Ol'fogasaurus black buggy

[chuckput]

The one thing that CWB did on his cage I wish I had done on mine. . . his door bar. I like how it follows the line of the seat down low and has good gusseting. My door bars form an X that terminates at dash level on the "A" down tube. This makes entry and exit (especially exit) difficult as I grow older and less flexible. In your situation Lee, I know that the contours of your buggy's side will dictate your side bar placement.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

The one thing that CWB did on his cage I wish I had done on mine. . . his door bar. I like how it follows the line of the seat down low and has good gusseting. My door bars form an X that terminates at dash level on the "A" down tube. This makes entry and exit (especially exit) difficult as I grow older and less flexible. In your situation Lee, I know that the contours of your buggy's side will dictate your side bar placement.

Thanks Chuckput; my flexibility is a big issue here too being I am not too far away from the next traumatic age event (78). I am going to try to get a better side picture of the area today but that means moving the buggy pan to the right of the garage (not talking about politics here ) for distance then moving my jacks out of the way so I can crawl under the body's storage mount to get a good full side pix of the area. I will need to take two pix, one with the seat at each max setting fore and aft to see the limitations. The seat being wide so the side bar has to go under the lip of the seat and not into the area that would block the cage from being removed.

If I were to do upper door bars they would have to pivot up not out which it something I hadn't thought about until you brought it up.... Hmmmm!

I have to mount the front beam support tubes that connect from the beam to the firewall also (one is shown right now but hits the hood of the body. Think how close it would normally be if I didn't have the 3" body lift already built) to determine a couple of other things I need to consider. In some ways it is like being back at work... doing layouts for designs (not in CAD or CAM either).

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I also am going to have lower side bars to protect the running boards (connected to the body lift) and connect to the rear hoop for more support... kind of like a rail has. They also will have bracketry to support the running boards in case someone forgets and tries to use the running boards to get into the buggy as they are in no way structural. I still have to come up with some support for the front fenders cause they are going to flex up and down on the rough sand.

One thing about this build... it keeps my mind working... which is very necessary at my age.

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Went out this am and did some playing around. One of the things I found out was that the front tape strip... where the front of the seat ended up was wrong, it was farther forward almost to the front hoop of the cage. I felt that there was a catch in the mechanism but for some reason I was able to get past it so things are a bit different now.

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Again, this is the lower limit of support and it derived from the upper bar to support the ends of the front beam.

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This is the highest (upper side of the tube in this case) that the spreader bar, whether it is one piece or 3 pieces of tube can be. The drift pins just happened to be the right height.

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With the seat in the rear position this is what the rear down bar might look like. The front bar is in an incorrect position (next pix).

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This should give an idea of what I have to do (or not). there might be a "V" or something like that in the center of the horizontal bar.

This should give an idea of what I have to do (or not). there might be a "V" or something like that in the center of the horizontal bar. The seat is back in the rear position. I have not posted all the pix as they are not really necessary right now... I think anyway.

Lee

Update: The bent piece, not including the trip to the floor at both ends come in at 5'-ish plus connection pieces.

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Woke up this am concerned that what I have been playing with is not going to work so I did some things as a check. In my work job, while it was not unusual we would stop a design and have it added to the mock-up so we could see things in a different light (no pun intended).

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Just to see just how much room I had to play with I slipped a tube (a bit larger than a cage tube but it does not affect what I wanted to look at) to see the relationship to the seat, the pan, the hoops of the cage and the body lift.

When I had the cage built on my blue buggy the guy did not put side pieces in... partly because he knew I was going to build the body lift. He had mounts that were designed to be mounting on the body mount flanges which (I guess) with a bug body on made thing strong enough (I hope). With the glass body... sans a roof, the strength of the pan diminishes and the body life (not a commercial one as they, like a lot of the cages you see are stated as "show cages" indicating they are not designed for rough use.

