I started this project last July and finished the driveline last weekend. Its a complete CRV driveline conversion. B20 mated to a cable link manual 4wd transmission, shortened CRV driveshaft, CRV rear differential, hybrid CRV/Civic wagon rear axles, and hybrid stock sol/Civic wagon trailing arms. Installed a fuel cell in the trunk to replace the stock tank and fabricated a spare tire mount in the trunk lid figguring the spare tire well would have to be cut to make room for the differential. Next steps are to convert the rear drums to disks, strip the interior, cage it, paint it then head off to the "local" rally circut. Somewhere in there I'll throw in a GSR head swap and then after a year of competition I plan on installing a turbo.

Questions and comments welcome!






















Modified by RallySol at 6:38 AM 11/9/2006


Modified by RallySol at 6:29 PM 10/6/2008

 

Pretty cool.

Hows it drive?

Love the spare.

 

haha how come del solies get all the cool swaps

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by amy &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">haha how come del solies get all the cool swaps</TD></TR></TABLE>

They need to be made cool some how.

 

curious how it drives, how much power is possible with the setup, and the clearance with the transfer case mounted in the engine bay.

 

So how much do you think it will cost to duplicate? Also about how many hours?

Also how large do you think the exhaust can be?

 

wow, never thought i would see on of these again. i thought it would have ended with the Braille Auto Integra, please post more pics, if you have them. this looks like another sick H-T project and good luck with its completion.

 

thats one crazy car man you arent that far from santa cruz either

 

very cool and looks like it wasnt all that bad to do, my only concern is those pencils for axles in the rear and if i remeber the realtime is only 4wd till like 20mph or so , but give us some insight on how it drives and handles

 

How does it drive? I've never driven an awd car before, just fwd and rwd cars. Its very different, but I'm diggin' it big time. It doesn't push as much through the corners, little light braking on entry to set it then power all the way through. Its like a fwd on entry then rwd on apex and exit. It feels a bit heavier, which is to be expected. I think I've added a good 150 pounds to the car. I'm going to try to hit up one of the truck scales this week to find out how much it weighs in commuter/work trim. The transmission ends up being rather short with the smaller tire size. Its nice in some respects and not so great in others. I crunched a few numbers and came up with this chart to illustrate the differences in ratios between the two SOHC transmissions and the CRV tranny. I didn't have ratios for a DOHC transmission so they're not present.


I don't really know how much power is possible, I guess that would depend on what people in the CRV community have already done. I believe the weakest point to be the CRV's rear inboard CV joints. They're tiny. I'm afraid I'll snap them if I try to do a four wheel burnout with sticky tires on pavement.

Clearance. Lots of clearance. Inches and Inches of clearance, its just awsome how well the transmission and transfercase fit in the engine bay. The cat is hanging in the stock location in the pic below, but you can see how much clearance the transfercase output has from the front crossmember and steering rack.



I think I'm probably $4500 in it as far as parts are conserned. Manual 4wd CRV transmissions are hard to come by, I went to HAP for mine as well as all the other CRV bits. I think it was $1100 out the door for the transmission and transfercase, $850 for the rear diff, $250 for the drive shaft and about $100 each for the rear axles.

If I did this sort of thing for a living, instead of trying to fit it in around an 8-5 job, it probably could have been done in a week if all the parts and metal stock were available. I couldn't source the upper engine bracket for the B series so I ended up fabbing the three main mounts. Unfortunately in doing so I had to space the two lower mounts so the engine and transmission tilt forward about an inch more than it should. I probably spent 5 or 6 hours on them, which I could have saved if the proper brackets were available








Right now the exhaust on the car is 2.25" and having it tucked up above the bottom of the frame rails leaves about an 1/8" space between the body on one side and the carrier bearing bracket on the other. If ground clearance wasn't that big of an issue, I suppose you could use 2.5 or -maybe- 3", but it would be -really- tight.

Braille Auto Integra? I can't say that I've ever heard of that car. Wouldn't happen to have any info or linkage available, would you?

Under the hood:


The interior:




Modified by RallySol at 6:40 AM 11/9/2006

 

Yeah, about that RT4WD thing... Apparently since the differential I have has been sitting dry for god knows how long, it doesn't completely disengage like its supposed to. It behaves more like a viscous coupling. When the front axles slip, it does lock up the clutch, so it kind of operates like its supposed to. For a while I thought that this was a bad thing, but then I realized that its better this way for the sort of racing I want to do. So I'm going to leave it be.

The way its supposed to work goes something like this. There are two pumps, one driven by the input comming from the front of the car and the other driven by the pinion in the differential itself. Inbetween these two pumps is a wet clutch pack. When the input from the front is more than equal to that of the rear, when the front tires slip and spin faster than the rear, the clutch pack locks up and you have 4wd. This works in reverse as well. When the front and rear pumps are equal, the clutchpack is supposed to unlock and when there is no pressure, when the car isn't moving, then its supposed to be completely free. Its not speed sensitive, its slip sensitive. Honda did this because apparently it boosts gas mileage when the clutchpack isn't locked up.

 

How did you mount rear differential?

 

Welded a piece of angle iron between the fram rails for the top mount and the rear mount is a piece of bar stock welded to another piece of angle iron.



I'll have to take a pic of the rear mount sometime today since I haven't taken one yet.


Modified by RallySol at 6:40 AM 11/9/2006

 

Any differences in the wheelbase between the crv and the sol? did you have to modify the driveshaft?

 

wow this is one sick *** project. i cant imagine how many hours you have put into this thing. Keep up the good work and when its ready tell us all when you bring it out to a show.

 

I did have to have the driveshaft shortened to 69 7/8" I think it was, about 10" shorter than a stock CRV driveshaft. I had it done by Driveline Services in San Leandro. Great guys and incredibly helpful, I'd recommend them to anyone.

I probably won't take it to a show until after its been painted. Looks all very POS-like right now.