Cost of Winning: The Monster Mav Chronicles
- Thread starter badassmav
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badassmav
Well-Known Member
Control Arms/links:
As I concluded the steering section, I touched on the control arms. The first and biggest change from stock would be in the front arms. I chose to make the lower arm the load carrying arm so I could keep the monstrous shocks under the hood, and maintain the lowest center of gravity possible. The arms are first built with 1" dia. x .065" wall mild steel round tubing that connects the weld bungs to the uni balls, or outer weld bung. I then plate over them with .090?" 4130 steel, to give the arm a redundancy that is hard to fail, even under the most severe of impacts. I use 3/4" x 3/4" rod ends on all inside control arm pivots, and 7/8" uni balls for the front outers, and 7/8" rod ends for the rear outers. The front and rear arms share the same basic design criteria, and are good for a full season plus. Front wheel travel is 17 1/2", and there is 3" of ground clearance from the pan to the ground at full bump. The front is set up with 4-6* + caster, and .3*-camber, and has 1/8" toe in.
The rear toe links, or radius rods are made from 1" x .120 wall 4130 round tubing. The outer joint is a 5/8" x 5/8" rod end operating with 1/2" hardware in a single shear application, while I used the stock Maverick a arm pivot bushing and steel outer sleeves for the inner pivot points. The factory steel outer sleeves have an inside radius that makes the shoulder life of the bushuing last for ever! The rear aluminum upright is mostly stock except some stiffener plates I welded between the 4 ears that make up rhe outer pivot points. The service life of these factory aluminum uprights are about 3 races, and 1 wheel bearing exchange for our car. Twice now, the circlip that retains the wheel bearing came off during a race, and the bearing pushed out, but did not go all the way out. The rear uprights are set up as factory, with the top pivot trailing the bottom one by 8*, and are adjusted to give the rear tires a scant 1/16" toe in. Wheel travel is 18", and there is 3" of clearance at full bump here as well.
I will finish the details of the shocks and spindles shortly.
As I concluded the steering section, I touched on the control arms. The first and biggest change from stock would be in the front arms. I chose to make the lower arm the load carrying arm so I could keep the monstrous shocks under the hood, and maintain the lowest center of gravity possible. The arms are first built with 1" dia. x .065" wall mild steel round tubing that connects the weld bungs to the uni balls, or outer weld bung. I then plate over them with .090?" 4130 steel, to give the arm a redundancy that is hard to fail, even under the most severe of impacts. I use 3/4" x 3/4" rod ends on all inside control arm pivots, and 7/8" uni balls for the front outers, and 7/8" rod ends for the rear outers. The front and rear arms share the same basic design criteria, and are good for a full season plus. Front wheel travel is 17 1/2", and there is 3" of ground clearance from the pan to the ground at full bump. The front is set up with 4-6* + caster, and .3*-camber, and has 1/8" toe in.
The rear toe links, or radius rods are made from 1" x .120 wall 4130 round tubing. The outer joint is a 5/8" x 5/8" rod end operating with 1/2" hardware in a single shear application, while I used the stock Maverick a arm pivot bushing and steel outer sleeves for the inner pivot points. The factory steel outer sleeves have an inside radius that makes the shoulder life of the bushuing last for ever! The rear aluminum upright is mostly stock except some stiffener plates I welded between the 4 ears that make up rhe outer pivot points. The service life of these factory aluminum uprights are about 3 races, and 1 wheel bearing exchange for our car. Twice now, the circlip that retains the wheel bearing came off during a race, and the bearing pushed out, but did not go all the way out. The rear uprights are set up as factory, with the top pivot trailing the bottom one by 8*, and are adjusted to give the rear tires a scant 1/16" toe in. Wheel travel is 18", and there is 3" of clearance at full bump here as well.
I will finish the details of the shocks and spindles shortly.
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badassmav
Well-Known Member
I know cognito had problems with their spider, but we only had hardware problems with ours, One additional problem was excessive wear where the spider glides on the outer housing. Ours had no wear strips at all. Just aluminum that wore on the torque side something fierce. Our clutches were gone through 100 % and rebuilt by the mfg. before every race, so the wear issue was a non issue!