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I then found a couple of pieces of 1 X 3 rectangular tube that looked good when taped together and when the tube was taped on top the dimension, off the floor of the pan, I got a measurement of ~ (roughly) 8 1/2" which looked good enough to continue on with. It also allowed me to move the tube back on forth on the pan.

Again, the seat shown here is in the rear most position.

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This shows the seat in the forward position and the cage's front hoop might be in the way. I never measure or tried access with the seat forward but there are at least two ladies in our group that a close to 5' tall and would need the access (one I hope never gets to drive it as there would be too much power for her to maintain control; I'm not sure if she can drive a stick anyway... no insult intended).

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If I allowed the front hoop to go through the cowl of the body the location would be close to the tube you see sitting vertical. You can see where the body lift bends which is where, on a stock bug, the front of the door would sit.

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With the tube sitting back again this shows roughly where the down tube from the cage might be in relationship to the horizontal part of the connection of the two hoops.

Still not sure if I gain that much but...

I also found out something else related to the cage the last time I was down at the dunes. If you remember I said a long time ago that it is (kind of) the rule that the bottom of the cage tubes should be 4" above the driver's (and pass ?) head. This is incase of a slow rollover in the soft sand because the body/neck can stretch some. This was based on a roll over by someone in another group we knew.

What I did find out the other day... after many year of the different slow roll story, was that the guy was past "polluted" and went nuts with the pedal glued to the floor. He finally went over and broke his neck and was a "quad" for 10 years before he passed away. His cage was kind of close to his head but from what I was told that would not have made that much of a difference as hard as he went over.

The 4" rule is still a good rule to follow as I have seen some heavy top of the cage digging into the soft (spot in the) sand that could have been more than rolling the rail back over and brushing the sand off. ("No see-ums" are everywhere)

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Been looking up roll bar dia. and wall thickness and it is interesting. I did find out that if the rig weighs under 3500#s then you should be able to get by with 1 1/2 dia. tube with a wall thickness of 0.095 but it also depends on what you are doing; e.g., if there are limitations say in race rules.

The Miniman bend dia. looks to be in the 6" radius range but not fully sure on this yet.

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Sorry about all the posts today but since there is so much smoke in the air from CA, OR and WA us'n seniors are in a health advisory which recommends to stay inside with closed windows so... my mind is active on the buggy.

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The big wheel you see is something I made years ago (I don't remember what for) but it is a bit over 12" in dia. and it shows the effects of a ~6" bend radius.

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The big problem is that the bend radius will not work here towards the front of the seating area as the seat over laps the body lift but OK with the way the body mount flanges are built but is in the way. What is forgotten is the door area tapers in about 5" give or take rear to front so the seats, aligned with the tunnel gets an overlap at a full forward seating position; if I move the front cage hoop farther forward it might be OK but haven't gone there yet. More arguing with myself again.

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

It is really weird out now with the smoke from all the fires in WA, OR and CA. We normally have a lot of traffic on our street as it is the only inlet and exit for roughly 100 homes (not sure of the total amount as it could be higher) and a lot of walkers and dog walkers, even the bicycle riders are not out: in other words... things are really quiet around here right now.

They are recommending people in WA, OR and CA staying inside with doors and windows closed. I went out to the garage to either look at something or do some work on the buggy and the smell of smoke in there was really bad the last few days but today it was less.

The sun did not come up today, or we couldn't see it come up from behind us (our house faces west), and looking across the street that house looks like it is a fog and the same for up the street and down the street. Even the area behind us which is a protected area that you can't go into as it has a protected stream that has/had fish that merges into other protected stream(s) near by.

Went out to check the mail and had to wear a painter's mask as the normal COVID19 masks do not filter enough of the smoke in the air. I also had to put drops in my eyes when I came in due to the particulates in the air. I've seen bars and taverns with better quality of air .

We are expecting some rain next week but that has been pushed forward from this week.

