Stupid Money Pit buggy build

[slravene]

Figured I would finally start a build thread here for my new buggy.

Last year after beating on my old buggy for a while, I decided that I wanted a bit more motor (had a 4.3 in the old one) and some more wheelbase (had 107 in the old one). I did a bunch of measuring and spent some time laying under the old one and trying to wrap my brain around doing what I wanted….

Here is what I had before and where 90% of the parts are coming from:

I eventually came to the conclusion that it would make much more sense to build a new chassis rather than try to adapt this one to the changes. The old one was just so small and tightly packed in, it would have taken a TON of cutting to get to a point of starting to make things fit.

A friend and I had been talking for a while about building chassis and so we both decided that we would pull the trigger and make it happen. We would build 2 “twin” chassis (I say twins…but there are slight differences in the two to make them fit exactly what we each wanted; but the base chassis is the same on both). We picked up Bend-Tech and some tools and got to work. We took a lot of measuring from my old buggy, his old buggy, and a lot of ideas and styles from some other chassis out there and put them all together. It is no secret which ones are predominately used…

The basic plans are for the following:
5.3 with a few small/standard goodies
4L60E trans
Atlas
Solid MFG HP60 front and rear from my old buggy
16" ORI STX in rear, 14" ORI STX in front
40” Trepadors on Trailreadys
Shooting for ~110” wheelbase
Front radiator
All the rest of the standard buggy parts

Here is the chassis that we designed in Bend-Tech. There will be some changes made in the final design, but this is basically it.

There is a lot of .188 wall tube in this chassis as I had some dented tubes in the old one and wanted to avoid that as much as possible. Any tubing you see throughout the build that is the dark color is the .188 and the light color tube is .120

There is a mix of 1.75, 1.5, and 1.25 in the chassis.

You will notice another chassis sitting off to the side…that is the rolling chassis that is the twin to this one…it was built before mine. Here it is as a roller and what mine will “basically” look like:

On to the pictures of mine…I am open to feedback and ideas if people see things that they have questions about.

 

[slravene]

Here is where we originally had the shoulder bar…I thought it ended up too low, so we eventually moved it up, which you will notice in a bit:

Both seats “mocked in”. It looks smaller than it really is because the seats are so big. It is 48” at the cowl and 50” at the b-pillar. From here on, the shoulder bar is at the correct height.

Much better:

The X-brace is in, things are starting to take shape

It looks tight in this picture too…but my legs are stretched nearly all the way flat out at the front of the rocker, should be just right

 

[slravene]

Dash bar mocked in. It may be moved down a bit, but we will do that as things take shape if need be

Seats out to see some more shape

Pulled it outside to get a profile look at it. The rear is obviously next on the list. This will get the TC/Jims Garage “tailgate” that really makes buggies look good in my opinion

That brings us up to currently….this will of course be an ongoing build thread. I hope to have this thing riding by next spring/summer.

Thanks for watching. Go fuck yourself if you think its ugly

 

[userbmx1315]

looks good. i want to build a buggy. but dont have the shop or the "know-how"

what did you do with your old set-up?

 

[slravene]

Well it was taken apart, but the guy that bought my chassis is actually trying to sell it again.

I think hes asking like $2,500 for it? http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1091833

 

[dkrajcovic]

NICE

 

[GONOVRIT]

Looks good, congrats. Can you tell me how many gallons and what brand that fuel cell in the roller buggy is? I don't need a large cell and that design makes sense to me for what we do.

 

[slravene]

i think its like 7 gallons? He made it (it was a leftover from his last buggy) and will most likely make mine for this buggy. I am sure he would make another one if you were interested...I will ask him.

 

[M&M Offroad]

Looking good man. Can't wait to get a ride together. All the new buggies getting bashed.. Keep up the good work.

 

[farmboy]

Damn, you guys actually know what your doing! haha Looks great. Completion date? Im ready to do some riding now.

 

[slravene]

we tried to learn a thing or two at some point

Hoping to be done by spring/summer. I have most of the parts...just a matter of getting it all together. I only get to work on it one day a week for the time being (its not at my shop right now) so progress could be a bit slow for a minute.

 

[slravene]

A little bit more was done this weekend.

Got the X in the doors tacked in. Nothing really ground breaking here....there will be a window "wing" bar (you can see the mock up in tape on the other side) that will also continue down to the bottom of the A-pillar at the rocker to terminate.

Already rolled it too....

Got the subframe in. Its about 1" lower than the other chassis so that we could fit everything in there and have a flat and sealed floor. One of the main things I wanted with this buggy was for it to be sealed in below the shoulder bar. I want to be able to put something in there and it not fall out. My old one had a hole in the middle and the back was completely open...I lost an ipod and a camera out of that buggy.

 

[slravene]

got a bit more done. got the belly in and braced up.

The belly is about 8.5 inches deep to the top of the tube, so i should be able to fit the whole atlas and tailhousing and such under there to seal the floor up. Also allows me to have a low roofline like I wanted. Its only 44 inches at the low end of the rake high from the floor. Keep that weight low and centered!

