Lee's ride

[bajaherbie]

hurry up.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Hoibie; I already dood it, it looks good but the same end problem comes up: I tain't got no top to spread the loads around so even with the HD body lift I still get some twisting of the main part of the pan which may or may not affect the holes in the body. I'm trying to keep body damage to a minimum.

The sketch is on a 4 X 6 piece of yellow post it note so I would have to re-do it on white paper so I could scan it. Do you want me to do that or will you take my word for it.

[uh60ce]

I didn't think about the whole body flexing problem... silly me !
I know with my glitterbug It flexes some, so I can see your concern with cutting holes in it. If you added enough tubing to solve all the flex problems you'd have one crazy jungle gym on wheels. ..or a rail

[Ol'fogasaurus]

I didn't think about the whole body flexing problem... silly me !
I know with my glitterbug It flexes some, so I can see your concern with cutting holes in it. If you added enough tubing to solve all the flex problems you'd have one crazy jungle gym on wheels. ..or a rail

(not enough laughing faces for the end of the last sentence!)

I really do enjoy driving the buggy on the sand and, as soon as I stepped into the buggy after the body lift, I immediately could feel the difference... a lot of the flexing that I really hadn't noticed that much had stopped. Kids like to see it also as it reminds them of speed buggy; they are just unusual to see out on the dunes. Every once-in-a-while you might see one or two of them but not many anymore.

As I said, the cage on a buggy or probably most rails are not designed for side loads/hits just fore and aft loads and even then, some of the rails are questionable.

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Now you know why all the cracking and crazing of the gelcoat on buggies. I was looking for something on web the other day and I ran into a very old picture of a buggy and guess what; they also had a piece of square tube going down the body mount channel like I do on my black buggy. "It looks like its Deja Vu all over again" (the late Yogi Berra)



The piece of square tube they used was extruded as it had sharp corners not rounded corners and it looked to be thinner in material but the idea was the same.

Lee

[uh60ce]

That was very common back in the days when these things were being made. Both of my fiberglass buggies have that square tube in the channel. It does help with some of the flexiness but doesn't stop all of it obviously.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

When I first got the buggy idea it was suggested that I replace the body mount tunnel with a 1 X 3 or 2X4 tube and be done with it but I didn't weld at the time (and it could be said I still don't). After the long fight with what ever was put on the pan to glue the two layers of carpet down even a prowelder was not able to make things stick. What a log battle it was and I still don't understand what was in the zinc, weld through primer that drew what ever it was out of the metal on the lower part of the tunnel.

Things are going swimmingly which means I am drownding in money going out to get it to where I would feel comfortable selling it to someone.

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

hurry up.

I am still thinking about it but I think I will end up doing a couple of pages of sketches on it as the more I think about it the more involved it would be but... if I could do all the machine work, that would make me almost even with CWB and his build!

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

While trying get back to sleep this am my mind got started working and I ended up working on the side bar design I have been playing with when I came up with a problem. In order to keep the cage removable it turns out the only easy fix would be to reverse a couple of the mounting parts on the cage which I am not too happy about but, right now I can see no other way to fix the problem reasonably so... for now, it has to be done.

My note pad with the original sketch is getting pretty filled up so I think I am going to have to end up drawing it out whether I want to or not.

It is looking like this will probably be our last year Snowbirding so the Motorhome will also go. We just aren't using it enough anymore to justify keeping it. If I can get rid of the black buggy also, that will mean that the blue buggy can come home and get the proper upgrading it needs which probably means a body off chase again.

I do need to find another good BJ beam to put adjusters on, hook a pins in and beef up the shock towers so I can use the Thing setup I put together a couple of years ago. I am still tripping over the bucket they are in . I am still playing with the idea of a through rod on top and keep the bottom leaf stack or I hear there is a 15% stronger leaf pack available and replace the bottom (the working stack) leaf stack with it. That might soften up the ride and allow better frontend contact with the ground.

I could change over to K&L but then I would need new spindle mounts and then, what the heck, go to R&P .... Mom, make the pain stop!

I would also like to change the seats over to suspension seats like Clone Bug has but that is going to require some other changes in the same area as the cage is in. Never stops does it.

