EZ-GO Marathon and Yamaha Warrior

[br1ev8]

I've been working on this project for months and figured I finally start a thread, especially since it seems to have been kinda slow in here. I've got plenty of pictures I need to take, as I'm well beyond where these pictures show, but it's a start.

I bought an electric marathon for cheap that had the electronics / batteries stripped from a guy that was wanting to put a Honda 13hp on it. He never followed through with it so he sold it off. I looked for months for a cheap donor quad and ended up with a warrior 350. I was looking for a 4wd, but everyone I looked at was ragged / had been snorkeled / submerged and needed lots of work. The warrior was as small of an engine I was willing to go with, but it was complete and needed only minimal work like a carb rebuild, etc.

A shout out to Forker45. He did mostly the same swap, so a lot of his thread was helpful to me, though his pics aren't working anymore, which was a bummer.

The marathon sitting next to my g16e



Warrior



Stripped down / gutted



Got to cutting




Initial mockup, nothing welded into place yet




Had to replace both bottom portions of the marathon's frame due to rust


Skipping ahead a bit (missed some picture opportunities), got the front and rear ends welded in and added some lower tubes to link the front and rear ends together



I'm using the stock warrior rear shock, which doesn't have the stiffest coil, so I cut the upper shock mount off and brought it out a few inches to give it more leverage over the swingarm compression... Worked out great

[
Got the front end squared up to install the rack & pinion




14" r&p tacked into position




Got the steering shaft hooked up....used a steering shaft from a Polaris ranger I believe it was. Also shows how I widened the front end by 8 inches




Lots more to show, but this is mostly the jist of the pics I took. Lots of small details I skipped. I post more later.

[rifter]

I don't know about anyone else but I can't see your pictures, I used Photobucket on one of my first and best builds and now all the pictures are gone forever. If you can use the photo uploader that is on this site, it works great and you don't lose pictures.

[br1ev8]

Thanks for letting me know Rifter.


Another couple pics. These are very out of order, as they are more recent, but are the only other 2 that I've taken so far.

I got larger tires put on. The fronts were the stock 22x7-10 that I replaced with some 25x11-10. They are just some used ones that I picked up locally for cheap for now. I was a little worried about the extra wide tires contacting the a-arms at full steer. I did measure beforehand, but you never really know until they are on. Well, they fit just fine with no rub.

A comparison shot of the stock vs larger tire


The stock rears were 22x10-9 that I replaced with 25x13-9.i had to get these new as it was very hard to find 25" tires in a 9 inch rim.




Because I'm running a larger tire, I also added a larger rear sprocket. I overcompensated on the sprocket size because I wanted to have an even better crawl final drive ratio. The stock warrior gearing used a 40 tooth rear sprocket, but I added a 52 tooth sprocket meant for a raptor 660. It's the same bolt pattern, but wouldn't fit a warrior due to the chain guard and rear chain roller contacting it. So, I relocated the chain roller forward and extended the chain guard downward. It fits great. I'll get pictures of that and many more later.

[br1ev8]

Just a little more info on the steering since I didn't mention it before. I used the warrior tie rods, which I cut down / rewelded to fit the rack and pinion. The pivot points of the rack and pinion union to the tier odds are inline with the inner a-arms pivots to maintain minimal-no bumpsteer.
The overall width of the front outside to outside of the tires is 49.5" with the new tires. The back measures 50.5" with the new tires. I also used 2 inch hubcentric wheel spacers on each rear wheel and the stock wheels were flipped to gain some backspacing to add to the width.
The braking system consists of using the stock rear master cylinder for the back brake. I bought another rear master cylinder that I'm using to power both front brakes. Both master cylinders are bolted to a bracket I made. Both master cylinders are connected to the brake pedal via a brake balance bar I made using a heim joint and clevis pins. This way I can adjust front and rear brake bias so that the front gets more braking than the back. I'll get pics.

