Flatlands #1

Hardline Crawlers - Rock Bouncer Builds, Tech & Off-Road Trail Talk

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Loved reading this thread again.

Makes me realize how bad of a fabricator I am, really :D

Beautiful work, and I'm glad to see it used as it should be :smoke:
 
Dwalk said:
Awesome buggy, very talented Fabricator.

Thanks man, it was a blast riding with you this weekend. And thanks again for showing us around HPO, we would have never found all that stuff with my navigation and Rays driving :rolf:
 
So i lost second gear in the tranny (th350)......and yep the hardened intermediate sprag blew to pieces lol. So I bought a new direct drum that has been fitted with the larger 36 element hardened sprag and ordered a new piston that has been machined to accept an extra friction and steel. Hopefully this will help keep the trans together.
 

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I had the same failure on my th350. I was going to go the same route with a 36 element sprag but ED at PTC recomend I go with a diode instead. I had never heard of it but so far so good. My guess is you will be fine.
 
While the trans is out figured it was time to upgrade a couple things. Decided to drop in one of these Improved Racing oil pan baffle systems as well as upgrade my two tranny coolers to these Improved Racing coolers....which are backed by 10" fans.
 

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old steel oil baffle out...new trap door baffle trey in. Will see how much this helps...figure it cant hurt.
 

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GREAT built...will reference some of the stuff you've done as I start my Single Seat buggy...
 
Well after getting ****ed around for a month with a local trans builder I finally did what I should have done in the very beginning and called Ed at PTC. Told him what my buggy specs were and what I wanted and seven business days later it was delivered! Big THANK YOU to PTC and Ed for the customer service and understanding what guys like us do with our rigs. Now to get this all back together.
 

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Love this rig Ray! Great job Dylan! It looks and performs great! It rides soooo nice!

I need some panels, console reworked, and a re-wire!
 
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Update to the build...I got tired of having to pull off the trail to let the buggy cool on long rides and on hard beat downs, so Dillion called up CBR and had them build a custom radiator to fit the rear of the buggy. This should take care of the cooling issues....and allow me to put a real motor in this thing one day lol.
 

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I agree. I was telling him the other day, when my steering gets hot, I’ll just pull up next to him.
 
So just a little update...not long after the install of the new radiator (which is awesome) I proceeded to pretty much destroy my motor...#6 piston broke and #5 rod broke in half causing two nice holes in my aluminum block along with some other damage. In the pics you can see all the parts that were on top of the windage tray when we dropped it along with a pic of the driver head lol. This motor has always had lower oil pressure than id like and we knew it was suspect when we put it in but money was tight after just building the buggy and I was just trying to get it on the trail.. so the outcome wasn't surprising.
 

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So I found another pull out from a 2001 Firebird Firehawk that only had 58k miles on it and looked really clean. Unfortunately the motor was out when I bought it so I didnt get to hear it run.....last time I will ever do that. We put the motor in the buggy and after 15mins of run time you could hear the bearings in it squealing. Pulled the motor out, tore it down and sure enough the cam bearings were toast and there was evidence that the motor had been super hot in the past.
 

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So at this point Im pretty exhausted with it and just decided to have it built all brand new. The motor went to the builder and the only thing we re-used was the block and the crank... my 243 heads went to Texas Speed for their 2.5 CNC port job and bigger valves. I should get the motor back this week so I hope to have a report soon.

Block bored .005 over
Block decked .007
Crank polished
Eagle forged rods
Wiesco 2618 forged pistons
rotating assembly balanced
New rockers with upgraded trunions
Morel lifters
Melling high flow/high volume pump
Billet double row timing chain
BTR stage 2 cam
TSP heads milled .015 with dual springs and chromo rods
 

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Bummer on scattering the old motor. True LS aluminum block motors have a cool factor to me so nice to see you going that route. Will be interesting to see how the cam and head work helps. Any compression change?
 
Bummer on scattering the old motor. True LS aluminum block motors have a cool factor to me so nice to see you going that route. Will be interesting to see how the cam and head work helps. Any compression change?


So can you bore an aluminum LS block like you would a cast block? Sorry for my ignorance, but I am not a motor guru unfortunately.
 
Bummer on scattering the old motor. True LS aluminum block motors have a cool factor to me so nice to see you going that route. Will be interesting to see how the cam and head work helps. Any compression change?

Yeah should get a bump in compression...will know the number when I learn what thickness head gasket the builder used.
 
So can you bore an aluminum LS block like you would a cast block? Sorry for my ignorance, but I am not a motor guru unfortunately.
I am no motor guru either. Google says early LS1s have paper thin lingers, later ones like Ray has are as he stated. LS2 and beyond have a different configuration and allow for more. Then there is lots of potential if someone got into boring and resleaving.
 
Yeah should get a bump in compression...will know the number when I learn what thickness head gasket the builder used.
Yeah, I was curious if he was going to make up with a larger gasket and if not what it might be.

We are looking to plan some rides so let me know if yall get some in mind.
 
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