86 club car engine swap. What engine?

[geoffisacnt]

im picking up an 86 club car...gas. it has no engine. but the rear axle is there. im getting the cart for 225. so my understanding from what ive read on this forum is that i can mount a snowmobile engine backwards (so engine pulley and axle pulley line up) and it will work? is this correct?

[Springbok]

Not sure about the snowmobile idea but here's a thread where one of our guys put a 13hp clone into his 1986 gas Club Car. Seemed to work out pretty well:

http://www.buggiesgonewild.com/lifte...-lift-25s.html

Post up some pics when you can.

[geoffisacnt]

yea. thats kind of what i was thinking...ive seen the snowmobile setup in other carts....just wasnt sure about the club car...looks pretty straight forwards. same basic set up as running that clone motor, as far as setting it up...hopefully it works out as straight forward as it looks

[Springbok]

Keep in mind that the motor in your Club Car was a counter-clockwise motor, so any motor you transplant into it will need to spin that direction.

[geoffisacnt]

arent most motors ccw?

[invalidsession]

Originally Posted by geoffisacnt

arent most motors ccw?

Not to the best of my knowledge they aren't. When viewed from the crankshaft, most engines are CW rotation. This simplifies the drive to the transmission on a gearbox equipped vehicle (car etc) and thus requires only one counter rotating gear to provide reverse. In a non unitary application such as a cart for example; there is only one forward and one reverse gear so the situation is much simplified. I must admit however that this does lead to some head scratching as to why opposite rotations still exist and why CC in particular chose to change the rotation of their motors in 1996. I don't see any economical sense in this. The tooling, production etc was all in place so why ? I've yet to see a sensible explanation but I suspect there is one.
Anyone got a clue ?


Chris.

[geoffisacnt]

I talked to the kid with the engine. He said when looking at the crank it spins ccw. So my idea is I will mount the engine the correct way. The driven clutch will go on a jack shaft. Then I will remove the cart driven pully and weld on a sprocket hub to the shaft in its place. So in my mind this will work. Now the only question is how I am going to gear it. I'm thinking the rear end needs something small like an 11t. So if I did 11-11 from the jack shaft to rear end that will be 1-1 so it should make the drive as if the engine were directly mounted to the rear end. Anyone see any issues with this?

[invalidsession]

Originally Posted by geoffisacnt

I talked to the kid with the engine. He said when looking at the crank it spins ccw. So my idea is I will mount the engine the correct way. The driven clutch will go on a jack shaft. Then I will remove the cart driven pully and weld on a sprocket hub to the shaft in its place. So in my mind this will work. Now the only question is how I am going to gear it. I'm thinking the rear end needs something small like an 11t. So if I did 11-11 from the jack shaft to rear end that will be 1-1 so it should make the drive as if the engine were directly mounted to the rear end. Anyone see any issues with this?

It would be a massive help knowing what RPM's and what type of motor you are considering. If I were you, I'd be in the "Big Block" section of this site. You might be running into potential issues with the rear end not being able to handle the additional HP. Also, where is "the kid" viewing the crank from ? 95 % of all engines are viewed from from the accessory side of the motor and not the transmission side as most folks assume. To the best of my knowledge, only Honda ran a CCW engine and even they switched in the 2000 model year. No reason as to why CCW engines wouldn't work, they do! but it's simply a world standard I suppose to standardise things. . In the late 70's, Yamaha reversed the rotation of the XS1100 shaft drive motor. The simple reason was that the shaft driven bike had a tendency to rise at the rear under hard acceleration and thus lose drive at the rear tire. Yamaha simply reversed the direction of rotation and thus created a classic that emulated a chain drive which lifted the front end and thus moved the weight rearward under acceleration to provide traction. While I can't imagine a puny 9.5 HP CC motor motor needing additional rear end grip I have to suppose that this may be a somewhat plausible explanation as to why CC changed over in 1996.


Chris.