Building a New Chassis For a Friend....

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Building a New Chassis For a Friend....

Postby Sean K. » Tue Feb 22, 2011 11:10 pm

Long story, but I got laid off back in August....started a new "career" in September....hated it and quit by end of November and have been unemployed since then.

Been building a new chassis for a friend since about mid-December.

These pics are sorta old.....I've gone through 4 redesigns of the engine cage....once I get the latest one done, I'll post some fresh pics.

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I don't get around here much so for those that haven't wheeled with me....this is my rig:

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Hope all's well with everyone here....haven't been by in a while. :)

Take care,
Sean
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Re: Building a New Chassis For a Friend....

Postby Sean K. » Tue Feb 22, 2011 11:22 pm

Oh, and specs will be a 5.3L, TH350 (built with a TH400 input/output), Atlas II 5.0:1, Spider 9 front axle with Hi-9 gears, 14B rear, 42" Iroks on beadlocks, XX 4 links f/r with 1x1.25" SREs and 2.25"/2" 4130 Rc40 links, 18" 2.5" King coilovers rear, 16" Fox 2.0's in the front, full hydro steering, etc. 110-112" WB, 24" belly height, 77" overall. Guessing somewhere around 3400 lbs.

It's coming along really slowly....since I'm doing all the design/fab by myself. I'm guessing 2 years to completion at the soonest.

Sean
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Re: Building a New Chassis For a Friend....

Postby Seth » Wed Feb 23, 2011 12:01 am

The new buggy looks nice. As soon as I saw it I thought of yours. That's a very nice design you make. This new will have a few more ponies turning those wheels then your current one. However, I know its not necessary having driven yours. That crawl ratio was real nice.
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Re: Building a New Chassis For a Friend....

Postby Sean K. » Wed Feb 23, 2011 11:55 am

Seth wrote:The new buggy looks nice. As soon as I saw it I thought of yours. That's a very nice design you make. This new will have a few more ponies turning those wheels then your current one. However, I know its not necessary having driven yours. That crawl ratio was real nice.



I think most people think buggies all look the same (there's really only so many ways to attach tubes).....this one is a lot different than mine in terms of proportions and weight.

My nose section is 43", the 'cab' (for lack of a better word)...or passenger area is 50" and the rear section is 45" long.

The new chassis is 52" long in the nose, 40" in the cab, and ~43" in the rear. My chassis is 50" wide at the widest point, this one is 48". I would have designed it to be a little more proportional and made the cab larger (it's hard to get in and out).....but I was limited by how the A&B pillars were laid out. As I said, long story, but this chassis started out as a Campbell Enterprises chassis built on a 6" tall shortened fullsize blazer frame. The original design had a lot of promise when my friend showed it to me and I originally thought we'd just keep most of it. As it progressed though, we ended up cutting more and more off....now, the only things that are still original are the A, B and half the C pillar....but that dictated the cab portion.

I used a heavy 2x3x.188 wall rectangular tube for my lower frame....I used 1.75x.120" wall DOM for the frame on this buggy....which will save a bunch of weight. My buggy with the 4 banger is 3600 lbs.....I'm betting with the aluminum V8, his buggy will be 33-3400 lbs.

I'll try and remember to post up more pics when I get the engine cage done. The rear of the chassis is more filled in than it was in this set of pictures, and the front 'eye sockets' for the headlights were lifted and curved to look more like eye sockets....so it's already a little tweaked from what you see here.

Anyway, talk to you soon.

Sean
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Re: Building a New Chassis For a Friend....

Postby Bellvis » Sat Feb 26, 2011 2:06 pm

Very cool Sean!
Keep the updates coming.
Miss you Rich! Thank's for all the memories!
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Re: Building a New Chassis For a Friend....

Postby Sean K. » Wed Mar 16, 2011 9:50 pm

New pics.....

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Re: Building a New Chassis For a Friend....

Postby The Other Rob » Thu Mar 17, 2011 5:27 pm

You gonna be able to get in there to check the oil with that cage..?? :lol:

Oh yeah.. You dropped your screwdriver..
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Re: Building a New Chassis For a Friend....

