Ol'fogasaurus black buggy

[Ol'fogasaurus]

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Oops! The engine cage is not what I am using that for, it is for the bottom mount for the Truss/Kaffer bar.

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It is the lower holes on each side and maybe the smaller top holes that I am planning on using and yes, I should have a spacer where that bolt is under head loading that is causing the threaded area to bend. Been like that for years but since it is still in the building stage I have been too lazy to finish it off. Too many other things!

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This shows what that rear mount looks like compared to the one I am using now.

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My blue buggy's cage top tube bolts to the shock tower and the bottom two tubes bolts on, via a piece of flat stock to the bottom lip of the engine mount which is what I am planning on using on the black buggy.

This is a bus into bug solid engine mount so it is a bit different than the stock bug solid engine mount on my blue buggy; it doesn't have the second set of holes to the side and a bit lower than the black buggy does.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

I went up to the fastener store and got two 3/4" grade 8 bolts, 4 washers and two nuts. I got them home and tried them on the mount and while they will work there needs to be some relieving of the welded flanges for the pickle forks which I am kind of loathe to do. When looking at things I got looking at things with a little less prejudicial eyes and thought when I noticed something that was in plain sight and I had just talked about.

A bunch of pictures that I took when playing around with things.

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What I was planning on doing was to make a new bracket that would use the 3/4" bolt hole at the bottom and the 3/8" bolt hole at the top but the bend would be in-line with the bend of the motor mount. Complicated but doable.

It then hit me, there was that bolt that holds the top strap in place that needs a spacer added (actually two, one for the other side) and it could be usable!

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Another view of what I was originally planning on doing.

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I decided to relook at just using the bottom hole and for some reason now (nothing had changed) the diagonal bar, instead of being one finger width away from the boot, now contacts it so this verified the idea of moving things up on the motor mount.

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Then I got another idea to see why the location was not good for what I wanted to do but OK for the Truss bar kit that hooked to the shock mount (obvious because of the width angle and the shock tower sits behind the spreader bar I am making but I was also looking for any other reasons). After I decided to put the truss bar back in place I noticed something weird!

When I had first marked the location of the connection for the diagonal bars I had them further out to the end of the spreader and asked for opinions. Dusty recommended than I moved them in further so I took a look and the pictures show the marking for where I decided to put them.

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Look at the overlay of locations (and I mean a real big shock). They are so close together it is like I had planned it this way but I hadn't!

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I move the bracket up to the top of the motor mount again and looked hard as using only the 3/8" bolt hole on the face of t he motor mount and also use the bolt at the top of the bracket which also would/could stiffen up the motor mount some.

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A side view and notice how much more room there is between the boot and the diagonal tube.

I'm going to do some more playing with this idea to see if it really works and how much work it is going to take to do.

I still have to make up my mind on the angle of the spreader but for now I think I will probably go for the 66° modification.

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

I think this is the direction I am heading now.

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I reset the angle of the spreader to 65° then bent the flat piece I had been using to mockup what I was doing at some angle (angle ???) I then laid a length of 1" square tubing on it and clamped it in place. The other end is sitting on the flat part of the motor mount. The angle of the diagonals as it sits now is ~22° (~ is a mathematical term that means roughly or approximately).

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This is what I am currently thinking of making using the two surfaces of the motor mount. I will add one more hole to match the existing 3/8th hole in the mount to give some extra support. Since the bolts are going to be short and probably fully threaded I will use Grade 8 bolts as the threads will be in shear and/or in tension.

I had a couple of lengths of 1/8th in flat stock to make the brackets out of.

The question now is: is the 1 X 2 X 0.095 wall tube strong enough or should I go to the full 1/8th wall tube. I am (hopefully) expecting that the spreader bar will transmit any bottoming out shock loading out of the pickle forks up through and into the down tubes of the cage to spread some of that loading forward via the cage.

I don't think I have ever bottomed out enough to touch the pickle forks but that problem is always a possibility.

Lee

[dustymojave]

In the long run, I don't consider the 1/8" strap to be adequate, yet you're concerned about the 1x2.

But the horizontal angle of those braces gets less and less effective for bracing anything.

I still say I would have the cross bar over the bell housing for strength. But I don't know where the rear "firewall" is located in that fiberglass body. Nor how high the rear "shelf" is nor how wide it is. It's tough to engineer a design when you're not exposed to all the parameters.

