Today I worked on the snout end diff mounts. I plan to drill down through the lower square tubes and weld in steel slugs that will act as crush sleeves and spacers.
The vertical support tubes will eventually also support control arm mounts.
I also started working on the foot box end of the side pods. 1" wide masking tape makes for simple layout of tubes that need mitered at non-90-degree angles.
newrider3 said:The engine of choice will be a Suzuki G10 three cylinder, from a Geo Metro. I bought this at a junkyard 4th of July 50% off sale for a different project, but this is now first in line. I can always grab another or two for $100 later.
This engine should be somewhere around 100 lbs fully dressed; in it's partially assembled state I can tote it around the garage by myself.
Once I got the beginnings of the frame tacked together, I had to throw the engine in to see how it's going to fit:
The oil pan may need slight remodeling for diff clearance, depending on adjustments up and down or fore-aft to tune the intermediate driveshaft length between the trans and transfer case. yBut the position looks quite goodlready.
Years ago I built a G10 Miata. For the oil pan I used a G13 pan from a GEO Tracker. I had to cut a section out to shorten the pan to fit the G10 block. All the pan bolt holes will line up. You also need to relocate the dip stick to an undrilled boss in the engine block and lengthen the oil pump pickup. All in all, it is a fairly easy way to build a rear sump oil pan.
In reply to Doc Brown :
I had seen your thread, thanks for the engine choice inspiration! I did forget the tidbit about the Tracker oil pan, thanks for the reminder.
I got the side pods/passenger compartment framed out this weekend. I have a sample seat on the way so I can start seat mounts and related crossmembers before I start triangulating the tunnel.
This is rad.
My initial plan was to use a Suzuki Samurai 5 speed manual trans, since it's the lightest, smallest option, and directly bolts up to the G10. But these have gone from being cheap used parts, to hard to find and expensive due to the cult following behind the Samurai. And an automatic would be a better option for fourwheeling.
I managed to find a 2wd Geo Tracker in the junkyard yesterday with the 3 speed automatic, a fairly rare bird these days itself. This is a GM TH180c or 3L30, so there's no electronic control needed, and it's about the lightest and most compact conventional auto option. Unfortunately it's still quite girthy compared to a manual, so I'm going to have to do some fiddling to get it in and out of my frame's tunnel. The main case is narrow, the pan is quite wide but shallow, so I need a removable access section to allow the pan to drop down under the upper two central frame members.
The larger Suzuki engines share the top two bellhousing bolt locations with the G10, but the lower two are wider set. Here's what the G16 block plate looks like on the G10. This issue has been solved by the Samurai aftermarket with the "Lucky 13" adapter hardware, but I'm not sure if I like their method. I may go with an adapter plate between the block and bellhousing.
The flexplate fits fine. It uses a spacer/spigot adapter, which I can replicate with increased thickness to compensate for any adapter plate thickness.
The trans with converter and flexplate, shifter and cable, and driveshaft ran me $180 with core charges/taxes and fees so this was definitely budget friendly.
I have a 5 speed I might be willing to part with for a cool project if the auto doesn't work out. I also have a couple of spare transfer cases if you get in a bind.
I always wanted to build a samurai with the 3l30.
No super exciting progress, but I did get a Corbeau Baja SS in to start figuring out seat mounts and related chassis components. Mocked up about where it should end up. I think the front two seats will end up on a tilt frame to allow access to battery, fuel tank, and storage under the seats.
What a depressing lack of progress posts lately. Anyway, I backpedalled on my transmission choice when I managed to score a Samurai 5 speed manual on ebay for $150. Got it in yesterday and test fit to the chassis; it's definitely the right choice, it just fits so much better in every dimension.
I also started adding seat rails, going for fixed seat mounting at this point because I couldn't come up with a seat tumble mechanism that I felt was safe. Also worked on some cardboard aided design for rollcage spreader plates.
Wow! This is gunna turn out sweet!
Engine and transmission are hanging in the chassis by their own mounts now.
Quite good shifter placement.
Too many carbs - bad idea, or worst idea?
Added the first bit of triangulation today, many more still to come. I was out of 1" masking tape so I had to switch to beer box CAD.
The cheap horizontal bandsaw makes quick and neat work of angle cuts like this. Getting a nice tight joint with square tubing is super easy, especially compared to the small diameter round tube FSAE chassis I've built in the past.
Not perfect node-to-node triangulation, and this chassis will be a lot of the same. But I feel like it will work out just fine. This particular tube had to clear the CV joint, and it ends up intersecting with the future location of the front shock tower so it's definitely doing some good.
