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Re: Ol'fogasaurus black buggy

Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2018 9:11 pm
by Ol'fogasaurus
Thanks "Pile.

The reason for the hard joint is to get the steering shaft into the passenger compartment before I change to universals in order to get the steering wheel and seats to be more in alignment.
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A little off-set is OK but this is more than a little off-set. I've had to move the seats over to the tunnel in order for the seats not to hit the body and wear out the seat cover when the seat is moved to the most forward position.

Re: Ol'fogasaurus black buggy

Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2018 7:25 pm
by Ol'fogasaurus
IMG_0974 copy copy.jpg
I went out and did some rough measuring and this picture is very close to being correct. In the picture I drew several days ago, I show it being mounted on top of the body lift like my blue buggy is but with to body lips to the inside of the body this buggy body it can't be done that way (look at the second picture where my arm is and that is where the lip I am talking about is).

Measuring off the floor the top of the rear hop of the cage the dimension will be ~49" and the down bar will be in the ~40" range and will be very close to a straight line from the long sides of the spreader tube as it sits. On the sand, the rule of thumb is the bottom of the bar s/b ~4" above you head then allowing another 2" for the helmet height when sitting on your k-noggin' before the 4" is measured. This accounts for both dig in and body stretch in a roll over. I think a roll over will be a one time issue as the FG body won't take much more of a beating than that.
IMG_0784.JPG
Again, the dimensions are rough (~) but for the sake of a rough mockup the are going to be relatively close. The straight line from the spreader tube is what surprised me the most.

Re: Ol'fogasaurus black buggy

Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2018 3:00 pm
by Ol'fogasaurus
I've been doing a lot of thinking and a lot of playing based on some ideas I have had.
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This is the angle of the spreader bar as it sits on the shock mount casting. At measuring, the pan sits at 0° on the stands. The spreader bar's angle measurement is something like 53° (its kind of hard to tell even with the door open and a flash light in use).
IMG_0996 copy.jpg
Doing a rough measurement based on the height of the back of the seat off the raised part of the pan in that area (not the foot well), my height over the top of the seat, +4" to the bottom of the cage the angle of a diagonal bar to the 1 X 2 measures out at roughly a +5° angle to the face of the spreader bar.

I don't think 5° is going to be a lot of miss-match so I my current thinking is of making a "saddle mount" for the cage's down bar to sit on. A "saddle mount", in this case, would be a piece of tubing that has a 1 X 2 (or what every material for the spreader bar will be) notch, at a 5° angle, in it so it slips over/straddles the spreader tube and is welded in place. I might have to go to a larger piece of tube than the normal 1 1/2" dia. It could also be a straight on cut match with a 5° angle on the top for the mounting plate to sit on. The tube for the down tube would bolt to the mounting plate or that is what I am thinking about now. Its too cold out there to do much thinking right now.

Still open for suggestions.

Lee

Re: Ol'fogasaurus black buggy

Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2018 7:21 pm
by Ol'fogasaurus
I went up to the salvage yard today to get some mockup materials just to see what could be done in the way I am looking right now. I found that I could get the 1 X 2 in thicker material than I thought. 1 X 2 X .090 wall and I got a foot of it. I also got a foot of 1 X 3 X .120 wall tube but meant to get also get it in .095 wall but it doesn't matter for this mockup. Both were available in up to 1/8th wall tube which is what I needed to know.

I also got two 1' lengths DOM tube: one foot of 1 1/2 X .095 wall and one tube of 1 5/8th X 1/8th wall tube.

I then went to an old friend who runs a machine shop to do some trading for information.
leecar31 - Copy.jpg
For those of you that don't know, this is a souped up Flathead Ford engine (Flathead meaning the intake and exhaust valves are in the block; AKA "valve in block", not the heads). It takes a special tool for working on the valves of which I still had one (the second one I don't know where it walked off to). I asked if he wanted it and yes, his old tool had broken the other day and they could use it. I showed him an ISO (metric) of what I was planning on doing and from him I got some short cut information on how to make the cuts in the tube (so simple I should have thought about it :oops: ) for a saddle mount I was trying to make; my way was making it more difficult :roll: than it needed to be. I will darken up the ISO and post it in the next couple of days.