In other words, Lee...We need mas info.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

I went out to get some measurements' and got into trouble when while moving the pan away from the body one corner of the pan fell off one of the jack stand. It was a pain to get the whole thing level again.The back of the body leans back at 70° which starts about 8 inches back from the body lift.

I don't have any pictures to show you but the bend in the back wall ends about 8" behind the body lift. The cross-piece/spreader bar is about 13.5 inches behind the inboard side of the 1 1/2 X 3 X 0.095 body lift which is sitting at ~65° on the shock mount forging but I am not attaching anything to that other than the spreader bar.

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Again, I drew this using a photo editing program. That is two 1/8th pieces of flat stock (or a cut 1/8th wall rectangular tube and the bend flat stock) to hold one end of the spherical rod end. I expect to do something similar at the spreader bar.

The mounts for the commercial Truss Bar are 1/8th inch so I thought that should be sufficient but the rear mount may be doubled being of a two piece design. The strap on the spreader bar goes all the way across the 2" face at an angle and the down bars of the cage will end up sitting close to the Truss mount allowing some potential loading back up into the cage.

The angle of the bend on the engine mount looks to be something like 20° and the one on the spreader bar will be 65° (off from vertical) + ~ a roughly 20° or so to be somewhat in alignment to the mount on the motor mount; it looks close to those measurements' anyway.

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This was the third shot of my mock up today. The question is mostly for the spreader and if I really need to go to an .125 wall tube. I think I have a 1 X 3 X 0.095 wall tube here or it won't take long to get one.

The scrap material shown in the mockup is thin and only there for mock up bending purposes. The cross strap is off the buggy right now to see about the mount. The two upper mounts (one per side) of the Truss strap will fill in the gap that is shown in the previously posted pictures.

Lee

[dustymojave]

And what happens to clearance between the axle shaft and CV/Boot when the suspension is cycled up? As in Bump! If at full droop you're having interference issues, it would seem that in bump you're going to have some more serious issues.

"The back of the body leans back at 70° which starts about 8 inches back from the body lift."
So the rear "firewall" is just a little aft of the torsion housing? What is in that space that would keep you from making structure behind the gas tank to support the frame horns and shock mounts?

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Sorry about being late in responding but we just got back from doing 4 days of work in 2 days cleaning up my brother-in-laws house. Three of us and 5 trips to Goodwill (for a total of 13 trips, he didn't throw things away, and 2 trips to the library to take coffee table books for their book sale). We are pooped!!!!!

The body is off for a while so I can finish up other things. I have about 4 or 5 things all going on at the same time and they are either tightly or loosely tied together or dependant on each other.

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That whole area behind the back of the firewall is open is pretty much open and there is room on top of the spreader bar I am building (I think I am going to change to the 0.120 wall rectangular tube just to be overly cautions; as I said in an earlier post I was planning on using it as part of the fuel tank mount as well as also using the landing where the trans cross strap is so I am thinking of over building here.

There is a package tray (so-to-speak) behind what would be the rear seat and that is where I bored a hole for the fuel fill hole. I have a marine closure for the fuel fill hole. I'll try to take a pix tomorrow assuming I live that long . So tired from the work and drive that I am shaking.

The drive down Thursday (starting at 5:00 am) was long dune to a very bad wreck on I-5 which closed the south bound freeway for several hours. the ending block out of one of the cars flew across the wide median and landed in the North bound lanes where a car hit it so that side of I-5 was partly closed down. We had to take a detour but I did get to see some towns I had never seen before! On the way home today there was another wreck on I-f5 North bound that backed up traffic for several miles. Add to that the construction in Tacoma and it was a 4 hour drive to make 200 miles.

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

One of the reasons I am again looking at going to a heavier spreader bar is the fuel tank. Gas weighs "The weight of a gallon of gasoline is approximately 6.073 lb" (https://www.bing.com/search?q=weight+of ... lang=en-US) so when bottoming out hard the 10#s of fuel would weigh a bit over 60#s multiplied by the the force of contact measured in gravities. I thought the lighter rectangular tube (0.075) would be OK but now I am a bit leery so I want to be on the "conservative" side on that for safety.

I was moving things around in the garage last night and was moving two ~4' lengths of 1 X 3 X 0.060 (I thought they were supposed to be 0.075 but they measure out 0.060; go figure!) rectangular tube around when I noticed that the weight difference between the two lengths that bothered me. I don't know if they came from two different sources or what but even though the two lengths are slightly different that length difference shouldn't make that much of a weight difference. One of the things that bothers me is sources as some of the off-shore sources have a different standard that they may manufacture to. You never know where things are made now days.

