2018 Kawasaki Mule Pro-DXT. Another basket case with some assembly required.

This is going to be a lot like my Polaris Ranger build thread. Less of a neat project and more of a bring it back to life and put it to work. The Polaris was a disassembled mess when I got it and needed a radiator and other things to put it back together. This Mule is similar but it needs an engine. 

This is the start. I have been keeping an eye out for a side-by-side since I hauled the Polaris to the farm in the mountains. The GEM I bought a couple of months ago was OK, but not really an off-road kind of machine.  My eldest and I peruse Marketplace and Craiglist on a fairly regular basis, OK a daily basis would be a better way to put it but you don't have to call me out on it. He will shoot me anything he thinks I'm interested in and vice versa.

This time it was a 2018 Kawasaki Mule Pro-DXT. That is Kawasaki's 6-seat diesel-powered full-size side-by-side. This was being sold by a semi-local diesel tech school. They had gotten it as a shop project but due to the large ventilation holes in the engine block decided to pass on rebuilding it. I bought it, less engine, for a little under challenge money. 

This is an ex-rental machine from US Rentals. I'm 98% certain it lunched the engine due to ingesting unknown quantities of muddy water. The radiator is completely stopped up with mud, there were also traces of mud and water in the air filter housing and the intake tubes. As it sits now, there is an empty space where the engine was. I did get the driven pulley as well as the belt, the entire exhaust, and all the plastics that had been removed to get to the engine. It will be a good start for a repower...

The transmission:

A new engine is in the $5000-$6000 range so that's not happening. Since the drive is a standard CVT, I'm going to repower it with an air-cooled 2-cylinder Kohler engine I picked up to power the Easy Ride that I have yet to finish. This will be a more versatile machine that I have a use for immediately so it's going to the top of the list. 

The Engine.

This guy is 20hp. It's probably not going to be as fast as the stock engine, but it will be plenty powerful enough to get the job done. Anything over 20 mph will be considered a success. There are some rumors that gas-swapped Mules are faster than the stock diesels. We will see. 

Since I already have the engine and the dive clutch, it should be a case of building a motor mount, rewiring most of the machine to make the computer-controlled crap work without the computer, and flushing the fuel tank. 

More to come as it happens. 

Can't confirm that a homebuilt gas swapped one is faster than the diesels, but I can confirm that the factory diesels are pretty gutless.

Even the gas versions of the mule were gutless compared to the Polaris, but the diesels were especially slow.

Toyman build threads are the best build threads. I have a special place in my heart for the non-racecar builds(jet boat, Sanford, lathe builds, etc).

We've got a diesel 2/4 seater manual dump Mule at work. Neat stuff like locking diffs, High and low ranges make it a good workhorse. Watching.

The self control you are showing by not going directly to "insert sport bike engine here " is remarkable.

In reply to 1SlowVW :

That thought crossed my mind but since this is going to be a work vehicle I figured I'd be better off giving it some manners. 

That said, I ignored the car my kids bought me and continued on the Mule project this weekend. My biggest issue is the width of the new engine. I didn't want it sticking out of the engine bay in odd places so that took some careful consideration in how to mount it. My initial plan was to remove the rear engine mount and build a new mount to hold the new engine. Unfortunately, the front rubber transmission mount was built into the original engine mount. To top it off, the old engine mount pushed the new engine forward enough to intrude into the floorboard area of the rear seat. That was unacceptable. 

So I pulled the original mount, chopped it in half with a circular saw, and mounted it in the mill to machine a 90-degree surface to build a new engine mount from. I will either weld an angle to this to mount to or drill and tap this to bolt the new engine mount. I'm leaning toward drilling and tapping. The mount is plenty thick enough to do that. 

With that cut, the engine sits perfectly. It fits behind the firewall and under the rear deck. This week, I will get a mount built and I may have this running by next weekend. Maybe. 

More to come.

hey, that's not an LS!

In reply to Toyman! :

I'm looking forward to this. Your build threads are consistently awesome.

You will probably have a higher top speed the diesel. The CVT does not really care about power as much as RPM. 3000rpm in is 3000rpm. Could have 1 HP or 10,000 hp. Rpm is what matters. The stock diesel was likely governed to just over 3000rpm. The kohler should be governed to about 3600 but the factory limit is 4000rpm if i remember right.i put a kohler ch18s in my golf cart. No need for a governor. Ive hit 5000k briefly. They will probably float valves before getting to too high of an rpm. 
 

im a big fan of the kohler commands. At one point i was kohler certified to do warranty work. 
 

i have a 30hp command my old engine rep donated to me. I want to swap it into my cart. 

