Put a couple hours into it today. Basic strip and chop session.
original full quad frame rough mockup showed a couple ways to hook into the chassis and keep the engine mounts. I soon realized there'd be no good way to pull the engine out easily.
Keeping engine access in mind i think the best way to go is to weld in a cross bar for the top front mount tabs and add a second cross bar pretty high up with a bolt-in "H" mounting bracket for the rear top engine mounts.
At the bottom, i think running a pair of my lovely 2x2 1/4 wall tubes straight back under the original quad frame is my best bet. heavy, but strong enough not to need a fully tied in frame around it all. I'll keep the quad's bottom frame and maybe bolt it to those tubes for ease of removal and possible chain tension adj. (that's a whole nother can o worms) The rear quad frame pieces would get cut out with that setup.
Mounting the engine--once that's all sorted is fairly easy, as are the swingarms. I've already cut otu my bars that triangulated the rear of the roll cage--thsoe will go back in once the trailing arm mounts are in.
I've set those at 25-inch tire height with about 1.5 to 2 inches of expected loaded sag change.
Biggest challenge is the jackshaft. the coupler i found would force the trailing arms to far outwards to get the clearance needed to run a chain forward to the pivot jackshaft. I'm thinking a very short run to a jackshaft mounted directly below the original drive sprocket with a dual sprocket like a crossfire. even that deal gets very close to the trailing arm sprocket.
shifter mech is going to be a solid shaft with rod ends off the old kick shifter (shortened and boxed) going to a lower 3/4 pivoting tall shifter handle.
and what to do with this hunk??? Labor of love that it was, thinking maybe just hook it to the sunl and that's half that buggy done. may have to jump onto that one to stir up some funding for this one.
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