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AWD Conversion ForumThis forum is to help with the recent advent of new AWD conversions. Got a question? Ask it here. Got an answer? Drop the knowledge here
I notice when you did a test fitment you had raised your wheel height to where it would be as if the car was sitting on the ground. Hopefully if your current location works. The angle of the rear axle is kinda off though.
I just used a pole jack, which doesn't fully simulate what would be correct ride hight, but it does give me some idea of where things will be. It's the angle of the rear axles that worry me the most at this point. It's one of those trial and error things. I'm just going to go with it and if it doesn't work, then I will make drastic changes.
I just used a pole jack, which doesn't fully simulate what would be correct ride hight, but it does give me some idea of where things will be. It's the angle of the rear axles that worry me the most at this point. It's one of those trial and error things. I'm just going to go with it and if it doesn't work, then I will make drastic changes.
O.k.
Now let's take a few egs and scramble them,
Add some bacon,
Keep scrambling,
Add some salt
Fire it all up and keep scrambling.
Now let's repeat the same recipe without salt...
What do we got?
Again bloody scrambled eggs with bacon!
Or else what others have done and fail, there is no way to work for you, if you keep the same ingredients.
So hungry, and sorry for the irony.
All Civic AWD swaps, even the most acclaimed, as per my perspective, fail in that very same point you are right now. All have broken axles at a point, claiming are week, we'll guess what I think.
Bullshit, mostly axle break only if twisted or mounted improperly. Axles are made from special (spring?) steel alloy, with different grain longitude and orientation, to withstand rotation, but not bending!
Now looking from this side of the yard, how many suspension Springs you have seen broken by now?
It is time to take the Crv beam and custom fab it to fit in there. Remove the spotwelds of the car beam as no way to have the axles working with that angle, and pass thru the beam in the middle.
As I mentioned my estimation already, perfect axles angle is about 3-5 degree in any direction, or differential placed in front of wheels center about an inch. Anything further than that and the axles tend to flex excessively when suspension hit flexed in hard bump.
With the axles placed, Compress fully one side of the wheels and you will hit the shaft of the axle in the CV rear walls.
Shortening the main shaft is way more dangerous, than remaking the CRV beam.
A rotational assembly needs perfect welding, roentgen (or whatever that's called now) inspection of the welds. and after all is OK a perfect balancing, As the power you are routing to the back it will require to withstand 100+ pounds of rotational torque, and far more x10 stress torque(engineers please correct me if I am way too wrong).
You have made already the set of TA's which is far more dangerous than making the Crv beam work.
Sorry to disagree with your methods.
But feel a little disappointed from the way this is turning.
1. Pretty sure axles break quite often even when in the "factory" positions. If this isn't true then companies like the Drive Shaft Shop are really pulling the wool over the public's eyes so to speak, and selling products that no body needs.
2. I am having a drive shaft shop inspect, shorten, and rebalance the CR-V driveline, so calm down. I'm not in my backyard putting a driveline together with a hacksaw, duct tape, and quarters.
3. Maybe you should put the effort into your own build instead of criticizing others' builds. Last time I saw your thread you had an engine in your back seat and a bunch of drawings. Go over engineer your own car, get it on the streets within the next decade, and then come back and tell everybody what they are doing wrong. I appreciate the info and suggestions, but DAMN... I'm building a car for me, not for anyone else. I learn as I go and what doesn't work can and will be fixed.
Now, back to scrambled eggs and bacon!!
The diff is bolted up and axles are now in. YES, I don't like the angle that I am seeing the axles in right now. YES, I know they were designed to be strait from the diff to the wheel bearings, BUT I don't care. This is stage one of this project and I want to see what it's limitations are. I also installed the locker and finished up the wiring. So far it is fully functional, but there is also no driveline to connect the power train to the diff, so there is no way to really tell how well it is working at this point. With it off the rear wheels turn in opposite directions and with it on the wheels turn in the same direction.
I've had the Civic on the ground and driven it a few times now with no funky noises, sounds, or vibrations. Again, at this point the Civic is still only FWD. There is no power being put to the rear, so I am only dragging around the rear diff and axles. This may all change once the driveline is hooked up, but for right now things are looking good. I like how high I was able to get the diff up into the fuel tank area. I have plenty of ground clearance, which was one of my goals. Another thing that bothers me about the angle of the axles though, is that the diff is still lower than the wheel bearings. If I raise the diff up any more, this will throw the angle of driveline off. So even if I had the diff backed up all the way, the axles still wouldn't be straight due to the diff not being high enough. Any of that making sense? Anyways, how about some pics??
