Just a small update. I updated Post #14 to warn people of it, but this buggy comes with
no gearbox oil from factory! So it's been driving for 56 miles (that's the odometer reading) with no gearbox oil! AWESOME!
Not a fun find. This week we replaced the gearbox oil 4 times so far with minor driving to let the oil toss around the gearbox. It's been coming out dirty and is lightening up. It's dirty in there. There's tiny grains (sand or smaller) and some may be metal. I shine a light very close to the oil to make out anything shiny, almost none. Unless metal can turn black (severe oil-less friction?) it's just very dirty. It goes in gear with no issues and there's no slipping.
We did other tweaks like adjusted the idle down a bit and it really idles a lot better. The lights are just wires that needed to be screw tightened, yada. No gearbox grinding at all anymore. Obviously no gearbox oil is a problem haha..
I have enough left to change it 8 more times.. Just rinse and repeating changing the gearbox oil until it's clear as honey. Then I'll take it apart and have a look at the gears.
The
shaking is still pretty irritating. The whole dashboard is shaking like crazy and the steering wheel gets it the worst. The exhaust is vibrating pretty hard as normal. It's clamped directly to the frame, metal to metal. The inside of the bracket has about 1mm of rubber around it but where it attaches has zero absorbtion.
Has anyone else had an exhaust clamp like this and found a way to tame down the vibrations?
Here's the clamp:
Here's how it sits attached to the buggy:
There's room for a bigger bolt at the top and I think putting in some (rubber? silicone? other?) high thermal tolerant shock absorbing material on it where the clamp bolts in it will dampen it, at least a small amount.
Any other ideas? Different clamp? Hire a firefighter to sit on it?