The machinist, also a VW guy thought that in either size of tube the .095 wall would be strong enough to do what I wanted.

Lee

Re: Ol'fogasaurus black buggy

Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2018 1:39 pm
by Ol'fogasaurus
Scan copy.jpg
This is the Isometric I said I would post. It is not to scale, but just what I am thinking about doing. It is not laid back 53° and size of everything has not been decided upon..

Part "A" would be the top mount plate that the roll cage down bar would attach to. I would have to make two of them for each side of the cage with the second matching size and hole mount plates being used for the down tubes of the cage (more on that later).

Part "B" would be the basic saddle mount that part "A would be mounted on. It has a full depth of the tube opening through the tube mount so it can "straddle" the rectangular tube it will be affixed to. I have two tubes I want look into more one being 1 1/2" and the other being 1 5/8 tube. I have questions about what is commonly being used for roll bars now days. I think it is 1 1/2" but that is from an "old memory" person (1 1/2" inch DOM tube does seem awfully small when looking at it down the bore of the tube)

Part "C" is the bottom plate used to lock the design in place. The idea here is a complete weld to the saddle mount and to the bottom of the tube to make a complete connection to the spreader bar and to keep the legs straddling the tube and not be forced to "splay" out which can happen on a hard hit. Being the "straddle mount" being made from a .095 wall tube the chances of splaying out is probably next to nil... but there is still a chance and I am conservative on safety stuff.

Lee

Update: One of the things I keep forgetting to post is that I run in the sand on the Oregon Coast which is salt infused sand. The sand is thrown up out of the ocean then blown inland by the wind. Yes it does rain but not that much to wipe the sand spic and span of the salt. Also remember that I don't run a windshield due to the amount of salt in the air and having to clean the glass on both sides frequently. I weld tight to keep the rust causing sand out of seams whenever I can. Hence another reason for part "C" and the fully welding the holes/gaps up.

Lee

Re: Ol'fogasaurus black buggy

Posted: Wed Jan 10, 2018 2:49 pm
by Ol'fogasaurus
Not sure how much time I will have in the next few weeks as there is so much maintenance to do at several different places so I am not sure if or when I will be able to cut the tubing to shape.
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This is what I got the other day, one foot of each:

1 X 3 X .125 wall rectangular tube. If I end up wanting to this tall of tube I would choose the .095 wall instead of the one-eighth wall tube. That extra wall weight is really quite noticeable even in a 1' length. It will be good for corner gussets I suspect.

1 X 2 X .095 wall rectangular tube.

1 5/8 X .095 DOM tube.

1 1/2 X .095 DOM tube.
IMG_1001 copy.jpg
These are the tools I will need to get started. For those who don't know, the V-shaped thing is a tool/jig for holding a round piece of stock in a drill press so it can be drilled; in this case drilled straight through.

The common adjustable Tri-square.

The bottom tool is an adjustable Tri-square like the above tri-square but it comes with three different heads to it. This is the head used to find the center of round stock. In this case, I want to be able to mark the center of the tube in the top and the bottom surfaces for alignment in the drill jig so a guide hole can be drilled clear through the tube using a drill press. That is what the channel in the bottom of the jig is for, the pass through for the drill bit.

Re: Ol'fogasaurus black buggy

Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2018 10:58 pm
by dustymojave
See the Baja Bug in my avatar Lee? It has a roll cage from bumper to bumper fabricated by me. Mostly 1.5" x .095" wall. My off road race buggy is mostly 1.5" x .095" wall. It got flipped endo 4x when flat out in high gear and there was no crushing or failure of the roll cage. SCORE rules for a roll cage for a car the weight of your buggy is 1.5" x .095" wall. Most 5/1600 race Baja Bugs have cages made of 1.5" x .095" wall. I hope that you're not building a ROPS (Roll Over Protective Structure) for a 15 ton 3-yard bucket loader.

