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Introducing "Lil' Green"


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This is one of my good mates 88" and as it currently resides at my place I took liberty of starting a little thread about it on here ;) 

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Its a good old trusty offroad warrior with lockers front and rear (10 spline front, and 24 spline rear) PAS setup using P38 box. Last winter it got a heart transplant to a nice running 200Tdi out of a D1 so all in all a nice capable offroader :i-m_so_happy:

But there's always things to change and stuff to make better so now its my turn to throw some tools and steel at it :) 

First job was to swap out the front bumper, the one that was on there was nicely made but sat waay too low so it was constantly dragging on the ground:

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Therefore he bought a used tubular one for a Defender and after drilling some new holes I was able to fit it up:

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A nice and relatively easy task to start with, next I'll be moving on to a more serious matter.. 6 pointing the 4 point roll cage ;) and it all has to fit inside the cab and under the canvas, and of course take up as little room as possible at the same time :D 

If you guys have questions about some of the stuff on it, or want some pictures I'll be happy to help as long as its in my custody ;) 

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20 minutes ago, miketomcat said:

Tea and biscuits sorted ready. Lead on sir. :i-m_so_happy:

Thank you, here's some "hot entertainment" for you, I know I've posted it somewhere else before, but this is the very vehicle that caught fire in this video: 

 

I'm not allowed any more projects at the moment :banned:so I'll have to make do with reading others. Though I do have some quick jobs to squeeze in when she's not looking :ph34r:.

Hahaa isn't that how it always works? :rofl:

Mike

 

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23 minutes ago, Arjan said:

Nice !

What's the plan for the cage ?

Thanks guys, well just to add the front portion really. Going to be two side hoops tied together with a cross bar at the windshield as opposed to the traditional front hoop that goes from one side to the other. This is mainly because the windshield frame is square in the corners on a Series so IMO it looks odd to have round corners on the cage, when seen from the front. Looks good on a Defender though as its already rounded at the windshield :) 

Basically this cage is just to save his ar$e in case of a rollover and to fend off the worst trees that might get in the way ;) It wont have to live up to any rules, just common sense ;) 

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8 minutes ago, Arjan said:

 

Love to learn more on the axle & lockers...

 

Sure, the front is just an ARB 10 spline unit with spacer ring for the Crown wheel and everything else is stock. It will snap a shaft on command, but once you learn to drive around it its pretty reliable unless you loose your mind, but if you're used to drive a Series you know everything about axle preservation right? :D 

And the rear is an RD128, again with spacer ring. And with my old trick of using a shortside 110" Salisbury halfshaft in one side, and a late 88" 10/24 halfshaft swapped around at the other side. This way there is only one weak spot, and that's the 10 splined end at one driveflange 

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I wasn't quite done with the bumper yet, have seen too many Series loose the bumper simply from the winch pulling it off due to leverage from sitting too tall. And After seeing this I feared the same could happen here. So after a steel run I made these:

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And as you can see from the next picture the bumper just can't get any closer to the wings, but still there's quite a lot of wasted space between the winch and the grille.. But hey that's just how it is :) 

IMG_20181230_153909.thumb.jpg.36c613cf32753cf2ef5889b15d818eb6.jpg

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Yes - the winch above the bumper is creating some serious leverage forces...

With the 200 Tdi there came a "Stage IV" nose and this gave me a good reason to fir a different winchbumper, between the chassis rails and additional fitting points to the chassis.

Getting a lot of flak for the flat front though....

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Sorry Arjan I just love that series look..... it has caused me a headache with the 109 fitting that straight 6 diesel and its going to be a headache to get looking right as a dovetailed shortened look on the toy but lol its just too iconic to not have  

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So time for an update! After a quick meeting with the owner we agreed on a solution and I could get to manipulating some steel :i-m_so_happy: After a lot of trial and error and even more measuring this is what I got done Friday:

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So just managed to stuff the 48mm tube in between everything, so quite pleased with the result.

Today I fitted another tube to the roof and took off the canvas frame and sticks to lay the windshield down so that I could finish up all the welds. After this I took it outside to get a look:

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Now I would've preferred less of a slope on the roof bars, but due to constraints from the canvas hood, the height of the windshield and because the main hoop is so tall I could do nothing about it. But looks better with the windshield up:

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Then I moved on to cutting the cage apart to make it removable, this meant taking off the floor plates to give me access to weld it up properly as well as making room for the cutting tools:

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This was all repeated at the other side as well afterwards, more of a hassle due to the pedals, but I got there in the end :) 

Now I just need to turn some slugs on the lathe which he can put in between the two halves upon reassembly once he has had the cage off for painting.

And finally a couple of pictures showing how tight it is :) 

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Next up is making a cross brace for the main hoop

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1 hour ago, Arjan said:

Nice !

Pity  you live too far away for a quick coffee...

Thanks, well you're welcome if you should ever find yourself with some spare time in our little country :) 

34 minutes ago, Daan said:

Neat job. Any reason you going internal? 

Daan

Thank you, as per order from the owner ;) But really I sorta persuaded him as well because an internal cage have some advantages that we both like, mainly the ability change around on your roof setup and when the weather is nice, either lay down the windshield or remove it completely. Another reason is we often get close to trees, and while the external would protect against them, it also has a tendency to get hung up on them.

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I like the fitment on those A pillars.... very nice 

Whats the deal with the join down the bottom.... I'm assuming you put a piece of bar in there and some bigger bolts thats way too light and no lateral support ? 

Of all the motorsports I'm involved with the lightest bolt on mounting rules (the rules I'm building the buggy too) is a min of 4 x M10 8.8 bolts on a plate bearing area of 100 sq cm (100mm x100mm) or a rubber barral style mount with a single M12 8.8 bolt 

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18 hours ago, De Ranged said:

I like the fitment on those A pillars.... very nice 

Whats the deal with the join down the bottom.... I'm assuming you put a piece of bar in there and some bigger bolts thats way too light and no lateral support ? 

Of all the motorsports I'm involved with the lightest bolt on mounting rules (the rules I'm building the buggy too) is a min of 4 x M10 8.8 bolts on a plate bearing area of 100 sq cm (100mm x100mm) or a rubber barral style mount with a single M12 8.8 bolt 

Yeah thats the slug I was referring too that I needed to turn on the lathe. When the slug/insert is in there the bolt should only provide clamping force and fritcion should do the rest, besides load will be greatest if the car was to land on its roof and thats no weaker from it being cut, thats why its cut sort of like a 'Z'

As I wrote in the OP this isn't supposed to live up to any rules, it just has to be better than what was there, and be as good as, or better than say a factory Hardtop. And this sure is. This is no Rally car or rockbouncer, and never will be ;) 

18 hours ago, Daan said:

Are you reinforcing the roll bar mounts to the chassis?

Daan

Would like to do it on the roll bar on the Tub as well yes, but its neigh on impossible with the way its made. We did discuss making a completely new cage from scratch, but really it would be overkill for what he needs. And of course be a lot more expensive in labour.

Its actually quite impressive how much abuse a Hardtop can take in a rollover, and in any case this might not be mounted much better than that, but it sure won't go flat as easy :) 

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