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Title: The golf cart is back with a new suspension Post by: Chevy1500z71 on March 31, 2010, 01:52:38 PM most of the older members have probably seen the golf cart, i built it about 3 or 4 years ago and it has worked trouble free with a modified stock leaf sprung suspension for years. to give a quick rundown of what it is, its a 2000 ez-go that i got for free with a rotax 503 snowmobile engine making around 50hp, its still using stock 13:1 ratio rear gears with welded spider gears which limits its top speed to around 45-50mph do to very tall ratio gears, its got a tuned pipe out of later model sled which is great because ski-doos tuned pipes are generally the best around for these motors, i was lucky to find one and actualy get it to fit. the whole thing is just kinda mad max looking, the fenders are cut up in the front to make them look the way i want, its got a home made dash with a tach. the paint is beet to hell and its covered in stickers.
the modified stock swingarm i was using finaly broke last time i took it to the yatch club, and being that iv done literally no maintenance on this thing in 3 or 4 years its time for a major overhaul. first thing was to pull the motor and freshen it up, i have a set of new pistons and rings coming in a few days and my brother is porting it(hes pretty good with the porting, not just a fluff and buff, the real deal) and we built a whole new suspension system for it. what it used to have was basically a 1 link, it had a swing arm with one big mounting point on the front and the rear was supported by leaf springs, it worked like a swingarm but the one mounting point allowed it to articulate like a truck, not really what i want since i want it to stay stable when it gets sideways. the new setup is a regular swing arm with 2 heim joints locating it, i gusseted the frame to take the extra twisting force and instead of just mounting the shocks directly to the swing arm we finally came up with the idea to knock off the rear link design like what an atv uses. after drawing up some simple designes on autocad to see what length to make the link arms we decided on a setup that yeilds around 11" of suspension travel which is 3x what it had, if i would have mounted the shock directly i would have only gotten 4" of travel. the shocks are from a polaris sportsman, i got them for 20 bucks off of ebay and boy did they clean up nice. all the metal was free, stole it all from my welding class, i payed my $75 materials fee for the class so i guess thats the total cost. on to the pictures. out with the old stuff (http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j139/kawasaki400racer/IMG_2011.jpg) some porting and matching (http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j139/kawasaki400racer/IMG_2077.jpg) (http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j139/kawasaki400racer/IMG_2079-1.jpg) (http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j139/kawasaki400racer/IMG_2078.jpg) the new setup all painted (http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j139/kawasaki400racer/IMG_2085-1.jpg) (http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j139/kawasaki400racer/IMG_2084-3.jpg) (http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j139/kawasaki400racer/IMG_2082-2.jpg) (http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j139/kawasaki400racer/IMG_2081-2.jpg) new stance, it has about 3" of droop once you get 2 people on it (http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j139/kawasaki400racer/IMG_2080-1.jpg) (http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j139/kawasaki400racer/IMG_2087.jpg) the link arms (http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j139/kawasaki400racer/IMG_2086-1.jpg) full droop (http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d53/kfx400rob/IMG_2073.jpg) fully compressed (http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d53/kfx400rob/IMG_2074.jpg) |