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Had a funny thing happen to me today. Because of the fires here in WA, the ones in OR and CA that are blowing in over us the sky looks like a heavy fog and the other day it was orange but today it was lighter (still never saw the sun) but we were supposed to have some rain about noon. About noon I went out to get the mail but the mail guy was there at the bunch of mail boxes for the area so I went back inside for a few minutes. When I came out, with my rain hat on, he was just finishing and getting ready to go so I stood about 20' or so from him when I felt a rain drop hit my hat then... nothing; no drop marks on the sidewalk or the road. I got the mail and went back into the house and told the wife so she looked it up on her phone and said that the clouds had just gone overhead and were heading west towards Puget Sound.

Hmmm, I wonder if they are going to call that a heavy rain storm .

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

The sun finally started burning through the smoke and fog at about 10:30 am today. Gee, it sure is light out after almost a week of dusk all day but it still "reeks of smoke" (my wife's words) though.

Anyway, although it is not a good idea to be even in the garage for us older "Ol Farts" because of the air quality in there I did get out and do some quick walk through looking at things a couple times a day. I've almost, and that is a strong "almost", am sure that a usable upper/mid hoop hookups between the two cage hoops is not that structurally doable. The lowness of the seating is part of the reason as is the space limitation between the seat and the body exacerbated by the way the mounting and stiffening flanges were built into the body. The body lift will be of a largely great structural value but it is the side hits (and front to rear load transmittal) that that second tube is needed to help with; the protection from "side hits" being secondary.

I think I will have to double up the cage's foot mounting to include some additional support from the body lift. I still have to work on the rear "X" connection but that can some later when some other things are figured out.

Anyway, still working on it... just a bit slower.

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

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Another problem: I went out and measured this angle and it comes in at somewhere around 25° (give or take) which, when you change that from ~1" tube that the mockup is and change it and the rear hoop to 1 1/2" X 0.120 wall tube on both pieces then angle gets to be maybe a bit short for any strength. One of the reasons the builder on my blue buggy (he knew I was going to build a 3" body lift) didn't add the side bars.

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Hopefully today or tonight that we are supposed to get some rain today to clear some of the smoke out of the air so I can go out in the garage and do something. I had an appointment this am so when I got back home I came in through the garage and as I walked by buggy I got looking at the steering and a couple of other things but mostly concentrated on the steering. I got feeling around and noticed that something was wrong as to how and where the steering box was sitting so I loosened the clamp up and slid it around and mostly towards the center to catch the raised area on the beam and did some more checking of the notches in the bottom clamp which locates things. When I got done double checking things I put the steering shaft back in place (it still hangs down some as it is a loose fit) and now everything lines up straight to and in the middle of the seat. Even the up and down angle aligns pretty darn close. I might stay with the stock VW setup to fix any alignment problems as I don't abuse my toys that much. I still might need a universal to get the steering wheel at the right angle and put an adapter on to get the quick disconnect to the steering wheel to fit.

I also played with the beam support clamps that go to the firewall again and noticed that the grease fittings were in the way skewing things up. Not sure on how that will be fixed yet but I now know I will have to remake the upper arms as they interfere with the body (or so I think but not 100% sure... yet.

I also have been playing with the center support bar and made some changes which makes the side bar fit angle even worse. I may just have to leave it out but support the front and double mount the rear hoops to floor and the body lift. Don't like it but there may be no other way.

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

The sun is more or less out... out enough to shine somewhat through the smoke haze anyway. We should be getting a spate of rain in the next few days to wash away some more of the problem. Now the ashes on the ground could be posing other problems.

I thought I had some problems with the steering box and the braces for the beam to the firewall but it turned out that the steering box had gotten hooked up and was not all the way over which didn't allow the braces to fit in place correctly and ride on the zerk fittings. I use angle iron for the strengthening of the BJ shock towers and they, I thought, were part of the problem but not now.

Glad something worked OK today.

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Wheeeeee, it just started raining! If the smoke gets washed out of the air maybe I can get back to work around the house and in the garage (the air currently smells like and looks like smoke and we are at a high health risk rate).

Lee