Ignore Amos
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badassmav
Well-Known Member
Spindles and Brakes:
I chose to use the stock rear steer spindles when converting the car to a front steer for the sake of time, and the fact that I have no machining or turning capacity here. The plan was to use the driver side spindle on the passenger side of the car, and vice-versa. I would take advantage of the stock steering knuckle, and tower off of it with a standoff to raise the tie rods upwards, almost parallel with the top a arm. This was necessary to keep the bump steer to a minimum (around 1/4"), and also raised them up out of harms way. I used 7/8" uniballs top and bottom, positioned 90* relative to one another. This is a truck building discipline, and was not necessary on a UTV. The result is a car with a turning radius of a 1975 Olds delta 88! Oh well! I moved the lower uniball slightly to narrow down the scrub radius a bit, and minimize shock transfer into the rest of the steering system. Although the spindles appear to be cast, they are not. They are forged spindles, and have fantastic mechanical properties. It still requires a process to weld onto them as much as was necessary to avoid cracking, and reliability issues. Each spindle took nearly 8 hours to fully weld once they were already tacked together. This was due to the need to maintain a certain temperature in the spindle for 100% of the welding process. I used the oven in my RV to pre and post heat them, and used Nyrod, an arc welding electrode. I just chip off the flux coating, and scotch brite them nice and clean before using them. Notice how I used 1" dia. boss stock as a stand off from the stock steering knuckle to add as much integrity to the new steering knuckle location as possible. Each spindle requires 10 or 11 different 4130 plates from .090" thk. to .190" thk that are meticulously formed and notched to fit together like a glove. I would have liked to build in some anti-dive into the front geometry, but suspension pivot points cannot be moved, so it is what it is!
The front brakes needed re-thinking as well because now, they are mounted in front of the axle, and the lead slider pin on the caliper is now in the floating location. That's o.k., but what is not is now the floating pin must assume the role of the stationary pin. The results are brakes that wear out in 100 miles, wear one side pad down drastically faster than the other, are extremely mushy, and all but non-effective. I replaced the Maverick brakes with brake calipers off of the outlander. Don't ask me why I didn't just install a performance caliper like Wilwood or something. Probably because we get a parts allotment from Can-am, so the price was right! I had Streamline make some custom braided brake lines to compensate for the wider track, and kept the stock master cylinder.
I chose to use the stock rear steer spindles when converting the car to a front steer for the sake of time, and the fact that I have no machining or turning capacity here. The plan was to use the driver side spindle on the passenger side of the car, and vice-versa. I would take advantage of the stock steering knuckle, and tower off of it with a standoff to raise the tie rods upwards, almost parallel with the top a arm. This was necessary to keep the bump steer to a minimum (around 1/4"), and also raised them up out of harms way. I used 7/8" uniballs top and bottom, positioned 90* relative to one another. This is a truck building discipline, and was not necessary on a UTV. The result is a car with a turning radius of a 1975 Olds delta 88! Oh well! I moved the lower uniball slightly to narrow down the scrub radius a bit, and minimize shock transfer into the rest of the steering system. Although the spindles appear to be cast, they are not. They are forged spindles, and have fantastic mechanical properties. It still requires a process to weld onto them as much as was necessary to avoid cracking, and reliability issues. Each spindle took nearly 8 hours to fully weld once they were already tacked together. This was due to the need to maintain a certain temperature in the spindle for 100% of the welding process. I used the oven in my RV to pre and post heat them, and used Nyrod, an arc welding electrode. I just chip off the flux coating, and scotch brite them nice and clean before using them. Notice how I used 1" dia. boss stock as a stand off from the stock steering knuckle to add as much integrity to the new steering knuckle location as possible. Each spindle requires 10 or 11 different 4130 plates from .090" thk. to .190" thk that are meticulously formed and notched to fit together like a glove. I would have liked to build in some anti-dive into the front geometry, but suspension pivot points cannot be moved, so it is what it is!
