ugh, not again already

[cbeck]

Long time listener, first time caller. Back in the 80's I bad a 70 baja, then a 64 !/2 baja, then a 63 lowrider. My wife let me drag home a deceased buddies rail, a older beeline cobra in bad shape with a locked up motor. In one years time it went from this,to this in a years time. Hope to cut in half and start rebuilding in the next week or so. Does not appear to let me load a second pic.

[Marc]

Looks like a fun project. How's the front end and brakes?
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=127818

[Steve Arndt]

Welcome.
I've seen a bunch of cool beeline rails on the dunebuggy junkies facebook group. All crazy mofoz from your area.

[jimmyhoffa]

So what's the story? Did you figure a plan to fix up the back half?

I'm glad to see you over on this side. This is where the crazy stuff happens. People ripping apart their own transaxles on the regular, full-homebrew Oxyboxers, ridiculous scratch-builds, highly experienced moderators giving out incredibly useful trade secrets to make life easy on the DIY-er, artistic welding experts, etc.

I like it here because it's quiet, but when something does happen it's often worth watching. The quality density of the content here is solid.

Get it buttoned up soon! Here's a little local motivation. Just a short hike from your house...

[cbeck]

Man, somebody is going to have to hold my hand on this picture thing over here, I gather my pics are too big?
Marc, beam is just fine and maybe for sale, Ball joint, discs, only 2 k miles,see budget.
Budget, 6500 to 7k. Needs,
suspension seats
motor work
4 or 5 sticks 120 dom
wants,
different final drive ratio, type 1 or 3rib, currently have good single side cover and bad double cover type 1.
remote fill fuel cell
stroker motor
3x3, got to figure trans type before ordering axles.
6 wider beam, even if I run out of money I'll widen my ball joint for now. Do I have to go rack/pinion to do this?
Frame
cut in half and see if torsion or just a arm is bent
add double roll bar, probably taller, need seats first
convert to a packrat style with a little more room between motor and engine cage, possibly could have saved my motor
lots of x bracing
motor
minimum 2054. that should require crank, rods, and a case. Do they sell b stroke 94 pistons only? Will they fit in a a stroke cylinder? 2276 sounds good for cheap. Wish list also has a good set of heads.Budget is getting tight.
Jimmy, what color are you doing, and am I going to be done before you? My plates are due in September.

[jimmyhoffa]

I'm a little too meticulous, you'll probably beat me. I have driven it quite a bit though!

You don't necessarily have to convert to rack and pinion when you widen the beam, but it sure as heck is sweet. When it warms up to single-IDF-Weber weather, you can drive mine and convince yourself.

Don't forget if the budget is tight, cut the bearing carriers out of your IRS arms and make some 3x3s or 2.5x2.5s on my jig. My thread on here shows how I use it.

Also, I for sure have 94mm AA brand A-stoke (STD.-ish pin height) in my 1915 I built.

I'm going Charcoal Gray for sure.

[Marc]

...Do they sell b stroke 94 pistons only? Will they fit in a a stroke cylinder? ...

Cylinders are the same, unless you're building a long-rod motor (in which case longer barrels are available which can be machined to ideal length instead of using thick spacers under the "standard-length" ones). Here's a set of AA 94Bs if your jugs are still good.
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/classifieds/ ... id=1094257

[Leatherneck]

cbeck welcome to the dirt pile. Look over this link and see if it helps you on the pics. viewtopic.php?f=28&t=127838

Good to see another rail come aboard, cool stuff. Ask any questions you need, help out where you can.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Welcome. When you get the widened beam put the trailing arms and spindles on the beam without the spring stacks. Make some temp tie rods then run the suspension through its full travel and that includes turning to both the right and left at full compression and at full hang. You should find some interesting things including a very long tie rod which could also flex.

You could move the stock steering box over to the center and locate its mounting angle to give the best angles to eliminate as much suspension problems as you can including the possibility of the long tie rod hitting the upper tube of the frame. You will have to modify the pittmman arm also.

By going to a center tie rod mount rack you would get more travel potential than you would get with an end tie rod mount rack. You still would still have to mount the rack properly but the end game would be so much better right off the bat rather than doing it later on. You could also add electric assist at the same time if you wanted.

The steering shaft, in either case, would have to be modified when going to a center location.

I hope this helps.

Lee

[Marc]

...You could move the stock steering box over to the center... You will have to modify the pittmman arm also...Lee

Good point, on a stock Pitman arm the effective radius of the LH & RH side is different - if you don't whack/reweld it to even things out, one wheel will always turn sharper than the other when you move the steering box to the center.