[rib33024]

Welcome to BGW --- Nice build.

I moved some pics, and deleted one of your post. Now your pics are in your first post

[br1ev8]

Perfect, rib! Question though...how come we don't have the ability to edit posts?

OK, onto so some more pics.

A current "under the hood" shot


A pic of the pedals. I used the stock gas pedal. The brake pedal is stock, but with the parking brake portion removed and the main pedal cut down narrower. The clutch is made from the warrior's brake pedal, but the foot pad came from my Virago's old brake pedal I had laying around.


A pic of the brake and gas linkage...probably kinda hard to make out what's what... A lot going on in the pic. Still lots of cleaning of the welds (overall) and trimming of various metal parts before I break it all down for paint



Another angle. You can see the brake balance bar setup I used, which I mentioned in the above post...made from a heim joint, threaded rod, and attached to the master cylinders' pushrod clevises. The linkage from the brake pedal is made from tie rod ends from the carts factory steering.


Another angle... More so of the gas pedal linkage. I kept the thumb throttle and adapted linkage made from some small heim joints and threaded rod.


This one shows where I mounted the brake master cylinders' reservoirs.


A pic showing the shifter linkage coming from the shifter back to a pivot point (made from an old bicycle crank bearing assembly, which goes down to the shifter


This shows where the shifter linkage goes down to the factory foot shifter


A shot of the shifter made from the old brake arm from my Virago (had a usable curve to it to wrap around the seat) and some square tubing. The lever at the top is a bicycle brake lever that's attached to a side pull bicycle brake caliper that I modified to actuate a locking pin which serves the purpose of locking the shifter in position so that the shifter isn't inadvertently bumped into another gear...like when my boys are riding in the center, I didn't want them to push the lever. So, when u need to shift, you just pull the brake lever to release the shifter lock and bump into the next gear. I figured the golf ball shift knob was fitting haha.


The opposite angle


A shot of the reverse/forward shift lever, which is next to, but lower than the gear shifter


A pic of the 52t sprocket and relocated chain runner and lowered sprocket guard


A shot of where I mounted the gas tank. It's off of a generator... Maybe 5-6 gallons I guess. It's got a gas gauge built into the cap, which is nice. I'm gonna build a rear seat that will mount above it, which will flip forward when I need to refuel. I used some bed frame angle for the mounting frame haha...use what ya got! Don't mind the exhaust can sticking out the back...thst was temporary just so I could test ride the thing... And she goes very well!
I'll be using a small car muffler mounted under body on the right side of the engine...wantrd to keep exhaust notes quiet as possible. I'll get pics of the exhaust setup when I get to that.


This shot shows where I extended the rear of the cart frame...i lengthened it 9 inches. Reason why is because with the warrior swingarm, the rear wheels are nearly 10 inches further back than stock (I put the engine as far forward as I could under the seat). So, I lengthened the frame and am moving the rear fenders back by the same amount. I've already started on mounting the passenger rear fender and the the side profile looks good (don't have a pic of that yet)

[br1ev8]

I reached my limit of pics in one post, so to continue....


A side shot of the steering column. I used a Yamaha rhino steering shaft that I disassembled and cut off the factory cart steering shaft below the steering wheel splines and welded it to the rhino shaft so I could use the cart steering wheel. I thought about multiple ways to mount the column to the cart. I wanted to buy as little as possible, so I used the carts steering column outside tube to mount the rhino column to. I just fabled up some brackets to make it a bolt on affair. I'll probable make a shroud to cover the column at some point so it doesn't look soo home grown lol.


Top down angle of the column


This angle shows where I mounted the warrior's light / start switch assembly and the ignition key barrel


Finally, a front angle shot as it sits



So, that about catches up with my current progress.

[Unforgiven]

Looks good,... I've had a blast with mine.

[br1ev8]

Thanks. BTW, you've done a fantastic job on your cart..lots of good work there.

[Rooster59]

What's your plan for cooling the engine?