I wanted to share my experiences building my 4 wheel drive 24 HP engine Club Car golf cart conversion.
I started way back in December '06 and am just starting to finish up the initial portion of the project.
Some background - I am putting together a '93 Gas Club Car golf cart. My intent is to drop in the 24hp Honda and the Imgainative Manufacturing 4x4 kit. I plan to use the cart on my small farm in Central Texas and at our family ranch in deeeep South Texas.
I lurked around the Buggies Unlimited forum for a long time gleaning information before I started this build. Most of ya'll have some pretty amazing carts and your craftsmanship is outstanding. This cart is intended to be a working vehicle and is not intended to be a show cart, but I hope that ya'll will like some of the things I put in/on the cart.
This is what I started with. I picked up this cart from a local dealer without an engine for what I thought was a good price. NO, I won't tell what I paid for it because if it wasn't a good deal, I don't want to know. I started my tear down and discovered a pretty dirty cart and some parts missing like the little puck that goes in the throttle box.
I read all of the posts about engines and decided upon the 24hp Honda for my own reasons and chose Helmuth Repair as my supplier after checking several places for price and shipping. Then it came and I couldn't believe it!
I made the call to Helmuth and sent them photos of the damage. They had me take it apart and ensure the damage was limited to the shroud and bottom bolts. Helmuth came through and got me the new parts PDQ
and all was right with the world once again!!
Back to Cartaholics Golf Cart Forum I went and began researching the clutch issue. I decided upon the 94C. I had to cut the shaft to get the length down so that it will fit in the engine bay. This is discussed at length in the forum, but still scared the hell out of me to cut it. Then I had to special order a 7/16" regular thread bolt to bolt the thing on. Not a single place in Waco carried a 7/16" bolt long enough.
I ordered my 4x4 kit from Imaginative Manu. and took my differential out and shipped it to them so that they could machine the output shaft.
While I waited for it to come back, I decided to finish cleaning some parts. The first to tackle was the engine pan which was pretty ugly. I never ran across any help on how to clean it up so I started in on it.
In the mean time, I needed to decide what I was going to do about the body. I went back and forth from a using a camo kit to some sort of durable paint. In the end, I decided to use a product called Durabak. It is a UV stabalized rubber paint like Rhino lining or Line-X but is much easier to apply and doesn't cost nearly as much.
Before painting, as you all know, there was a lot of sanding and fitting of lights.
Because of the holidays, Imaginative iwas backed up and agreed to send me the rest of the kit while they finish machining the differential. It comes on a pallet and weighs a couple a hundred pounds.
It came three night before Christmas and I had to start on it that night, much to my wife's dismay. I put together part of the front assembly the first night, just to get my cart fix in. The first major step is to completely take apart the stock front end. Bolting the front diff on only requires using existing holes and drilling two new holes.
I started way back in December '06 and am just starting to finish up the initial portion of the project.
Some background - I am putting together a '93 Gas Club Car golf cart. My intent is to drop in the 24hp Honda and the Imgainative Manufacturing 4x4 kit. I plan to use the cart on my small farm in Central Texas and at our family ranch in deeeep South Texas.
I lurked around the Buggies Unlimited forum for a long time gleaning information before I started this build. Most of ya'll have some pretty amazing carts and your craftsmanship is outstanding. This cart is intended to be a working vehicle and is not intended to be a show cart, but I hope that ya'll will like some of the things I put in/on the cart.
This is what I started with. I picked up this cart from a local dealer without an engine for what I thought was a good price. NO, I won't tell what I paid for it because if it wasn't a good deal, I don't want to know. I started my tear down and discovered a pretty dirty cart and some parts missing like the little puck that goes in the throttle box.
I read all of the posts about engines and decided upon the 24hp Honda for my own reasons and chose Helmuth Repair as my supplier after checking several places for price and shipping. Then it came and I couldn't believe it!
I made the call to Helmuth and sent them photos of the damage. They had me take it apart and ensure the damage was limited to the shroud and bottom bolts. Helmuth came through and got me the new parts PDQ
and all was right with the world once again!!
Back to Cartaholics Golf Cart Forum I went and began researching the clutch issue. I decided upon the 94C. I had to cut the shaft to get the length down so that it will fit in the engine bay. This is discussed at length in the forum, but still scared the hell out of me to cut it. Then I had to special order a 7/16" regular thread bolt to bolt the thing on. Not a single place in Waco carried a 7/16" bolt long enough.
I ordered my 4x4 kit from Imaginative Manu. and took my differential out and shipped it to them so that they could machine the output shaft.
While I waited for it to come back, I decided to finish cleaning some parts. The first to tackle was the engine pan which was pretty ugly. I never ran across any help on how to clean it up so I started in on it.
In the mean time, I needed to decide what I was going to do about the body. I went back and forth from a using a camo kit to some sort of durable paint. In the end, I decided to use a product called Durabak. It is a UV stabalized rubber paint like Rhino lining or Line-X but is much easier to apply and doesn't cost nearly as much.
Before painting, as you all know, there was a lot of sanding and fitting of lights.
Because of the holidays, Imaginative iwas backed up and agreed to send me the rest of the kit while they finish machining the differential. It comes on a pallet and weighs a couple a hundred pounds.
It came three night before Christmas and I had to start on it that night, much to my wife's dismay. I put together part of the front assembly the first night, just to get my cart fix in. The first major step is to completely take apart the stock front end. Bolting the front diff on only requires using existing holes and drilling two new holes.