The front brakes needed re-thinking as well because now, they are mounted in front of the axle, and the lead slider pin on the caliper is now in the floating location. That's o.k., but what is not is now the floating pin must assume the role of the stationary pin. The results are brakes that wear out in 100 miles, wear one side pad down drastically faster than the other, are extremely mushy, and all but non-effective. I replaced the Maverick brakes with brake calipers off of the outlander. Don't ask me why I didn't just install a performance caliper like Wilwood or something. Probably because we get a parts allotment from Can-am, so the price was right! I had Streamline make some custom braided brake lines to compensate for the wider track, and kept the stock master cylinder.
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badassmav
Well-Known Member
The intake duct for the primary clutch is underneath the driver side dashboard. The inlet has a snorkel pointing downwards, and a micro screen filter cloth covering the inlet, so when a large amount of silt is in the air, the filter screen stops most of it, and becase the snorkel is pointing downwards, remnant dirt just falls from the screen to the floor board.
badassmav
Well-Known Member
Coil over Shocks:
Up until now, we have been running Fox's 2.5" internal bypass shocks. 14" stroke in the front, and 16" stroke in the rear. The frame is 15" off the ground at ride ht., and there is 5 1/2" of droop, and 12 1/2" of bump travel (the numbers for the front and rear are within 1/2" of each other.). The motion ratio's are very low, at around .75. The rear of the car has been giving us problems bottoming hard, as you can see by the damage sustained in the 500. Fox has stepped up and offered to help us solve that problem, and are currently working on something light, adjustable externally, and fat. That is all I should say for now. We should have them on the car in time for V2R.
Up until now, we have been running Fox's 2.5" internal bypass shocks. 14" stroke in the front, and 16" stroke in the rear. The frame is 15" off the ground at ride ht., and there is 5 1/2" of droop, and 12 1/2" of bump travel (the numbers for the front and rear are within 1/2" of each other.). The motion ratio's are very low, at around .75. The rear of the car has been giving us problems bottoming hard, as you can see by the damage sustained in the 500. Fox has stepped up and offered to help us solve that problem, and are currently working on something light, adjustable externally, and fat. That is all I should say for now. We should have them on the car in time for V2R.
badassmav
Well-Known Member
Yes, we do have a 3", 135 cfm inline blower that has a scoop-type inlet in the rear of the car. It has the same inlet filtration I described for the front. The duct attaches to an aluminum collar that I cut into the CVT cover on the secondary side. The position of the hose where it attaches to the cover is not in the center of the secondary, rather offset to the top, about 1/2 a hole off center. That way, the air doesn't just hit the face plate of the secondary, but the face of the front sheave instead, where the heat builds up the most. I would like to run 24 volt blowers, because they will triple the cfm, and since we have dual batteries, we would be able to run them if we wish. Right now, we do not want to change things up too much, as we are running for the points championship, and can not afford any surprises.
We also run the same 3" inline duct fan at the rear of the car, and it draws the air from the back side of the primary. It made a big difference when we added the "sucker" at the end of the system.
We are currently experimenting with variations of this arrangement, and are getting closer to achieving satisfactory eresults.
crazywatson
#13 - UTVUnderground Approved
On summit racing they sell a 240cfm inline fan. You could double them up and put in a Y connector. 480 cfm
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badassmav
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Finally cutting on the frame todayhows prep coming reid? We are a little ways out....
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, order p/u mat'l. tomorrow and start splicing and replacing . I wish all my time could be spent working on the physical damage, but there are parts to order, drawing to make , digital cut files to measure and generate , parts to dis assemble and repair , welding and fab supplies to pick up , oh, and doggies to walk and posts to generate !
badassmav
Well-Known Member
Here's the area of focus this week. Keep in mind that this damage was transmitted through a 1/2" thick Factory UTV skid plate! How much more would there be if not for them! Thanks Bob and Dave for all you do for us.
The rear frame repairs should be 2 days to complete, and the a arms will take 2 weeks to generate accurate drawings, convert them to digital cutting files, make holding fixtures for my jig plate to accept the new profile, have the upper and lower main plates, shock and limit strap tabs, and internal gusseting water jet cut. The old a arms were asymmetrical and were hand built. The parts were laid out by hand, and cut by eye w/ a hand held plasma cutter, then welded while being clamped to a table, as opposed to being firmly positioned and held in a proper welding jig. I will need to confirm the overall axle length and plunge depth before committing to jigging the arms. It all takes time. Invisible time to the lay mans eye, but time none the less.
