Looking really good. Where did you get the headlights and do they work well with the stock wiring ?

Rob.

I saw that sticker on the cart and I couldn't help but get a pic of the tranny up there.

The light housings I got off ebay and they are h4 conversion housings. Look for the autopal h4 housings because they give a very clean cut off line.

Break in update:
The motor is very strong and gets to 60 in a hurry. I'm only revving to 5000 until the first oil change but there's more in it. I found myself doing 80 in short order with the freeway flier without realizing it.

There's a few problems so far:
-reverse gear is non-existent, if I pull on the stick hard enough i can get teeth to grind but no engagement. I tried multiple shifters and adjustments but it's no good. Going to call Rancho on monday.

-One of the idle circuits is plugged, car runs on 3 cylinders until I get on the mains or hammer the throttle. I will probably pull all the idle jets and clean them.

-There's an oil leak near the pulley on the crank that is leaking pretty bad. It's not the oil pump and I think it's coming from the crank even with the sand seal.

Great to see it is back up and running. Having to pull a transaxle back out would suck. Sounds like the shift fork needs adjustment. Pull you idle jets and adjustment screws and blow some carb cleaner thru the passage and jet. Do you have a breather box/vent hoses to vent the case?

I pulled the carb on the 1-2 side and cleaned it out and one of the idle jets was plugged. Got it back together and damn it's fast. I nearly rear ended a ferrari F430 cornering at speed. I'm sure he didn't expect to have a beetle barreling down on him out of nowhere either. Unfortunately when I turned arround the problem came back and I suspect its the idle jets again. I might have to do this a few time before its completely cleared out.

I do have a breather tower on the motor but right now its venting to atmosphere. Eventually it will be plumbed to the carbs on each side.

One thing I've never done was open up a tranny. How hard is it to adjust the shift fork for proper engagement? I'm guessing it'll have to come back out to do the adjustment as well.

Adjusting a shift fork is done in the build up case (holes are cut in the case to get to the guts). I would see if Rancho can do this for you.
This time to clean your idle jet/passage, pull the jet and the mix adjustment screw, then shoot some carb cleaner thru the passage and blow it out with compressed air. Maybe have a look in the bowls to make sure you don't have any trash in there.

Called Rancho today about the transmission woes and talked to Mike. He said that by the sound of it, the shift fork is fine but the tranny was assembled with the wrong reverse gear. Rancho is a stand up company and they are sending out an advance replacement transmission under warranty. It sucks that I'll have to pull everything again but at least it's being taken care of.

Yes it sux to have to pull it. But at least they are going to do you right.

Cleaned the 1-2 carb the proper way, completely pulled it apart, blew out all the passages, cleaned all the jets again, and cleaned a small amount of rust and corrosion I found. Got it all back together, in the car and took it out for a spin. Runs great, very strong from 3k-5.5k, and scoots to 60 so fast. Oil temps hover around 200-210 with the fan going, after the 10 mile 2000' climb to the summit. On the short side, the summit climb is half that distance but still 2000' and in 3rd gear temps were 190-200.

Now to fix the heavy oil leak at the crank snout. This thing is pissing oil past a sand seal even with vents on the case, and I'm not sure how to fix this. The race engine does the same thing, so whatever it is both engines have it. There are no leaks otherwise anywhere on the engine.

Here's a quickie start up video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj07EaMPPn0

sounds nice and strong ;)

take some video well ripping through the mtn.

Chris.

So I called Rancho late on monday, around 4:30 and the replacement tranny showed up at noon on thursday. How's that for speedy service?

I started the process of swapping the tranny out today. Got the motor out, bad tranny out, and the new tranny in before I ran out of light. Should get everything back in tomorrow morning. I'm going to change the oil, re-torque the heads, and check the valves while I'm at it.

Sounds really nice and starts great!
So they trust you to send back the faulty tranny after you removed it? :rolleyes: Good service 4sure from Rancho.

Weird thing on the pulley sealing issue on both engines. Curieus to know what that was in the end.

I've got 150-ish miles on the new motor and I noticed the oil leak has gotten smaller as I drive it. I haven't been nice during the break-in and floor it or engine brake where ever I can. If the leak stops on the street motor I know its a good indicator for the race motor, that's the hope anyways.

So I got the tranny swapped out and the motor back in over the last couple days. While the motor was out I took the pulley off and found the source of the leak. I hadn't used enough spacers on the sand seal pulley and it "kissed" the seal spinning it in the housing. It's a press in seal, so I pulled it back out, cleaned it back up, and bonded the seal in place with a thin coating of hondabond. I added a couple more spacers to the crank, put the seal back in and buttoned it all up again.

I discovered the hard way that the big HP1 filter doesn't have enough room to come off with the exhaust in place, so I changed it for a smaller filter. While I was at it I checked and the valve clearances, and re-torqued the heads. I checked the spark plugs since they were easy to reach and the mix looks spot on if not a hair rich.

We took it out for a spirited drive yesterday, and I gave it the beans whenever I could and no oil leaks that I could see. So now I'm going to double check the seal on the race car and I'll probably find a similar situation.

Well if it's not one thing it's another. New motor and tranny are too much fun, dangerously fun, but now the odometer in the speedo gave up the ghost. Apparently it didn't like the quick runs to 90mph so now it doesn't move at all or 10x too fast while the speedo reads just fine.

I also got a chance to refit the new front springs and dropped the overly stiff 300lb/in. for a pair of 200lb/in. Now it feels a lot more stable in the corners and rides a bit smoother in front, however mid corner bumps or aggressively driven banked corners put the tire up into the fender now. I still need to get adjustable front struts but they are being bumped for a set of front tires and an alignment.

Sounds like you are well on your way.
Need videos