Postby Sean K. » Thu Mar 17, 2011 10:56 pm

Yep....it all unbolts. The whole thing lifts out as a single unit, except for the "pockets" for the coilovers.....not that you'll have to do that to check the oil. ;)

....And that's not a screwdriver, but thanks for playing. ;)

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Re: Building a New Chassis For a Friend....

Postby Bellvis » Sat Mar 19, 2011 9:06 am

Ummm, I'll take one to go please.
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Re: Building a New Chassis For a Friend....

Postby HummBebe » Wed Mar 23, 2011 1:36 pm

Are there going to be skins on it - seem like a waste to cover up all that artwork.

Are you using tube connectors or is it bolted to the side rails?
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Re: Building a New Chassis For a Friend....

Postby Sean K. » Sun Mar 27, 2011 10:10 am

HummBebe wrote:Are there going to be skins on it - seem like a waste to cover up all that artwork.

Are you using tube connectors or is it bolted to the side rails?


Well, I say we skin it.....the guy I'm building it for wants to leave it open so you can see the tube work. I think it'll look a lot better with skin, not to mention it'll protect the tubes from rock rash. I'll try and persuade him to cover it.

Not sure what you mean by tube connectors......the engine cage is flanged to the main tube chassis and all of it except the "coilover pockets" lifts out.

The "tube connections" or flanges are a design I thought up while thinking of how to make my wife's Jeep Tj project go from a 2 seater cage to a 3 or 4 seater by just adding to (and removing from) the back half of the cage.

I've never seen a design like it before, and I think the reason why is that it's pretty labor intensive versus using external or even interlocking tube clamps and is more complicated and a lot stronger than the traditional 2 or 3 bolt flanged set up. It's also got 'shear plates' built into the design and is angled at about 1º so that it's a press fit that self aligns and holds the structure while you install the bolts. You'd have to shear the bolts and the plates as well (as well as force the whole structure into a smaller physical space) in order to deform the cage. It should mean that the individual tubes will bend before any sort of catastrophic failure could occur.

Not sure that answers your question.

Sean
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Re: Building a New Chassis For a Friend....

Postby HummBebe » Mon Mar 28, 2011 10:56 am

Like these:

Image

This sounds like an awesome fab design - I'd like to see the flanges but understand if it's a 'trade secret".

It's also got 'shear plates' built into the design and is angled at about 1º so that it's a press fit that self aligns and holds the structure while you install the bolts.


I'm not sure I've seen this before either, makes me giddy to read it so it must be bad-ass :D
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Re: Building a New Chassis For a Friend....

Postby Sean K. » Mon Mar 28, 2011 9:50 pm

HummBebe wrote:Like these:

Image

This sounds like an awesome fab design - I'd like to see the flanges but understand if it's a 'trade secret".

It's also got 'shear plates' built into the design and is angled at about 1º so that it's a press fit that self aligns and holds the structure while you install the bolts.


I'm not sure I've seen this before either, makes me giddy to read it so it must be bad-ass :D



Ya, those are the interlocking tube clamps....they are very nice, but very expensive and if you've ever used them for fabrication (I have) they are very hard to align/phase to one another to get them in/out easily. Further, if you do roll hard, that style binds when you try to remove the sectioned piece. To be fair, mine will likely bind as well b/c it's such a precise fit....but the interlocking feature still loads the bolts, not the keys in the interlocking portion.

My design isn't really a "trade secret"....I just haven't really taken any detail pics of how it works.

Sean
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Re: Building a New Chassis For a Friend....

Postby Sean K. » Fri Oct 10, 2014 10:16 pm

New project for my friend's dad this time.....

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This one is low....70" tall at ride height on 42" tires. 113" WB....LS1 intake and pan on a 5.3L...should push 525hp once it's built. The owner basically let me design it how I'd build my next one....though I would've used 1.5" tubing instead and would change a few things now that the major design work is done on this one (mainly longer upper links on the rear). Perfect f/r link geometry....and adjustable in the rear for 8 different positions.
Last edited by Sean K. on Fri Oct 10, 2014 10:35 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Building a New Chassis For a Friend....

Postby Sean K. » Fri Oct 10, 2014 10:17 pm

Image

Image
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