Adrian and Pauls new truck

[CwazyWabbit]

.......

Also dreaming of a CNC plasma cutter I have my eye on.... That would definately need a garage extention - capabiltity to cut 8' x 4' sheet steel....... mmmmmm.....

Now you are talking!

[B reg 90]

Sadly you then need a brake press to fold the profiled steel..................

[CwazyWabbit]

Will there be any garden left after the expansion takes shape?

[B reg 90]

I use Paul's (brothers) 1500 sq foot shed for the big stuff.....:

[B reg 90]

What have you done to get yourself a 3 phase power supply, I recently aquired a 3ph laith but need to sort out a power supply for it. Any cheap options.

Pinchers,

Just seen your post.

I have a 240 V single phase to 3 phase 415 V inverter rated at 7.5 HP. Pulls 40 amp on full load ....... :o

This came from Drives Direct in Nottingham. I think it was £400 about 4 years ago, but was a bargin at the time compared to their normal prices. However once you have the inverter you can buy/run 3 phase equipment that others don't want, so tends to be cheaper. The inverter cost more than the lathe and a Jig borer cost combined......

The inverter has a 24 V external control panel. I have the colchester Triumph lathe running off it at the minute. I have modifed the wiring in the lathe so that the start/stop lever, reverse lever, etc, switich the 24 v contol panel. So the lathe is controlled by the standard levers and appears to be standard.

I have the 24 V control system running through 7 core trailer cable and have a trialer socket in it. This means I can plug in new machines by the 415 V power plug and the triler socket 7 core control wire system.

Hope this makes sense. I can post up more if needed.

Adrian

[B reg 90]

Will there be any garden left after the expansion takes shape?

The MUUUUUHHHHAAAAA plan is to extend the garage to make it a triple.... Then raise the roof so it 'appears' to have a floor above. However in a cost saving offering to the missus not put in the upstairs floor at that phase of the project. She's not sussed that that would allow a car lift to be fitted and the floor would never happen........

[CwazyWabbit]

I like your style

[hurriedly scribbles notes on convincing the mrs for future use]

[V8 Freak]

[hurriedly scribbles notes on convincing the mrs for future use]

Not gonna happen Barry.. Your missus will suss you out waaaaay to fast....

[B reg 90]

So it's been a while. Life/work has got in the way a bit. Including having to do stuff like move my series one from one hiding place to another.... Funding has been an issue. One factory clearance, college automotive clearance and a redundant truck, generator and trialer were aquired from work. Major Ebay session later and we were good to go again.

Anyway,

We decided that we needed portals.... of the Volvo variety. So I bought Portal Bob off Andy Thomlinson. I think he expected me to collect it on a trialer - I caught a train to Glasgow, jumped in it and drove to Falkirk. Andy had a very worried expression when I left. Never told him that I later drove it to sheffield. It was OK even when overtaking on the M6!

So we then stripped the axles off Portal Bob and bunged some TD5 axles back on Bob. Paul got carried away and tarted them up before fitting. Bob them went off to a new home for some one's wife to drive.....

After a bit of trial and error fitting we then decided that land rover suspension was not going to cut it when going fast so decided to go for coil overs. I went with Kings as they have shorter compressed lengths than Fox's and Simon Buck was very helpfull unlike Milners. I was planning on 12" shocks, but bizarely 14" were ~ £200 a corner cheaper, so I have 14" travel 2.5" remote resovoir shocks at each corner.

All we needed to do was fit them. I couldn't bring my self to 'nail them on' then find out where they bind. So I pursuaded my boss I needed a CAD package and some training. He would only spring for Auto CAD LT, so 2D drawings were it. After many hours measuring the chassis and drafting I ended up with this lay out:

Side and Plan View:

Front Articulation

Rear Articulation:

From this I developed a drawing for the Front shock tower:

I then drew this as a opened up flat profile. Hard going in 2D..... Caclulated the bend radius etc. The CAD file was sent for laser profiling and folding. When it fitted 1st time on the chassis I was fairly chuffed.....