I don't understand why you feel it necessary to make an additional part or 2. The roll bar brace itself can be the saddle. You don't need the disc. You don't need the short stub for a saddle.

One thing that I feel your education in engineering missed, and it misses a LOT of degreed engineers, is K.I.S.S. "Keep It Simple Stupid. I've worked under the auspices of a few "Engineers" who had no clue about KISS. And I've inspected a number of race cars over the years built by folks with no clue about KISS.

Keep your buggy simple and it will bring you a lot less grief.

Re: Ol'fogasaurus black buggy

Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2018 11:11 pm
by dustymojave
Oh.
BTW. The VW stock shock mount is NOT a "casting". Look at the mold parting lines on the pieces. They are wide. Like 1/4" wide. not 1/16" wide. That width of parting line defines the difference between casting and forging. Those parts are forged. Most everyone calls them castings. But so what? Where it makes a BIG difference is when you go to weld something to those "Castings". Because if they were cast, they would be VERY difficult to weld to. OTOH, as forgings, they weld VERY nicely.

Re: Ol'fogasaurus black buggy

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 10:11 am
by Ol'fogasaurus
K.I.S.S is the word most of the time but, as I said, I have seen so much wrong done plus given some bad advice in the past that I over build at times. You also must remember that I was working with different restrictions starting with 3 "G" and 9 "G" loading then we moved up to 12 "G" with "cribs" (in this case "crib" is a change to the load formula used to determine the mathematics to a higher level for safety. For example the formula used to get 12 G loads with the "crib" the formula would be more equivalent to 16 G s) to 16 "G" designs. I still think "over build" most of the time :oops: :roll: :lol: (seriously). Between my father the electrical engineer, the requirements at work and a the guys I ran around with going to the easy way then having to fix it again and again (assuming they survived... which some didn't) I developed my bad habit.

You are right though, my memory does have it backwards; my memory says that forgings did not weld well and castings do. It is castings you have to cool off slowly so they don't crack not the other way around :oops: . I stand corrected on this. Part of the problem is that my memory remembers that castings are cheaper to do than forgings and since businesses usually go with the cheaper way of doing things... not always the best way.

"I don't understand why you feel it necessary to make an additional part or 2. The roll bar brace itself can be the saddle. You don't need the disc. You don't need the short stub for a saddle. "

As far as the roll cage goes my point is I want the cage to be removable like the cage in my other buggy is so I could remove the body to repair things which I have had to do three times. Working on a glass buggy is so different than working on, say, a Bug as most glass buggies don't have doors so access under the dash it difficult to say the least. If you notice on my builds I try to accommodate that.

As I get more and more ancient it is even harder to crawl under and through the seats and cage to get to things (I almost lost it one time when crawling under the dash on my blue buggy and getting stuck. I was wedged in so bad that panic started when I tried to move) so, to make my "finished" life easier I put changes as I consider them to my "building" life. Looking at what I do should have shown that (remember the "Plan Ahead" and "consider the whole" before and as you get to the smaller parts of the "whole").

Welding the cage in place would be easier but I also didn't want to have big holes in the body drilled for pass-through tubing; which I have now have pretty much now resigned to somewhat based on your kind input... "to somewhat based" is based on the first connector shown here: https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=ro ... ORM=IQFRBA Again, the first one is what I have in mind but some of the other ones shown here I had not seen before.

The S-glass body I have is not one of those old style "thick" F/G ones so I am sure I am going to have to remove the body to do some damage control. While it could be done with the body on the pan the "wing" style of fenders I am looking at as being a potential problem for cracking. I am going to have to reinforce them before too long as there is already a crack in the front of one of them. I bumped into something when moving the body around on it's dolly. IOW, plan ahead! :wink: :roll: :lol:

More than you wanted to know I think.