Here are a couple of better pics of the rear damage.
The rear frame repairs should be 2 days to complete, and the a arms will take 2 weeks to generate accurate drawings, convert them to digital cutting files, make holding fixtures for my jig plate to accept the new profile, have the upper and lower main plates, shock and limit strap tabs, and internal gusseting water jet cut. The old a arms were asymmetrical and were hand built. The parts were laid out by hand, and cut by eye w/ a hand held plasma cutter, then welded while being clamped to a table, as opposed to being firmly positioned and held in a proper welding jig. I will need to confirm the overall axle length and plunge depth before committing to jigging the arms. It all takes time. Invisible time to the lay mans eye, but time none the less.
Here are a couple of better pics of the rear damage.
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badassmav
Well-Known Member
Motor Transport and Shipping Crate:
I picked up this plastic, air tight/sealed container and lid from my local surplus store. I paid $45.00 for it, and spent a day designing and building an adapter bracket to accept the v-twin Rotax engine. The adapter bracket picks up the crank and tranny output shafts, as well as a point on the front cylinder head area. The frame/bracket suspends the motor inside of the box, and protects if from damage that would occur if dropped, or if it tumbles across the bed of a truck while flying downm dirt roads!
I am using it to ship the blown engine back to BRP, where they will dis-assemble it and find the cause of it seizing. It is my guess that when the shipper dropped it (it apparently fell directly onto the end of the crankshaft, on the CVT side) the crank was forced over some dimension into the main bearings, mis-aligning the crankshaft with the cylinder bore. This caused thrust loading of the crankshaft main bearings through the connecting rod. I know very little about motors, so you critics, please be easy on me! I do know that before deciding to sign for, and run the motor, I checked the run out on the crankshaft at the end face where the primary clutch slides on, and it was less than .0005", so I felt it did not get bent in the fall. I would like to conclue this post by saying that BRP and Can-am have been working with us, to our satisfaction, on replacing the damaged moter, even though the damage was sustained by a third party (the shipper). IMO, their main shortfall in this whole fiasco was in shipping a new engine from Canada to San Diego, basically in a cardboard box. Wait until they get a hold of my badass shipping crate! Someone in shipping is gonna get a "sit down", and it won't be pretty.
I picked up this plastic, air tight/sealed container and lid from my local surplus store. I paid $45.00 for it, and spent a day designing and building an adapter bracket to accept the v-twin Rotax engine. The adapter bracket picks up the crank and tranny output shafts, as well as a point on the front cylinder head area. The frame/bracket suspends the motor inside of the box, and protects if from damage that would occur if dropped, or if it tumbles across the bed of a truck while flying downm dirt roads!
I am using it to ship the blown engine back to BRP, where they will dis-assemble it and find the cause of it seizing. It is my guess that when the shipper dropped it (it apparently fell directly onto the end of the crankshaft, on the CVT side) the crank was forced over some dimension into the main bearings, mis-aligning the crankshaft with the cylinder bore. This caused thrust loading of the crankshaft main bearings through the connecting rod. I know very little about motors, so you critics, please be easy on me! I do know that before deciding to sign for, and run the motor, I checked the run out on the crankshaft at the end face where the primary clutch slides on, and it was less than .0005", so I felt it did not get bent in the fall. I would like to conclue this post by saying that BRP and Can-am have been working with us, to our satisfaction, on replacing the damaged moter, even though the damage was sustained by a third party (the shipper). IMO, their main shortfall in this whole fiasco was in shipping a new engine from Canada to San Diego, basically in a cardboard box. Wait until they get a hold of my badass shipping crate! Someone in shipping is gonna get a "sit down", and it won't be pretty.
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crazywatson
#13 - UTVUnderground Approved
Nice crate I would ask for the new engine to be shipped back in it.
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badassmav
Well-Known Member
Thanks. I'm one step ahead of them.
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