I'll put pictures up in my next post. However that will be mid Feb as I have to go too King of the Hammers 1st.....

Adrian

[B reg 90]

MMMMM.. Kings

Found a picture of the shock tower trial fitting;

Adrian

[dirtydiesel]

I'll put pictures up in my next post. However that will be mid Feb as I have to go too King of the Hammers 1st.....

Adrian

Lucky git.

Shock towers look good, still using pto winches?

[Soren Frimodt]

Are they intact so short, those kings, that they can clear your bonnet without having to cut big holes? That always seems to be a issue.

[B reg 90]

Lucky git.

Shock towers look good, still using pto winches?

PTO winches - 'Using' implies I have actually winched..... Yes they are still part of the build.

Adrian

[B reg 90]

Are they intact so short, those kings, that they can clear your bonnet without having to cut big holes? That always seems to be a issue.

Yes the shocks will stick through the bonnet by 1". I could have got them under the bonnet if I was prepared to assume I would never have a gubbed radius arm bush - articulation is less, therefore shocks under bonnet. However in the real world you do get knackered radius arm bushes, I have therefore allowed for more articuation to prevent this from bottoming out the shocks. It's all a compromise.

Another solution would be to have put the shocks onto the radius arms, hence dropping them down. But I didn't think of this untill the other day...........

Adrian

[Soren Frimodt]

Okay I see, well thought-out to make room for knackered bushes! I don't think attaching them to the radius arms would be such a good idea, firstly because you wouldn't have as good damping of the axles because some would be lost through the bushings, and further, when they do get knackered you would have a sloppy suspension. So the way you've done it is probably the best I'd say.

[elbekko]

Yes the shocks will stick through the bonnet by 1". I could have got them under the bonnet if I was prepared to assume I would never have a gubbed radius arm bush - articulation is less, therefore shocks under bonnet. However in the real world you do get knackered radius arm bushes, I have therefore allowed for more articuation to prevent this from bottoming out the shocks. It's all a compromise.

Hmm, surely the bumpstops should be taking care of not bottoming out the shocks?

Looking nice!

[Daan]

I think fitting shocks to the radius arm will result in that knackered bush very soon. Plus a big bending force in the radius arm.

Looking good, good to see progress. I bet there are going to be some alterations to the plans after you return from the Hammers!

Have fun,

Daan

[B reg 90]

Hmm, surely the bumpstops should be taking care of not bottoming out the shocks?

Looking nice!

It depends on where you put the bump stops and why. I want to be able to have max possible up travel. That's limited on a LR chassis any way and I have gone and put a mini prop shaft and hydraulic pump above the hydrosteer ram. That looses 0.5" of up travel.... I could lift the pump, but the mini prop angles are as high as I want to go. I could lift the front of the engine, but I want as low a center of gravity as possible.

End result bump stops in chassis rails as that's the bit I dont want to hit. This allows max articulation and up travel within the limitations of the chassis etc.

Having got this far into the build I now know why I should have started a different build. BUT, I did not have the knowlegde and experience of this build to allow me to have gone straight to the 'ideal build' - catch 22!. However I am acquiring idea's, eyeing up equipment and so on for the next car after we finish and use this one.

Adrian

[B reg 90]

I think fitting shocks to the radius arm will result in that knackered bush very soon. Plus a big bending force in the radius arm.

Looking good, good to see progress. I bet there are going to be some alterations to the plans after you return from the Hammers!

Have fun,

Daan

I agree, but the americans do it.... I believe to reduce shock shaft velocities and hence avoid cavitation within the shock. A week at KOH will allow me to research that one. I need to pack a tape measure to get copying their designs....