Locker mounted driver's side front of fuel tank area.
Yes, having my doubts too...
Look, no hands!!
Look at all that ground clearance
HAHAHA
A rear diff in the Civic! Awesome.
Oh those axle angles...
Surprised how much room there is between the strut and axle.
Plenty of room if I need to move the diff back further.
Next step is to make the mount for the center bearing on the driveline. Then it's off to the shop to get shortened. Stay tuned...
I guess I should have clarified. The axles are straight in factory AWD Civics and CR-Vs. That's not the case with my set-up for now. And that's right tony, trial and error.
I guess I should have clarified. The axles are straight in factory AWD Civics and CR-Vs. That's not the case with my set-up for now. And that's right tony, trial and error.
Peace man,
I'm not the guy with the deepest pockets at the moment because of the cash for my project went in to a XC70 Volvo.
missing the Civic but man I love that Swedish tank...
Apart getting the pieces here is not an easy task with 750$ monthly incomes, so to go on the rush is no good if I want to keep the family happy with at least bacon and eggs.
Will be retaking the civic next summer, I really have no rush to do it in a trial error way, so first do my errors on a 3D, then is much easier to not have any error in the workshop.
Few more hours with the mouse, keyboard and screens, pays out at the end, note I can spend only 100 bucks every month by sacrificing my breakfast, if I want to keep with my addictions.
Guess you also would be more cautious with the steps under my circumstances. My sorry *** crowds other side of the globe so is my business to deal with adversary hometown conditions. Not offended, not intended to offend, maybe was a bit too harsh, but at least these were honest thoughts at the moment, maybe felt bit more envy, jealousy or whatever.
Sometimes when you are laying down terrified, one of those mysterious kicks in the seat parts , is just the right input torque amount to lift you up and force you run quicker than ever.
This was the excuse.
So lets stick on the build.
Looking the pictures, you can still move the diff back about 1 inch.
Clearance look good, but is still a little low, per my calculation (again on paper) axles could lay about an inch above the anchor point for the LCA's, that's nearly another inch and a half up on the diff. only do not see if the beam will be close.
By the way next week will have my RTSI tank sand blasted and coated.
then Pump, wiring, piping so on.
I am still on the research for proper fasteners, as do not want excessive rust on.
And yes I have bought an entire spare rear floor to play on dry with, before anything goes wrong.
Hey I hear ya! A lot of time and money has to be invested in a project like this. Believe me, I started with a budget that I had in mind and I have gone over that in a hurry. With only a handful of these conversions ever done, it's hard to say exactly how long it will take and how much money it will take to complete. I've already run into a couple of issues that I did not foresee, but I guess that was to be expected. I think even if I had sat down, planed, drew everything out on paper that I would still run into issues that I couldn't have known that I would run into. It also would have taken me a hell of a lot longer to get started. So I said, F IT!!" and just went for it. I'm hoping that I can 1) complete this project, 2) it will be successful, and 3) I do not spend ungodly amounts of money in the process. It is easy to get discouraged and give up on something like this. I don't know how many times I have looked at the Civic and asked myself, "What the hell did I get myself into?" But I am exactly at a point right now that I need to be. The point where I have gone too far to turn back. SO, moving forward is my only option and continuing this thread keeps my eye on the prize. Sorry for the rant . Really don't have any new pics of the project, so I will just leave with a pic of the Civic. Let's not forget what we are working on here...
Don't overspend and over-complicate something before you give it a go or the project will likely never leave the ground. I'm guilty of that. I'm sure anyone who has did these AWD swaps ran into similar issues but it wasn't documented like yours so we will not hear about them. However, I do wish EPIC tuning or youtube's (Justin Sane) would post a run down of their setup to show some different ways to go about this conversion.