Also, the welded seams are in different places which I am not too sure of either. I would want the seams to be in front where I would be welding on the 1/8th inch connectors for the Truss bars. I don't weld over previous welded seams so the lengths with a center seam would be better than the length where the seam is about 1/3rd to 1/4th down from the bend (distance is from memory). The welding of the brackets on each side of the seam would be supporting the join. They are also not flat as I showed the other day but at least one has a slight crown to it.

Anyway, for what it is worth; something to think about!

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

I forgot to mention: when we got home last night from doing all the cleaning out work in Oregon on my late brother-in-laws house we were very tired. I unloaded, into the garage, the stuff we brought home that we did not have anymore room to throw it away down there. Once everything was in the garage for some strange reason I duplicated something I had done before: I laid one, then the other 1 X 3 tubes across two surfaces and pressed down on the 3" face working the 1" section and thought that I may have seen a bit of deflection which concerned me more this time so I went out a few minutes ago and tried it again. but this time between two more solid surfaces.

I didn't sit on it but just kind of leaned forward on it with the heels of both hands and... I did get some deflection on the 1" sides of both tubes, not much but some deflection. What really surprised me was that the 3" surface itself was deflecting between the two 1" ends where the heals of my hand were. I turned it over and tried the other side where the seam was in the center of that surface and while there was much less deflection there was still some. I also squeezed the two surfaces between my thumb and fingers and I could even make it so the surfaces deflected that way.

I tried it on the other tube which is something less than 6" shorter and got a similar, but not quite as radical result with a difference that on the seamed area which was not in the center but off-set to one side it seems to be a bit less deflection. Even though they were supposedly identical as to size and wall thickness, is there a material composition difference (on-shore, off-shore)???? When buying from a scrap yard you never know.

I went out and dismantled the 1 X 2 X .095 wall tube that you seen in the pix, it is ~41" long. Again, I set it up so I could try to deflect it again and did get some but what surprised me was that as the deflection occurred I could been the 2" surface change. What is was doing is hard to describe but something felt different as I pressed. I don't know if it was bulging up but the more I think about that is what I think I felt; I think it was as the material did not want to compact as the inside material of a bend would have to do. Weird!

Anyway, I am even more prone to going back to the 1 X 3 stock size, probably passed the 0.095 wall thickness, to the .120 wall thickness as there is so much potential there for hard loading and to be damned to the weight penalty.

Lee

[dave46]

this is how I tackled it

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Thank Dave but I am not setup like that. If I had started originally with a custom built frame it would have been different and your idea would be a great way to go. Maybe someone here can use your ideas.

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This was the first go at it.

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I not only had no real knowledge of VWs at the time plus I had to play by the rules that were in forced here back in the early 90's. Things have changed some since then.

I started out on the street but then, after an event I decided to go off-road.

Lee

[dustymojave]

Lee. What Dave shows is basically what I've been trying to lead you to all along. There is no reason it would not work for your car except for the guy building it. It could be made with little or no bends in the tubing.

Note the location of the 3/4" holes for the bumper cage in Dave's motor mount. That's where they're supposed to be, not up high like in your motor mount.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

If I was going to start over again I might do something like that but I also see flaws in that design too. There are too many ways to do the same thing and so far I have not seen a perfect way of doing it. Over the years I have seen a lot of glass buggies and old style of rails (and by old style I mean not just the rebuilt tube style of rails and glass buggies) that have gotten the pan or tube equivalent with the suspension busted up just by normal buggy on the dunes style of playing around.

I am trying to accommodate some load transferring to solve some other problems but am running into other problems.

Maybe it is time I dropped out of here. It sounds like I am becoming a pain in the what ever.

Lee

[ninelives17]

I consider both you and Dusty a valuable source of information and experience. I hope you both continue to contribute as long as possible. Differences of opinion will always come and go, members shouldn't.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Thanks Ninelives17. I too value Dusty's opinions and ideas but right now I am being challenged on a bunch of things outside of STF and am a more than a little bit tired of it so I probably over reacted.

Among other things when I worked for a living, being a mentor, teacher and teacher for so long I still have "that thing" in my system; e.g., to give info so probably talk/post too much. I don't believe that I know everything and I don't have a problem making mistakes and not fessing up to them as others may learn from it.

Lee