Crazy_Carl's Wheel Horse Mud Rat [2018 Build-Off Entry]

Nice! They do look good all painted up!

Case halves looking good! Never painted a trans myself.

Good luck on the reassembly.

Thanks for the compliments everyone.  It lets me know that I'm on the right track and keeps me motivated.

As planned I assembled the transaxle today.  Assembly was a breeze.  With the new spring pushing against the detent balls the shift action in it feels great.  With the new seals it shouldn't leak either.  Nothing binds or seems out of the ordinary except for the locked differential lol.





I have a little touch up paint to do, but I think I'm going to leave the shifter the way it is to fit the rat rod theme.  I'm waiting on wheels and tires, but I can still bolt this and other body pieces to the frame and start mocking up the chassis.

Needs some racing stripes!

if you do decide to paint the shifter, silver to match the wheels mi9ght look good?

Looks great Carl. That is quite the square trans.

Looks good, don't blow the locker tho!

I've ordered two sets of front rims for mud rat.  The first set I got a good deal on, but I thought they were too narrow for the SunF 20x7-8 tires so I had my dad take them to the farm to store them.  I ordered a more expensive set of wider rims for the front.  The tires and the wider rims showed up today.  The tires look really narrow and it looks like the first set I bought will work better.  Do you guys think these tires would look goofy on the wide rim?  I think so.  What do you guys think of the silver color for the rims?





@AllisKidD21 @Double W Cross Ranch Remember the top speed calculator I made.  I showed it to my uncle the MIT graduate and he said the math checked out.  Right now I'm working with him and my engineer brother researching and developing an ackerman angle calcuator.  You basically would input your kingpin center to center distance, your wheelbase and desired turning radius at full lock and it would give you the steering arm angle(ackerman angle) and your tie rod length.  The more I researched this the more I realized how important it is. Thanks for getting me thinking about this AllisKidD21. As you turn the wheels sharper the inside steering tire needs to be towed out more to turn sharper because the outside and inside tires are tracking on different radii.

The tires might look abit "stretched " but they could also end up fitting parallel to the rims like most atv steering tires do.

That's a good point about how atv steer tires are mounted, but I grabbed the other set of rims.  I think it looks better.  There is a valve stem in this rim so I want to mount the tire up before it gets powder coated so I know it will work.

Great idea about the Ackerman angle calculator Carl! It'd be super neat if you made it work! Handy to have for sure, haha.

Yeah those rims look good! BTW, could you calculate the top speed I would have if I took that ungoverned engine to 5k rpm with a 5" rear pulley and a 6" front pulley with an 8:1 gear reduction? Cause that's what I ran before, and I couldn't get over 23 MPH.

I mounted it up. Pretty easy to do and I think it looks good, and will look even better once the rims are powder coated.





@Double W Cross Ranch With those pulleys your top speed should have been 52 mph. I think you were getting some belt slip or were you using deck style pulleys where the belt rides deep in the groove? That would decrease the actual pulley size for this calculation quite a bit.

Love the "Black Box" look of the tranny!

Hey Carl, I got the same tires for my front. I was able to put them on a wider rim pretty easy. I was very pleased how easy they were to work with.

@mightyraze Oh my god I'm an idiot. That picture has been your avatar all this time. I like the look of your wider rims better so I'm going with that. Man I didn't have to go through all that trouble of getting one mounted on a narrow rim buts thanks for saving me the trouble of trying one on a wider rim before I get them powder coated. I was going to do that tomorrow.

Yeah, when I installed them, I used a ratchet strap and they just widened up on the rim and set. Note how wide the bead wall is on the wide rim. I had the same. It just set right up.

Yeah Carl that's pretty much what I was going off of lol

You know how a lot of rat rods have sketchy cracked welds if they are poorly homemade by someone?  Well today I got around to getting the frame cleaned up.  I took off the battery holder to allow me to slide the OHV motor back.  I was wire brushing the part of the frame where the transaxle mounts and this thing is CRACKZILLA!  Buyer beware if you're buying an old Wheel Horse.



I promptly welded up the cracks on both sides and ground the welds down.  I thought it came out pretty good for how rusty the metal was.  Once I get the front end done I'll know if I need to lift it or not in the rear.  At that time I will be adding gussets and reinforcing this part of the frame.

Be a good place to keep an eye on in the future too.

Ooh, yeah might wanna watch those things for a while.

Nice old rusty frames.... I can't stand rust on my machines but it always feeds on any bare surface or weak paint ....

biggasmowers wrote:

Nice old rusty frames.... I can't stand rust on my machines but it always feeds on any bare surface or weak paint ....

Everything you say I want to make a reference to Cars.  Wierd thing is I haven't seen that movie since I was 4 lol.  Don't know how I remember so much about it.

Lol Disney stays with ya for sure! One of my weird older friends still sings songs from very small child movies...

Those welds should do it tho , what kind of welder do you use carl?

It's a TIG.

Okay. I am extremely jealous right now

So today I started getting the chassis mocked up.  I'm looking at things like wheelbase and motor placement.  There's plenty of room for suspension up front.  Steering will be a challenge but I have a couple of ideas.  I have it blocked up pretty close to what ride height will be with the back tires on.  I'm pretty happy how it sits.





Do 196CC predator exhaust ports ordinarily look like this?  This kohler one looks factory ported and a short little cast iron manifold goes between it and the muffler.