[B reg 90]

Some pictures:

Profiled shock tower:

I then had it folded and drilled out the holes for the bolt at the top:

I scounged an old B7 stud out of the bin at work as they are 1.25% chrome steel and made up the top cross bar. Heres a test fit:

I then got it TIG'd - not by me. I also started on the dimple dies to give it the go faster sexy look that l could not resist. I had a couple of wines by this point so I laid out the holes to give a statisfying geometric precision. This gave 7 differnet hole diameters, 14 bits of dimple dies. When your grabbing and hour here and an hour there on the lathe this takes a while.

A couple of dimple dies..

I then extened the bump can's by getting some one sle to TIG an extention on and machined it to size/true afterwards..

I then took a trip back to Paul's for some installation work (275miles from home).

We drilled the chassis for the bump cans like so:

[B reg 90]

And then we fitted the bump can, bump and trial fitted the shock tower again:

A picture showing both shock towers in position:

We then looked at the radius arms. You need a disco 2 arm to fit around a volvo C303 axle in my view. After some thinking we decieded to go with longer arms to increase articulation. We also decieded that we would use the 90/disco style end bushing. This allows the radius arm to twist in the chassis mount and hence reduces compression at the edges of the bush at the axle end - I believe this will give more articulation. We bought a new chassi mount off Richards chassis (and blagged a new coolant pipe for my lathe off a srcap lathe in their yard). With a mocked up extended radius arm the end result is:

And finally a close up of the arrangement at the top of the shock tower. I have drilled and reamed out the cross beam to 0.500", then skimmed a 0.5" UNF bolt to make afitted bolt. This should avoid the shock tab elongation issues that folk have.

[elbekko]

It depends on where you put the bump stops and why. I want to be able to have max possible up travel. That's limited on a LR chassis any way and I have gone and put a mini prop shaft and hydraulic pump above the hydrosteer ram. That looses 0.5" of up travel.... I could lift the pump, but the mini prop angles are as high as I want to go. I could lift the front of the engine, but I want as low a center of gravity as possible.

End result bump stops in chassis rails as that's the bit I dont want to hit. This allows max articulation and up travel within the limitations of the chassis etc.

Having got this far into the build I now know why I should have started a different build. BUT, I did not have the knowlegde and experience of this build to allow me to have gone straight to the 'ideal build' - catch 22!. However I am acquiring idea's, eyeing up equipment and so on for the next car after we finish and use this one.

Adrian

I see, so I guess I just understood your post wrong then. Still not sure how the radius arm bushes decide uptravel and bottoming out shocks in that case then though Your bumps are still placed in a position where they'll stop the axle from hitting stuff/bottoming shocks, so as long as they hit on the axle and not on the radius arm, the bushes shouldn't affect anything?

I agree, but the americans do it.... I believe to reduce shock shaft velocities and hence avoid cavitation within the shock. A week at KOH will allow me to research that one. I need to pack a tape measure to get copying their designs....

And also extra travel from a smaller package. Also generally a very different type of joint/bushing on the end of those arms, and probably replaced before every race.

It's all possible, but I wouldn't do it with a bushing at the axle end, as that would introduce an uncontrollable variable into the whole setup. Bushing at the frame end shouldn't be a problem, and is used a lot to stop the arm from rotating from the force of the shocks.

[discomark10]

Like the build so far fella, where did you source the coil overs from?

[B reg 90]

I see, so I guess I just understood your post wrong then. Still not sure how the radius arm bushes decide uptravel and bottoming out shocks in that case then though Your bumps are still placed in a position where they'll stop the axle from hitting stuff/bottoming shocks, so as long as they hit on the axle and not on the radius arm, the bushes shouldn't affect anything?

I may be used the wrong words. Up travel with axle horizontal is limited by the bump stops. Articulation is limted by the bind in the radius arm bushes. I have assumed the bushes are shot, therefore place the shock such that once it hits the bump stop on one stide when articulated that the shock on the lower side limits articulation before the shock on the high side bottoms out.

Does this explain it?

Adrian

[B reg 90]

Like the build so far fella, where did you source the coil overs from?

I got them from Devon 4x4