Hydraulic Clutch on a Mini Buggy

[Thingem3376]

Hi all, as you may or may not know I am building a mini buggy that will be powered by a V65 Honda engine(1100CC's and 116BHP). My question is, is a hydraulic clutch practical in a buggy or should I look for a way to convert it to cable clutch?

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[OzFab]

"Practical" depends on:
-the original setup of the engine
-what you have available to you
-ease of installation/modification

Another thing to investigate is how prone to damage will the hose be? If it has major exposure to flying rocks, sticks, etc that can damage the hose, it's probably not a good idea... unless you want to spend big bucks on a teflon lined, braided steel hose &, even then, there's no guarantee it will be safe...

In my experience, cable clutches are much more "accurate" (for lack of a better word) than hydraulic in terms of feel, meaning, with a cable clutch, you can feel the clutch engaging/disengaging by the position of the pedal, not so much with hydraulic; I can "quick shift" any car with a cable clutch very well but, with a hydraulic clutch, I tend to "miss" the shift because I can't feel the clutch; cable clutches are also more adjustable than hydraulic...

Now, that's just my "opinion", other members opinions may/will differ from mine; wait for them to chime in...

 

[Thingem3376]

Thanks for the info, but besides the tactile feel will there be a noticeable difference in clutch performance if I extend the hydraulic line, such as weaker slave cylinder, harder high speed shifting? I plan on running steel tubing along the frame and then use flex hose for a hand clutch using the stock master cylinder and slave.

 

[OzFab]

The use of steel tube will make a big difference over rubber hose as steel tube won't expand under pressure like a rubber hose will...

Having said that, cars use steel tube for most of the distance between the master & slave &, to me, there's still that loss of "feel" over a cable...

Having a slave cylinder which has a smaller diameter than the master will mean less pedal movement for more clutch engagement/disengagement, which should help with high speed shifts...

 

[frdtrkrul]

You'll have to bleed the hydrualic line which can be a huge pain. With cable clutches you have to adjust the cable over time. I'm not sure if its possible but the cable to possible get caught on something and snap. Never heard of it happening. If you ran rubber hose for a hydraulic setup you could fab up kind of s skid plate or shield out of maybe 16ga sheet metal and not worry so much about debris damaging the line. I think converting to cable would be way more costly than just using the existing hydraulic setup. Both will work but I think with hydraulic being more or less enclosed it would give you less problems down the road, especially getting parts.