Also cut out and tacked in roll cage spreaders.
Please tell me it will have a rudimentary windshield, headlights and turn signals for street legal abilities?
In reply to 84FSP :
Definitely. I'm moving up to the mountains later this year, and this will be the perfect vehicle for fair weather runs down the canyon into town or further up for exploration on old mining trails.
More tridangles.
The shallow angle miter cuts don't work out on the horizontal bandsaw, so you have to resort to the deathwheel. Results aren't quite as nice but it works.
I like this. I want to see a version where a FWD transalxe (and engine) sit where the center diff is for the crazy gear reduction.
So I've been doing a little of the other kind of CAD, and had some laser cut pieces delivered today.
These ones will get two bends at the slots to become chassis-side control arm brackets. 0.188 plate.
The other two piles become custom front and rear uprights. 0.250 plate steel plate.
I decided to move away from the cast Subaru knuckles which would require some workarounds and geometry compromises. Instead, I'm building fabricated uprights that accept unit bearings from a 2000-up Legacy, at all four corners, allowing me to also run the same CV axle at all four corners.
They will also allow me to run simple bushings at the rear outer control arm pivots, and uniballs at the front outer pivots. They'll look something like this when assembled:
Of course, there are always issues with designing something in cyberspace and then translating it to meatspace with no prototyping:
The front upright side brackets have a larger radius to accomodate some big uniballs, but they interfere with the bell of a 14" wheel. There's definitely meat that can be ground off to provide clearance, but I was thinking about going with 15" wheels anyway.
In reply to newrider3 :
Time for a 3D printer.
Design, print, modify, print, done. Then you know it will work.
How much are you paying for lasered plate like that? Do you have a good online source?
This was an online order through oshcut.com . This was my first time using them, previously I've used sendcutsend.com but they quoted about 30% more expensive for this order. Both sites have instant quote systems, as long as you feed them .DXF files. OshCut has setup fees for each material and charges shipping, but gives better discounts for multiple pieces or multiple parts in one material; while SendCutSend has free shipping and no material setup fee but they don't give price breaks until you get to Qty 10 or more.
For price examples, the control arm brackets in 0.188 were about $16 each, and the upright side plates in 0.250 were about $10 each. Feels worth it to avoid a whole bunch of time on the bandsaw (hand pain) or cutoff wheel (stench of burning abrasive).
Eventually I would like to get my own CNC plasma cutter setup, but I need to build the house and shop to hold it first.
Thanks for the links. Those are not bad prices at all for precision, low quantity stuff.
Is there a reason you didn't tab & slot the upright parts?
In reply to ProDarwin :
Mostly laziness I guess, the only Windows machine in the house capable of running Fusion360 is in the corner of a spare room and crashes constantly, and I didn't want to spend a whole lot of time on it drafting.
Also because I haven't decided if the side plates are going on the top or the side of the hub plate, and I probably won't decide until I bend the hub plate, and without slots/tabs I still have the flexibility to weld it wherever it makes sense later. Also, it will be easier to grind a bevel to get good weld penetration on a straight piece of plate.
A perfect application for tab and slot would've been the inner control arm brackets. I thought I would just put them in the shop press and give them what-for until they were a nice u-shape, and it's going...not well. I've bent two and a half of them and gotten hit in the shins by stuff flying out of the press at least 12 times.
I was trying to avoid a bunch of welding along the back edges but I may just end up grinding some relief cuts to make bending easier.
So this project has been on the back burner due to the new house build and moving process. Now that I'm fairly settled in I'm trying to regain motivation and momentum.
As I'm looking through those nice laser cut parts I posted above, I'm realizing they're basically all scrap. I just can't design stuff using free CAD programs and I can't design assemblies using those programs and just 2D drawings either. I speak Solidworks and that language doesn't translate well to Fusion360.
So, I pieced together a Windows computer since we didn't have a functional PC in the house, paid for a real copy of Windows 10, and luckily my wife is eligible to buy a student edition of Solidworks since she's getting a second bachelor's right now. So now I'm getting all the components I have physically on hand drawn up, adding in some models from McMaster or GrabCad, and starting to draw the new components and assemblies like the suspension uprights and control arm brackets.
The uprights won't crash into the wheel or rotor this time since I'm doing it the right way and designing the assembly top-down.
I'm also crossing my fingers that I might have a CNC plasma cutter in my own garage by the time I'm ready to fabricate these parts.
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