaible engine would be a lot easier to put in there, I'm open to suggestions, but I would love to see a honda in that thing....