French Tickler Buggy

jeepinmatt said:
Wait a sec! Did you paint them black?!?!?!? Now how are people going to know how much money you spent!?!?!?! :laughing:
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Pic from BKOR website. I'd love to paint them black but honestly I don't remotely care enough to paint anything. I get so many comments about painting my car it's not funny.

The fun part (to me) is that a bunch of people dismiss the vehicle as a POS because it doesn't look cool and has a little engine with no choppy cam. I don't care but it hurts its resale value big time. If it were painted in a flashy color and I traded the bypasses and proper suspension for a set of FOA shocks, the price I could sell it for would go up.
 
IF I ever wrap it, it's going to be a copy of this livery.
I even found a matching firesuit :cool:


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I too would contribute to that go fund me…
 
Y'all are crazy :D

If someone wants to organise this and send $ my way, I won't say no. But I'm sure you should use your hard earned money for something else that matters more than this :lol:
 
Bebop said:
Y'all are crazy :D

If someone wants to organise this and send $ my way, I won't say no. But I'm sure you should use your hard earned money for something else that matters more than this :lol:
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There is currently nothing... repeat nothing... that matters more than getting you in a perrier fire suit with a cruella deville cigarette and one of those commie coffee macchiato bullshit drinks!
 
Sweet merciful crap!!

Meanwhile mine is "large dark roast black". Them: Venti sir? Me: is that the largest size? Them: yes. Me: yes that (thinking I should have just went to Dunkin or Sheetz)
 
I ended up spending waaaaaay too long to put this POS back together. Everything that could have made my life harder did.

For some reason, one of the knuckles turned out to be a huge PITA to weld to. Cast is always harder to weld than regular steel, and I've done my fair share of successful welding in it, but this one threw me for a loop.

One of the knuckles welded perfect and after a cool down in a blanket was ready to be installed. The other one had cracks all around the toe of the weld. Took me 4 full re-grind, clean, prep etc to get the weld to fully penetrate and be up to my liking. I ended up using some NI55 rod which made a significant difference in way the puddle behaved and edge control. I even tried to MIG it (which I've done sucessfully in the past) and this was the worst result of all my tries.

I cannot understand the drastic behavior difference between these 2 knuckles. The only 2 reasons I can come up with is that one of the castings wasn't as good as the other, or the welder (not the machine...) really sucks ass at this TIG welding thing. In all honesty, it's probably the later.

But the one that welded fine was looking kinda decent.

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Then, when I thought I was clear to install, the ball joints bit me in the ass. I had a spare set I bought when I installed the knuckles during the original build. Driveworks brand. They worked nice on my OEM 2005-07 knuckles, but for some reason were too big to be pressed on the Reid ones. Because I wanted to move along quickly, I went to the local parts store and got their house brand. They pressed in good but when I went to put the knuckles together, the taper of the stem was wrong and was letting them free-float in the female tapper of the C's. So I had to get a third set and this time I got Moog (like I should have gotten in the first place) and everything went together was supposed to. Of course this was a significant time waster.

When I had it all done good, I fogged the knuckles and arms in order to hide the bright orange powder coat of the Reid knuckles. I made sure to finish whatever was left in 3 random spray cans of black paint (different shades of course) I had laying around. I'm saving money and making sure the result doesn't look too good. Don't want new shinny parts looking too nice on my garbage.

Because I had time between my welding attempts and BJ issues, I ended up spending a few minutes putting lipstick on this pig. Properly shanked all braking hardware, painted the outers, cleaned up and repacked the big bells (they don't have an ounce of play after 3 years of riding) and changed the outer shaft seals.

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The new arms have a terrible Ackerman IMO (lines up with the OEM holes) and will need to be redone for optimal performance, but I was trying to put it back together to go ride. I'll spend some time on that later.

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But finally, after much cussing and sweating my ass off in my non-AC shop, she back !

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Cast welds on knuckles have been thoroughly tested this weekend. They hold great.

My dumbass should have put more pressure in the tires.

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I have put a smaller pulley on the pump and it’s overdriven 50% now. Solved 90% of my low rpm concerns. Doesn’t even feel slow when it’s cold.

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But now the steering is overheating. Howe heat-sink in the shit location isn’t cutting it when I’m giving her the beans, so back to the drawing board. I'm thinking about placing a radiator with fan in the back of the buggy.

We're looking at about 12ish extra feet of plumbing on the return line. I am thinking about staying with AN10 lines. I don't think this will be a problem, any input ?

The cooler would be the high point in the system. The ideal solution for packaging would use a dual pass cooler, with the fittings pointing down. So I'm worried about trapping air at the top of it. Would using a single pass cooler and a 180deg fitting at the top a better solution ? Less room for an air trap ?

If I was building a water cooling system with low pressure, I would add a bleeder at the top of the dual pass cooler. But when it comes to hydraulics, all my fittings always sip a little bit of fluid.This seems to indicate that they aren't 100% air tight so adding a bleeder would probably introduce air instead of solving the problem. I've also never seen a bleeder in any kind of hydraulic circuit.

Shitty paint drawing for clarification. Dual pass on the left (preferred), single pass on the right.

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Since the cooler is on the return line, wouldn't that be considered low pressure? Do you happen to know what that pressure would be? If so, you could possibly add a bleeder at the high point.

Another thought is that fluid will be forced through the cooler so is an air bubble at that location likely to stay there when the engine is running? Fluid only has one way in and one way out. Depending on the size of the line, there may be enough turbulence to force the air bubble to vacate the high point. The point being, an air bubble may not be able to live in the high spot if the fluid flow is fast enough. None of this has any scientific backing and is purely how I've rationalized it in my head.
 
Bleeder is on my mind for sure, it's even on the diagram.

Flow is 6 / 6.5GPM on the low pressure side indeed. I have not measured the psi on the low side. Most hydraulic radiators are rated around 100psi and I beleive there is a lot less than that in it.

I'm still exploring options.
 
Could you bleed the system with the cooler down low before you mount it? Then mount it where you want after?
Where are you planning to mount it in the back?
 
I could, I just don't want to.
Imagine if I have to remove the cooler every time I want to work on the PS system. Terrible design.

I want it behind the driver seat.
 
I've used both the typical tube and fin and plate style coolers that have both the inlet and outlet on the bottom for both transmissions and power steering applications. I never had a problem. My only thought might be that if it is mounted above the reservoir, that the level might drop too far in the reservoir once the system is in operation.
 
Install height doesn't matter


I'm just worried about trapping air.

I probably shouldn't be worried and am overthinking it.
 
I'm not an engineer, but I say bolt it up and try what you propose and see what happens. What's the worse that can happen, you are back to where you are at now? I agree with Adam I think the bubbles will work themselves out of the system, and also in agreement with Adam that's what I tell myself as well LOL!

Report back if we are all.wrong
 
I got to make cooler mounts, run lines, wire the fan.
None of that ain't cheap nor quick.

That's why I'm asking for input.
 
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