88 Wagovan AWD

danwagonboy

I'm new to this group and just wanted to see if anyone can figure out what's going on with my ride. The pictures aren't too detailed, but if anyone could figure out the car's purpose, it would be here.

Mandalore88

um, transporting contraband across the border?

Dom

First question... R u from Santa Cruz?

danwagonboy

Yes I'm from Santa Cruz - that's why the Mystery Spot logo. The car was 2WD and it still is in a way, but the torque split between all four wheels is 50% of the engine power.

danwagonboy

OK here's the answer. Note that nothing has been modified in the front end and its emissions equipment are still functioning.

Charb

Need more pics!

rti intrac

Thats awesome! Defiantly need more pictures

Mister DA9

That's awesome. First thing I noticed was the mystery spot sticker too. Lol

danwagonboy

OK here are a few more pictures of the car and controls. The interior is still suffering from a break in a few years ago and needs some work. Both drivelines are automatic which slightly simplifies the shifter linkage. Two gas pedals drive cables to the stock front throttle and the rear throttle (via aircraft cable atm). They are close together and can be pressed simultaneously, or one at a time with the right foot. The brake pedal was shifted to the left slightly to avoid confusion between the gas and brake. The red switch on the dash toggles between front engine rpm, coolant temp and rear engine rpm, coolant temp. Rear oil pressure goes to the seatbelt indicator or rear hatch ajar light, i forget which.

Charb

Both motors dual point... love it lol

Good work man. I love stuff like this!

ScallyWag

Wow! :shock: :shock:

I bow before your fabrication skills and determination.... To merely have the idea "wouldn't a twin engined wagon be cool" is easy but to make it happen is heroic....

I wanna see some donut vids! 'Specially if you get that rear-steer going (or crab walking would be cool too - paralell parking made easy!)... ooh ooh or front engine in Reverse and rear in Drive burnout....

(Sorry - after all your time and effort the first thing I wanna see is you abuse the snot outta the car :twisted: :oops: )

EDwEFprts

wth...


i want to see videos too.

bam-bam

Hell yeah. I'm impressed, and I don't impress easily!

lil'ghost

wow!

danwagonboy

Thanks for the compliments - this project owes a lot of credit to the advise and help of my dad as well as to the people who said it couldn't(shouldn't) be done. I will try and get some video when the opportunity arises (i.e. video camera, gravel parking lot). The easiest way to spin the wheels is by putting the transmissions in opposite gears. Its also fairly easy to cause power oversteer from a start with the back engine - but because there is power on the front it seems stable. I have tons of pictures and a rough timeline of the build, which I will try to complete soon starting with this.

The blue wagon was my daily driver for years at this point, and the donor 1991 civic was purchased for $250 from some shady characters in Salinas.

danwagonboy

Sorry for not posting sooner, but have been busy as a college grad So I left off with the main chassis work undone. This work spanned roughly from May 08 to December 08 and entailed taking the carved up donor chassis, wagon chassis (work undocumented with pictures unfortunately) and eventually joining them together using brackets and stiffeners and lots of seam welds.

Trying to fit the donor subframe in the blue hole

danwagonboy

Connecting the rear bulkhead to the wheel well cutout, we wanted a strong connection here.

danwagonboy

The front frame connection looking from the rear to the front, left, the upper and lower tubes are supposed to provide a moment connection into the front frame, the upper tube terminating on the underseat stiffeners.

Haydz

That... is fucking ace.

kylerwho

this gives a full new meaning to awd. now if only you would boost both motors to 350hp then you would have bisi beat with a 700hp awd wagon.

nice fabrication procedures for keeping the chassis straight.

MrLewayne

MORE PICTURES

danwagonboy

Yes 700 hp would be fun but right now the setup is borderline maintainable. And its quick enough to be fun - as long as your getting power out of each engine. The latest project was to build a better (stiffer) throttle assembly which encouraged synchronizing the engines but at the same time have the flexibility to bias throttle front/back - with a single pedal. Problems with the dual pedal setup were primarily the flex in the housing, it arm and housing moved maybe 1/8-1/4" during full throttle, causing the effective lever arm to be reduced. This made it very difficult to synchronize the throttles. Boat synchronizers were ruled out because of expense, bulkiness/weight and cable connections (meant for marine engines). Several ideas had been brainstormed and it was decided rebuild the bracket and to build a sort of differential using miter gears.

danwagonboy

After installing the assembly it was clear that the throttle bias wasn't enough - ideally the assembly can go 100% on one engine and 0% on another. A dual volt meter was also setup on the throttle position sensor to display throttle position on each throttle body. At this point it was only possible to bias it +/- 0.8 V on a 4.25 volt scale, not enough. After thinking about it some more, I realized that even with ideal throttle cables (i.e. 20 lbs of tension on each), it would require something like an 8" wide peal to give this amount of bias. It than became clear a reduction was neccessary. since the gear housing was already machined and reducing bevel gears are hard to come by, it was decided to add a gear reduction to the system. The first option was to mount a planetary gear set from an air drill on the input.

Foofighter

That is the most absurd and awesome thing I have ever seen!

Sparkles

What the hell! lol!

debris

Your sir, are crazy.
I tip my cap off to you.

danwagonboy

Thanks for the input. Leave it to me to over complicate things - Idea started out simple and ended up taking more time than expected. It does meet the functional requirements though. And its a hard thing to understand unless you drive the thing - in a crude way analogous to "torque vectoring". All I know is the project is inching towards something I would call complete.

danwagonboy

Hello fellow wagoneers. Haven't posted any updates in the last few months, so I thought now was a good time for that. I have been working on documenting the project as part of my portfolio site (http://www.daniel-clark.net/index.php?i ... ts_88civic) and welcome anyone to check it out (and critique it if need be) for a little better documentation. In the last few months I've been dealing with stupid details like rerouting the rear throttle cable several times to get stick-slip down to a minimum, installing (adapting) sedan seats which are in much nicer condition, and getting new kicks with some brand new Michelins on them. For the throttle, I ended up using high end bicycle cable and found out the cheap stuff with a series of pulleys is the best way to go. In fact if you are running a cable connection more than 180 degrees and 3', it seems pulleys are an inevitable solution.

One concern right now is that I'm going to use it to commute for a while and while 20 mpg isn't bad compared to an explorer, I would rather be near the old mpgs (28-30). Keep in mind their both automatics. One thing I just tracked down yesterday is that even though the rear ecu was getting a vss signal (same switch as the front), it didn't know D4 was selected so the rear lockup torque converter was never engaging. My hopes are that it will increase highway mpg slightly. I may also have a slight case of ODO error in that the wheels/tires have a bigger rolling radius than stock.

The obvious solution to the bigger problem is to take the back engine out and run it on the front, but that would make it sit high in the rear and would be no fun to drive. My question now is whether it would be feasible to either adapt some type of locking hub to the rear or get at the innards of the transmission and make some way to pull the differential apart. Its possible to put a external pump on the transmission but I think this would cost more energy than if it was simply disconnected at the shaft. Any input is appreciated.

wagodizzle

this is too legit for words.

Pavementwago

super crazy. im at a lose for words

bucky4u

guy u need to take your work to higher places! you could build domo bots or somthing!