(we also slightly changed the b-pillar to keep it out of head range in a bad rollover. just a couple of degrees difference on both top and bottom. The "door x" has been taken out until chassis completion so that getting in and out of the sides while working on it is about a million times easier....so dont give me any of that more triangulation crap! )

 

[zubz]

Looks good Lee. Sounds like you are doing a lot of different things than that original buggy chassis was designed for. Good to see a pic of the old girl, I kind of miss her.......

The new chassis looks great.

 

[slravene]

I loved that thing...i miss it sometimes too.

it was an awesome buggy. did everything i asked of it and survived my drive by braile tendancies pretty damn well. If you ever get back into the chassis game...you had it pretty well figured out with that one, i wouldnt change much

 

[zubz]

I loved that thing...i miss it sometimes too.

it was an awesome buggy. did everything i asked of it and survived my drive by braile tendancies pretty damn well. If you ever get back into the chassis game...you had it pretty well figured out with that one, i wouldnt change much

Thanks man, that thing was a learning experience. Maybe one day I will build another. There were a bunch of things I would dial in but it was great and I loved driving it. Can't wait to see the new one finished.

 

[slravene]

Got a bit more done this weekend.

Got the back end together and got the bracing in the belly done. Next time we will get the motor, trans, tcase in and start with the fun part!

Have to give it to the guys that coined this idea (the TC tailgate)....this is one TOUGH tube to get right and in one piece. It doesn't look bad...but the multiple planes, angles, and making 6 different tubes line up and be level is not an easy task.

Got the eyebrow bar up to where it needed to be as well. Should give me the right visability. The dash bar looks high here...once we get the motor in we will see where it needs to be and if it needs to move.

another overall side profile shot to see what we have so far. (the door bars are out for the ease of working on it)

 

[Land Crusher]

Man they look awesome, wish I could do that in my garage!

 

[UNCC-CRAWLER]

sumabitch, dagum, mudbuggy leakin' ???

Looks good man, keep up the good work

 

[slravene]

We got the axles and seats mounted in last weekend. Still have to finish up the upper link mounts on the chassis as I was going to re-use some johnny joints on the uppers, but they wont work so I have ordered some more 1.25 heims to go up top just like the ones on the bottom. The bracketry and steering on the front axle will also be relocated a bit to allow for some better uptravel. The rails on this buggy compared to Andy's are a bit narrower and dont play nice with the way the axle is set up. Should have the uppers done and possibly the rear shock mounts in next weekend. Going to also try to get the motor/trans/tcase sat in there and lined up soon as well.

 

[slravene]

oh, and I also took almost 2 inches out of the belly pan to lower things down a bit. With the seats raked a bit as they are, the atlas should still fit under the floor as we originally wanted

At ride height:
Overall height is 72" to the highest point (b pillar)
Belly height is 19"-20"
Wheelbase is ~110"
8" of uptravel in the rear, 7" up front

 

[loganstoy]

Looking good!!!

 

[slravene]

A few little updates so this thread doesnt suck as bad....

well it will probably still suck, but here are some pictures anyway.

We got a decent bit of work done recently. got the seats mounted in, the belly finalized, the lower links mounted and the front uppers done (on the chassis side) as well. The rear uppers will be done soon as well, we just need to adjust the plates a bit to get them to sit where we wanted.

We had a few hangups on the axle ends...I have to drill out all my mounts as the old buggy was all 9/16s hardware and the new one uses 3/4 hardware. Also the upper mounts on both axles will have to change and we will put some sort of trusses on the axles as well (front to lower and re-mount the steering to get the right uptravel for this chassis and the rears becuase i somehow bent them quite a bit....probably doing something retarded)

Here is the rear end started with my mockup links:

We took one of the vertical supports out of the belly as well when we made it shallower and it really cleaned things up. Still need to add back in the diagonal supports:

The front seat mounts started. This is a bit different than on the other buggy and should be alot easier to remove for service (EDIT: not sure about the optical illusion going on there....something doesnt look straight there, but its all square...i think ) :

The front setup. Again, the axle end will change all around on this one. it will go to a bare axle pretty much and then redone to get the triangulation out of the uppers that we want. The chassis side is pretty basic here. We will double shear the uppers in time. I am shooting for about 7" uptravel in the front to match the ORIs.

Then we moved on to the rear.... we got the ORIs mounted up back there and will have 8" - 9" uptravel back here, depending on belly height. The chassis has room for alot more, but we wont use it.

Should have a good departure angle in the end. I plan on adding a "bumper" or sorts back here to stand as a throw away piece to protect the back end of the chassis over time.

Rear stance and such:

 

[slravene]

Here is just a random shot of where the magic happens. Soon enough we will have both buggies to rollers and things should be moving pretty quickly on them both until we get to that tough stage at the end:

Next up is to get the drivetrain dropped in, the rear end filler tubes finished out, and then we can continue on with the interior and such. Once I can find some 14" ORIs for the front, we can continue on with that as well.

So there it is...it sits like this right now and I will try and keep updates after each workday. Its a slow process with only two of us working on it once a week...but we will get there.

 

[farmboy]

Looking damn good. Keep it up. ETA?