Lee

I took the "N" out of INOW so it now reads "in other words" (IOW).

Re: Ol'fogasaurus black buggy

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 6:39 pm
by dustymojave
I'm claustrophobic Lee, and getting worse about it as I grow older. So I understand concerns about small tight spaces.

I have "seen" your buggy with a removable bolt-in roll cage, or at least roll bar, from the time you started sharing the project on here. I've tried to make suggestions with that in mind. You do NOT have to cut large holes in the body to install a roll bar. Just like a roll cage in a Baja Bug. Or a roll cage in a Toyota pre-runner truck. Or a 34 Ford lakes coupe. Only bolt holes. That's all that has to actually pass through. One plate on each side of the panel with generally 4 bolts per plate sandwich. 3/8" bolts, Gr. 5 minimum. The plates do not have to be perpendicular to the axis of the tube, either. Far simpler and far less expensive than the fancy stuff you linked to. And those are NOT well adapted to passing through the body shell. They are far better suited to situations were the tube with a junction is out in the wide open where it can be moved out of alignment to assemble or dis-assemble the joint. Most of those tube junctions pieces are not well designed anyway and I would disapprove them in Tech Inspection. They don't have enough engagement with the tube they get welded to. Little more than a simple butt joint in ALL of them. A proper design would include an extension of at least 2x the tube diameter into the tube for rosette welds.

Yes, fender support braces are more than strongly recommended. I suggest round tube with tabs of thin (16ga.) flat stock. Passing the roll bar or cage through the body will support the body quite a bit.

Planning a head is good. We all need one. :wink: Some of us need a good spare.

Re: Ol'fogasaurus black buggy

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 10:47 pm
by Ol'fogasaurus
dustymojave wrote: Fri Jan 12, 2018 6:39 pm I'm claustrophobic Lee, and getting worse about it as I grow older. So I understand concerns about small tight spaces.

I have "seen" your buggy with a removable bolt-in roll cage, or at least roll bar, from the time you started sharing the project on here. I've tried to make suggestions with that in mind. You do NOT have to cut large holes in the body to install a roll bar. Just like a roll cage in a Baja Bug. Or a roll cage in a Toyota pre-runner truck. Or a 34 Ford lakes coupe. Only bolt holes. That's all that has to actually pass through. One plate on each side of the panel with generally 4 bolts per plate sandwich. 3/8" bolts, Gr. 5 minimum. The plates do not have to be perpendicular to the axis of the tube, either. Far simpler and far less expensive than the fancy stuff you linked to. And those are NOT well adapted to passing through the body shell. They are far better suited to situations were the tube with a junction is out in the wide open where it can be moved out of alignment to assemble or dis-assemble the joint. Most of those tube junctions pieces are not well designed anyway and I would disapprove them in Tech Inspection. They don't have enough engagement with the tube they get welded to. Little more than a simple butt joint in ALL of them. A proper design would include an extension of at least 2x the tube diameter into the tube for rosette welds.

Yes, fender support braces are more than strongly recommended. I suggest round tube with tabs of thin (16ga.) flat stock. Passing the roll bar or cage through the body will support the body quite a bit.

Planning a head is good. We all need one. :wink: Some of us need a good spare.
Some of what you have said I agree with but some of it is in disagreement with what I have been told by others (I do ask more than a lot of questions besides here). Confused! I was told metal bodies are one thing but a FG body, especially this thin one I have would/may not work with the plates on each side as with any pan or body movement even at an angle parallel to the body there could be damage to the area (even on a metal body the two opposing clamping plates must be of at least slightly different overall sizes otherwise any movement can cause the body metal to flex, worry, fatigue then fail. This happened to the Extreme Off-road builder on one of his builds several years ago then he made a big deal over it which was the proper thing for him to do (something I had learned long before that). I don't mind making mistakes then getting called out on it. I appreciate it and if other learn... so much the better.

