Charlie's Bravo powered G1 project

[CharlieN]

To make a short story long, A year or so ago I visited a race car buddy who mentioned he replaced his golf car since the piston went bad. He offered the cart to me at the time and it seemed it would fit the bill for what I need.
Well it took me a year to get back down with a trailer to collect it.
Visually this ol' G1 is in pretty good shape, some rust at the battery tray but otherwise quite sound.


Turns out the engine was in a few boxes, he described he was driving in the paddock at an event and the engine just shut off, had a little clatter.
He said it broke a piston, Yup it's broke.


Kind of interesting since the governor is still intact but may have something to do with always towing a formula car around the paddock for a dozen years.
With the engine apart I gave it a good look over. it is definitely rebuildable but will need new bearings, piston, seals and gaskets. I already knew I wanted something more to make this go.
Searching around brought me here where I found many options of how to go about resurrecting this car. Right now I am starting with the simple and economical approach, buy a Bravo engine and drop it in.

So here I am, a freshly delivered Bravo engine on a bench being converted to drop in the G1 chassis.
Not much to show at this point since it is early in the project. In another thread I mentioned the G1 clutch did not fit the Bravo crankshaft, It just kind of sat there and rocked about. This took me by surprise but once I counterbored the center of the tapered hole enough the clutch mated up fine on the crank. That is cool.
Going to the flywheel side I start pulling it apart and grab my flywheel puller for Yamaha outboards, dang meanies, the bolt circle of the puller is different. I will drill a new pattern when I get a chance and swap the pickup and flywheel over.
I have ordered a pair of crank seals since it would be stupid not to freshen them while this is apart so I will wait for them to continue this task.

One little bit I have done with no clue if it will be right or not was to machine a spacer to preload the primary spring in the clutch. I figure I need to start somewhere.


All for now till I get to play with this some more.