It's been a while since this was updated. I've got too many irons in the fire to concentrate on one project so it's been moving slowly a little at a time. 

Over the past 4 months, I've built the engine mount and gotten it installed. It consists of a chunk of 1/4 plate welded between the OEM Mule front engine mount and the modified transmission mount. There is some angle iron bracing under it. The engine ended up an inch or so higher than I originally planned. That may cause me some problems when it comes time to install the bed and back seat.

And there I stopped taking pictures for some reason. 

The engine got mounted and the oil in it changed a couple of weeks ago. I added a remote oil dump hose for future oil changes without having to pull the engine. From there, I started on the wiring and got it mostly done. The factory ignition switch starts and stops the engine as it should. Even the neutral lockout works to keep you from starting it in gear. I also got all the diesel out of the fuel tank and replaced it with gas. From there I tried to get it running but the pulse mechanical fuel pump on the Kohler engine wouldn't pull fuel from the fuel tank. 

I worked on it again most of yesterday. I started by adding an electric fuel pump and fuel pressure regulator to bypass the manual pump. The new pump was wired to the Mule fuel pump relay. That wiring was already in place. I decided not to use the Mule pump because I didn't know the operating pressure nor how it would hold up long-term with gas. Throttle and choke linkage was figured out using the Mule accelerator pedal and a manual choke lever. The drive clutch, belt, and driven pully are installed and working properly. I also built a manifold to dump the exhaust from the V twin into the OEM Mule muffler and tailpipe. As of the end of the day, it will crank, run, and move forward and backward under its own power. The only thing keeping me from driving it around the neighborhood is that the engine has been sitting long enough that the carburetor is full of crap. I have a new carb and a set of plugs on the way.

Then it will be time to work on the intake and air filter and figure out how to keep that under the bed and seat. 

I'll shoot some pictures when I get home and update this again. 

More to come. 

Picture dump. 

Ignore the booger welds. I made a few cutting errors fitting the 1" exhaust tube into the 2" exhaust tube and had to fill some holes in the exhaust. The stainless exhaust tube wanted to disappear when welding it to mild steel. Function over form, especially when I'm out of practice. 

I was pretty happy to be able to use the stock exhaust. It's pretty quiet and well mounted. 

Fuel pump and pressure regulator. I don't think I will ever get all of the mud out of this thing. I'm pretty sure someone sunk it and that's what blew up the original diesel engine. 

The new carb and spark plugs should be in today. I may try to get them installed this evening. 

More to come. 

The new carburetor and the plugs took care of the poorly running engine. I got them installed Saturday morning. Next up was pulling the exhaust and finishing up the welds on it. I did some factoring on the intake as well. There are some parts coming to make all of that work. 

The last thing that happened was to reassemble the entire thing. The bed was remounted, all the plastics were reinstalled, floorboards are in. That was a bit of a jigsaw puzzle since it was in pieces when I bought it. The only thing missing other than all of the fasteners were the mounting brackets for the folding rear seat. The brackets are available online so they are on the way. 

The clutch is working as it should and we have forward, reverse, high, low, 4WD, and the differential lock works. The only thing not working is the electric power steering. I have some digging to do on that. It may never work. Luckily it's not very hard to steer. 

The engine is under there somewhere.

I'll get the intake and air filter figured out this week and this will be another project pretty much done. 

Edit to say:

The brakes are worn out to the point that the parking brake no longer works. I'm going to be ordering a set of pads today and going through those as well. I also think it's going to get a windshield. 

I forgot to mention. I did get to take it for a spin around the neighborhood. It runs very well. The engine governor kicks in at 19 mph which is fast enough for what this machine will be doing. 

That's about 10 mph slower than stock and about 34 mph slower than my Ranger. 

Last update on this. 

Airbox designed and built. It needed to be low profile to miss the bed. I fabbed the box up out of some scrap sheet metal and exhaust tubing. It draws air through the OEM air box and filter. It's not pretty but it works. 

Then it was loaded up and hauled to the farm where we promptly put it to work hauling sago palm fronds to the burn pile as we cut them back for the year. The six sagos were planted in the 1830s so they are enormous. Trimming them is an all-hands evolution. There are four generations in this picture. 

See you on the next one.