If you look at some of the earlier parts of this build I was working on, especially in the front beam to the front firewall cage I had that in mind and I think I showed it or at least talked about it (I think I did anyway :? The first join in the pictures was the disconnect join I was thinking of using to attach the upper beam support from the firewall join bar to the front hoop.

I think I still need to have the seal around the pan and the body lift to keep the salt water out (yes, there are puddles in the sand and wet sand on the beach)... or at least I think I need to. One of the reasons for the body lift, besides clearance, was to help eliminate some of the pan flex and twisting when going off-road that, with no body w/roof, will do. I think I can still feel some of it in the blue buggy w/cage and body lift added. Part of the problem there is with the frame head not being supported like I plan on doing with this one.

As I have said before, the VW junk yards say that they often see the pan (they were more talking about the tunnel) sag between the Napoleon's hat and the shifter hole due to loss of support when the body w/its roof is gone. I also think, as tight as I can get everything bolted together there still might be some movement or at least that is some of my concern with the body cracking. As you say, I might have over thought the problem and be worried about nothing but if I don't do it and stuff does crack or other things happen that I have thought about then I would be upset with myself over that especially if it happens to someone else who inherits or buys it (I'd probably turn over in the Bar-b-que :wink: ).

" Most of those tube junctions pieces are not well designed anyway and I would disapprove them in Tech Inspection. They don't have enough engagement with the tube they get welded to. Little more than a simple butt joint in ALL of them. A proper design would include an extension of at least 2x the tube diameter into the tube for rosette welds."

Some of this I wondered about. I had never looked this up before and was shocked to just how many designs there were. I didn't spend a lot of time looking at them but the search was based on roll bars/cage: something for some later time. Thanks for that information.

Lee

Re: Ol'fogasaurus black buggy

Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 8:47 am
by Ol'fogasaurus
I think I may have gotten “Hoist by one’s own petard” (Shakespeare https://www.thefreedictionary.com/hoisted+by+own+petard) Basically I got so involved in other things I ignored the obvious (it didn’t “sink in” even when I was dealing with it on other things) or in other words I got nailed by my own “prejudicial thinking” which is something I had warned about.

After talking to Dusty here and via email and thinking about it I caught myself missing something very important: In my blue buggy the cage is mounted to the body lift so it is very much stronger than if I mounted it directly to the pan. This is doable on most of the buggy bodies I have seen as the top of the sides of the body are formed outward to become part of the fenders. In the black buggy it is the opposite, they bend in probably to about the same distance as the body to pan mount (pictures to be added later). The forming of the top of the sides is necessary for strength but I missed/ignored this difference, even though it had an effect in other things I was doing. This is known as “Prejudicial Thinking” and it something I had advised against not too long ago ( :oops: !).

In one of the pictures I had modified to show the rear hoop and the down bars to the spreader bar (to support the truss bar, the fuel tank mounts and add some structure to the shock mounts) I had stopped the drawing of the rear hoop at the body mount and said in text that it actually would go to the floor of the pan (I even measured the floor in that area to see if it could be done then ignored it [prejudicial thinking again]) so now I have to start over somewhat as far as the cage goes.

I still like the spreader bar for what it will do for support. I also will finish the additional protection of the torsion assembly via the additional torsional mount to protect the end of the torsion tube. I still plan to use the “saddle mount” idea as I think it is good (the cap at the bottom of the saddle mount is there only to keep sand and salt from getting up inside of the saddles Dusty). It is the cage that is going to take some head work now.

On glass buggies, unless you want to hack the heck out of the body you have some limitations but I think this body is going to have more limitations in order to be as safe as I want it to be. Most glass body cage setups I have seen have the cage mounted to the floor, sometimes on a pair of tubes that are on the floor parallel to the side of the pan. Then the hoops bend out a bit before going straight up to do their business. My black buggy body will not allow this. One of the gains is the addition of side bars could now be done; there has to be some good in everything although sometimes it is hidden, at least for a while anyway.