The VW trailing-arm suspension requires the longest-possible tierods to minimize bump steer (ideal length would be infinite) so if you choose to go with an R&P setup, get off on the right foot with a center-load type.

It just so happens that a stock anti-sway bar fits nicely inside a stock tierod; this spring-steel insert makes a huge improvement in the ability to survive a hard knock, and if you're going to be making a longer tierod by welding two together this'll let you get away with that. Trade-off is that one of the ends may be the first thing to fail so carrying spares is even more important.

If you choose to use this trick, make sure that the inserted swaybar chunk is short enough that the tierod ends won't bottom out against it when you're adjusting the toe-in. Worst-case, that could cause a huge stress riser that'd make the tierod snap off with little provocation.

[dustymojave]

Wow...4 to 5 sticks? That's nearly enough to build a complete frame. Just what is bad about the existing frame? Or is it not bad, but not the way you like?

And why .120 wall? Beeline and most all of the buggy frame manufacturers use .095 wall and it works just fine. My 1.5" x .095 wall with 1" x .065 wall lacing Hi Jumper got quadruple-endoed when flat out in high gear during a race in 1984 with no permanent frame damage. I still have it and the frame is just fine still. But I have a 5-1600 race Bug with the cage made of .120 wall that the B-pillar hoop bent to the side when it was rolled because the diagonal was not done right. The bottom end of the diagonal fastened to the upright nearly a foot up from the bottom and the cage tweaked in that area below the diagonal. Proper design of the frame or cage cannot be properly overcome with heavier wall tube. Light can be stronger than heavy.

[cbeck]

If stock box will do for a year or two, that is one of those future winter upgrades. Are they ever really finished? I've got some left over 1x.125 I would use on new tierods. 99% street use planned.
The part that worried me the most was the hoop over passenger head started compressing on top where the roof and rear down bars came together while the rear down bar weld started tearing on the bottom. I want to remove the start of a front brace and raise it enough to allow me to raise dash bar a couple inches, to be determined after suspension seats are mounted.[also its leftover po ugly] The steering shaft is currently about 1/4'' below brace. With front brace, double roll bar and x brace, properly located shoulder harness bar, and entire rear clip packrat style, I,ve already added up over 60'. Front bumper pieces, engine cage, and nerfbars used the better part of 2 sticks. Now here's a good one I've never seen addressed in a forum, crumple zones. I don't want cockpit to become the easiest area to crumple. Would I be best to use 120 around cockpit area and 095 for the rest so it crumples first?
Talked to my engine/trans guy. Decided to go up to 2054 from 1915. My 1915 still runs, but after the exhaust got dented by pulley it has lower oil pressure when warm now. With the extra machining and trial assembling required for a 82, I would rather use budget somewhere else, like the trans or some better heads. Going to lose the ssc trans W/3.88 r@p and rebuild my dsc trans. 4.12 r@p should get the 400 to 500 rpm increase at cruise that I want, currently with the ssc its about 3000 rpm @ about 65 mph. Going with a super dif, welded 3/4 gear, hd side covers, and a few other little things.
If some of you need to be brought up to speed, I was punted off the road by a drunk driver in a ram 1500 4x4, who then left the scene. Lucky bastard, unlucky me, he did not get a dwi, only excessive bac even tho police report states alcohol was involved.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

You probably already know about this but just in case you didn't.

No sag in bars! If ya gottem get rid of them. The rule of thumb on the soft sand it the bottom of the bars to be 4" above the head with the helmet on.

Bad welds... fix them and gusset them.



"X" bars in the rear hoop that go from top to bottom.

viewtopic.php?f=28&t=105659&start=75

Side bars we recently talked a bit about in my blue buggy sting. After a holiday on the dunes (we did not go out but did see the medic trucks heard the helicopters landing) with all the new side x sides out there with newbies at the wheel the subject came up.

Since it is a glass buggy, which is similar to a rail in ways, but more unprotected because of the restrictions put on fixing it by the body. More discussion on previous pages but there might be something you could use for thinking about. After playing with the sketch I now wish I had put holes in for the 4 fasteners that are in the rear crosspiece. This way I could have bolted a strip in then gusseted it to the bolts and the rear cage hoop. Some gain maybe would be had to belt high side hits.

For what it is worth.

Lee

[cbeck]

Uh-oh, I might have figured this out.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

WHANG! Is there a frame jig around?

You've got a lot of straight to get back straight. Was that in a rear ended type of hit or a slide into home type of hit? From the second pix, the top looks like it could be racked quite far forward.