Thank you Arizona for taking away our e85! That's right, Arizona has changed Flex-Fuel and it is now only going to have around 54% ethanol in it. I had been hearing some talk about this happening, and they finally made it happen. There goes all that gobs of boost we were able to make from cheap fuel. From what I am hearing now everyone is moving to a fuel by Torco called t85 to tune with. It's actually supposed to be a little better and much more consistent as far as the percentage of ethanol it has. But that stuff is $6.00 a gallon and you can't get it at the pump. It only comes in a 5 gallon pail or 55 gallon drum, and I haven't found anyone who delivers it. E85 was so cheap ($1.79 earlier this year) and sure it wasn't at a lot of pumps, but it was available at some. I guess with the Flex-Fuel sensor I can mix the pump e85 (now e54) with the t85 and still get pretty good performance. I'll just run straight t85 at the track or when I feel like ballin out and spending $90 to fill up my tank. Anyways, gone are the days of cheap, high boosting, pump gas. Just have to adapt and move on.
Ya, I don't know. I guess the new blend raises the vapor pressure. Sucks! Just went to the pump yesterday, and they are still calling it "E85" so either they are either false advertising, or still have actual 85% ethanol in their fuel. I won't know for sure until I run it through my FF sensor.
Now that the rear diff is in place and things seem to be working properly, it was time to tackle the driveline. I went to a local driveshaft shop and talked to them about shortening the driveline. They told me to measure from the center bearing mount to the flange off of the transfer case. Well I don't have a center bearing mount, so I had to make one before I could shorten the driveline. This makes it difficult to keep the driveline straight and level when the transfer case is in the way. Again, I just had to go for it and if I need to change it later, I will do so.
I mounted the diff pretty high, which allows me to tuck the driveline high up into the tunnel. In oder to this though, the center bearing needs to be mounted at a slant. I was able to make one mount coming right off of the frame of the Civic, but the other one has to come off of the body at the top of the tunnel. I decided to take two plates and "sandwich" the body much like I did with the rear mounts for the fuel cell. Once the plate is in place I could build a tab coming off of it for the other mount.
Tried to get as close to one side as possible to give room for the exhaust
Plate welded to the frame to disperse any torque energy
Top tab for top of tunnel, bottom tab for the frame
Took a bit of tweaking to get right
Poked holes, bolts just the right length
Last bit of moving around before it is permanent
Tab welded to the plate, plate welded to the frame
Sandwich plate with tab welded on
Still had to tweak the tabs once they were welded in
Center bearing mounted!!
About 6" that need to come off
Just under 38" from center bearing to flange
Top of the sandwich in the cab
Center bearing is just under the E-brake handle
The sandwich plates
Just sprayed them with underbody coating
Hope I provided enough pics for y'all. Now that I have the measurements, I can drop the driveline off at the driveshaft shop to get shortened. Gonna have all 4 wheels spinning soon!!
How much torque are those tabs going to see? I'll have to go look under my CRV at how mine is mounted for comparison just because I'm curious. Looks like you're getting close. Must be getting excited now!
Shouldn't really see much tq at all. I just wanted to make sure it wasn't going to fall off of the car. So close and so excited!! The driveshaft shop said it would only take them a couple of days to shorten and balance the driveline. Step-by-step, ooh baby! Gonna get.... UGH, where the **** did that come from??
Got the driveline back. Thanks to the guys over at Phoenix Rack and Axle for helping me out and making quick work of it. The driveline has been shortened, balanced, and the dinky little u-joints have been replaced. I'll get this thing installed and we will finally see what we've got...
It makes navigating so damn hard. But its only been on this last page so I guess its ok.
Nice progress.
Ya, I don't know what the deal is with that. It's just how they come up. They've been huge like that for me on all of the pages though, not just this one. I don't know how to change it either. Sorry, and thanks.
Re: Not Another AWD Civic Project!!!
. Really don't have any new pics of the project, so I will just leave with a pic of the Civic. Let's not forget what we are working on here...
That's right, Arizona has changed Flex-Fuel and it is now only going to have around 54% ethanol in it. I had been hearing some talk about this happening, and they finally made it happen. There goes all that gobs of boost we were able to make from cheap fuel. From what I am hearing now everyone is moving to a fuel by Torco called t85 to tune with. It's actually supposed to be a little better and much more consistent as far as the percentage of ethanol it has. But that stuff is $6.00 a gallon and you can't get it at the pump. It only comes in a 5 gallon pail or 55 gallon drum, and I haven't found anyone who delivers it. E85 was so cheap ($1.79 earlier this year) and sure it wasn't at a lot of pumps, but it was available at some. I guess with the Flex-Fuel sensor I can mix the pump e85 (now e54) with the t85 and still get pretty good performance. I'll just run straight t85 at the track or when I feel like ballin out and spending $90 to fill up my tank. 