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Since I won't see my buggy for about a month could someone get me a rough measurement. It has to be from a short wheel base buggy; I am assuming here that what I want is close enough to other buggies to be of some help. The lines at the bottom are roughly where my cage sits and what I think I need it a rough angle where the arrow is on the side entrance of the body.

I am still playing, off and on, with the exterior side bar and if it is possible to hide and still work enough to be of some help in a T-bone type of collision.

Lee

[uh60ce]

I'll take some measurements off of mine if it'll help. Its a short wheel base.
By angle I'm assuming you mean the angle of the body at that location correct?


I get 41" across the bottom edge of the body from the back corner to where the pan begins to bend in.
The angle of the body on mine is 7° . just playing around with the picture of your buggy I get an angle of about 10-15° approx.

Hope that helps some.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Thanks, that tells me a lot. I had hoped that they would be closer as so many of the bodies out there were mofidied splashes of the origional and modified or mods off mods. I keep running into Aw $#its on this. I'm still not sure if it is worth all the work as the pan and cage are not really designed for side hits. Not enough material to stop an angry quad or SXS at speed.

I've seen a couple of exoframe buggies lately and they were not designed for side hit at all. I am not sure they were well designed for fore and aft support either. Too much missing from their bridging. All I saw was a fence gate/target.

I'm in a period of not being able to do much; waiting to have more tests done. Heart has pretty much been ruled out and not they are looking at GI, as I understand it, heart and GI can have similar symptoms. Add to that I tried to divide my right thumb into two equal parts on the bandsaw.

Lee

[CentralWAbaja]

.......... Add to that I tried to divide my right thumb into two equal parts on the bandsaw.

Lee

How did that work out for you? Let me guess, it was not equal parts so the sewed it up for another try at a later date?

[Ol'fogasaurus]

.......... Add to that I tried to divide my right thumb into two equal parts on the bandsaw.

Lee

How did that work out for you? Let me guess, it was not equal parts so the sewed it up for another try at a later date?

(read a long chuckle here)

I finally took the bandages off today to give it some fresh air and while it looks bad it may not be as bad as I origionally thought as I didn't go to the Dr. (when I came in my wife showed me the bill for the tests I had just had and when I called the insurance company to check on it, they said the charges were correct and that there had been a change to the contract that they had already notified me of. I then told here I couldn't affored to get the stitches put in now ).

There is an old saw that if something that should hurt but doesn't hurt then you got problems. Well, it didn't hurt that much and I think it (my thumb) was so surprised that it didn't bleed at first (another sign something is bad) so I put pressure on it with a paper towel or two, cleaned up most of the mess (I left the blood splattered all over the place to impress my wife... which she ignored as she was playing a game on her phone which was more important I guess! ) which included putting my tools away and rolling the bandsaw back into it's place then I went in and cleaned up.

The funny thing about it was that while the material I was cutting wasn't thick nor was it thin, the saw was cutting through it quite quickly. When the bandsaw blade made contact with my thumb the blade jammed which put a big load on the motor giving me time to turn it off and then pull my thumb out when the pressure of the blade was released (does that make sense?). When it did start to bleed then you could see where each of the teeth of the blade were as that is where the ozzing started. Very weird but then you had to be there to see it unfold (pun intended). I think what also happened was that I was pushing the stock with my thumb and I think some of the stopping of the blade may have been helped by the stock and I think my thumb rolled a bit so the cut looks longer and deeper than it probably is. Nasty and jagged looking though.

Anyway, when putting pressure on my triangles (doing a layout of the problem I am working on) the bleeding would start up again and the bandages would allow the triangles to move as I couldn't get proper pressure on them and the bandages did not have proper traction.

The angle part that I was asking for was more of a passing interest but it also changes things about (length of the brackes) as they are now going to be at an angle, assuming I do this, and have to be longer than they would if they were 90-degrees to the cage. Since the cage, in the rear, isn't 90-degrees then that also can make a difference.

The idea here is to plan ahead and cut your thumb once.

Lee

[bajaherbie]

reminds me of the time I let a fingertip roll thru the back of my 4 x 24 belt sander....

I didn't even look at it, just wrapped it up and took the rest of the morning off. took a few months for the fingerprint to reappear.