Anyway FYI.

Lee

Re: Ol'fogasaurus black buggy

Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 11:13 am
by Ol'fogasaurus
The pictures.
Dune Buggy rebuild (1) copy.jpg
This should give you an idea of how my blue buggy and the cage work.
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This is the front of the passenger compartment. You can see here, as compared to the picture above that the structural flange fold to the inside vs. the outside on the blue buggy.

That formed area is for strength and it is where the windshield frame attaches.
IMG_1005 copy.jpg
This is the rear of the black buggy's passenger compartment. You can see that part of the area is a bit complicated and yes, there is a crack in the mounting flange. This was done the other day when I tried to move the body off the pan and onto the dolly by myself. The area has been repaired from both a bad build of the body itself, where the flanges were not anywhere near flat, and I had this body mounted to an 091 trans setup hence the large hole. The glass repair was thin but ready for the strong stuff to be added. I still have a lot of flange fixing on the body left to do.

Lee

Re: Ol'fogasaurus black buggy

Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 12:56 pm
by Ol'fogasaurus
IMG_1009 copy.jpg
A possibility? Did a lot of moving and measuring but not sure yet but still working on it.

The tape marks are the forward and rear position of the seats. The white tape is the seat in the forward most position and the blue is the seat in the rear most position. The lip of the seat is still in the way and the seat is moved as far to the middle as possible. The rear diagonal brace to the body lift may have to move back to where the rear white or maybe the blue tape is. The seats have about 6 1/2" of travel, for what it is worth. Darn "Big Butt" seats!

The front hoop is at the location of the dash. The front hoop could be slightly to the rear of where I have it.

Re: Ol'fogasaurus black buggy

Posted: Thu Jan 18, 2018 8:06 pm
by Ol'fogasaurus
Dusty and I have been talking off-line a bit about my black buggy and the cage. He has been a great help not only in ideas but just being able to talk to someone about it and get other ideas. Something I was used to do at work... when I did work anyway so many years ago :roll: .
4535998 copy.jpg
I got this picture off TOS many years ago so I don't know who to give the credit to for the build and potential idea. I don't want to cut my body up anymore than I have already plus I would like to be able to separate the body and the cage for separate removals in order to do work on either but again... this is a potential idea/location for the front hoop. I think this build is more of a windshield frame but since the other photos of it do not show more detail so I am not sure it is anything more than just a windshield frame mounted tot he cowl of the body; e.g., structure beneath the body attaching to the pan.

What it does do is to move the A-pillar/hoop forward from where I can reasonably put it without cutting holes in the body: I wouldn't have to cut aa couple of relief holes in the body in a location up by the front bend in the pan (where a door would be assuming that there was a Bug body on the pan). That is a distance of ~7" to 10" + another 4 1/2" back to not have to cut the body at the radius from the dash to the basic body (the buggy body is a 3-piece design). The measurements are taken more or less fore and aft (e.g., front to rear) parallel to the tunnel.

Dusty also brought up my idea again that I had of making a side plate kind of what could be called a "crash barrier" like they have on the roads . One of the problems is that I can't mount the cage on the body lift like my blue buggy; the reason being it is so close to the side walls of the body that neither an "X" bar or a V style of door bar could be used due to room restrictions. Most of the problem is the flanges on the "Big Butt" seats even when they are mounted as far to the center of the pan as possible. With the cage mounted on the floor I might be able to use the "V" style of door bar if the bottom of the center of the "V" was mounted on the body lift but that is a long gap in the middle. The "crash barrier" design would be made from a flat plate that is flanged horizontally facing outboard then bead rolled between the flanges would absorb some of the energy if there was a side hit above the body lift to protect the occupants.

Anyway, some of what has been going on. Thanks for the ear and ideas Dusty.