Soren's Budget Single-Seater Crawler

[Soren Frimodt]

Tonight I finally got around to making a proper shifter for the 2wd/4wd selector, after these pics were taken I took it apart and tidied up the edges with a flapwheel, and painted everything black. So ready to reassemble next time I get over in the workshop

[Soren Frimodt]

So then, finally convinced myself that I needed to fit a winch to the front of this thing before Summer as well. And seeing as I'm pretty well on schedule I decided to go for it straight away. Ideally I would like to build a mechanical winch driven by its own engine (Quad or MC) But I'm not that far ahead on the schedule So went for the ever trusty 8274 with a Bow2. You just don't go wrong with these winches, and the speed is great as the Buggy is so low geared I'll be able to match the wheel speed to the winch, making everything work much smoother and easier. So yesterday I got it positioned:

And mounted a tube with a spherical bearing in the end at the front spring perch:

This morning I then spent some quality time at the lathe and made the fairlead:

Spooled on some old rope I had, and made a protection bar to go over the winch brake as it protrudes from the cage itself:

The winch sits at a slight angle towards the center, and pretty high up to point exactly at the sweet-spot where I wanted the fairlead to sit, so if your wondering about the weird looking placement of the winch, that's why

[landroversforever]

Looks good Sören! I like that it's tucked back in the middle. Would be interesting to see where the centre of gravity is on the car

[elbekko]

I guess you won't need a remote operated freespool this way

[landroversforever]

Just got a remote winch instead

[Soren Frimodt]

Looks good Sören! I like that it's tucked back in the middle. Would be interesting to see where the centre of gravity is on the car

Yeah definitely, had this been a high $ build on Pirate I would've been able to show you a neat graph with all the suspension geometry, but this is far from that Just a bloke in a shed who does it by the feel and 99% luck

I guess you won't need a remote operated freespool this way

Just got a remote winch instead

Haha Actually you're quite right, I did just mount a switch to the control box on the Bow motor for controlling the winch when I'm sat in the drivers seat, I don't even have to stretch my arm all the way out to reach it

[deep]

Remarkable. I spent all my spare time, over two months, last Summer making a bumper/winch mount/ bullbar for my 110 and you popped a winch in over a few days! I guess that is part of the advantage of a clean build, not having to make things fit in impossible places. For the record, though, I ended up gaining in approach angle over the standard LR front bumper (other than the huge fairlead required when running a wire cable) so it was worth it.

[Soren Frimodt]

Testing:

[Soren Frimodt]

Yesterday evening I finally got a real proper offroad testdrive done in this thing! Was a quick one though, only about 1,5 hour, but i did hit some of the most nasty climbs and a lot of technical stuff too. No pictures or video sadly as I had to make best possible use of the little time I had. Did snap this picture from the way home though to prove that it actually moved off my property

So status? BIG GRIN!! Managed to climb a hill that that we had to give up on the last time we where there with our landys. The 35"s and portals make a great combination of stability from the smallish tyres and the ground clearance that you would normally only get with bigger tyres. It's biggest limitation is definitely its short wheelbase, making some stuff a lot more tricky than the 100" I had in the JWH. But this was to be expected, and something I'm plenty familiar with from the 80". But the crawling capabilities is through the roof and so is the 45 degrees of steering angle on only 88" wheelbase. Making the slow technical stuff a blast!

But as any other maiden voyage some problems occurred, nothing too big though. First and foremost the belt for the PAS pump spun around and laid itself on its back in the pulleys. after putting it back on properly and tightening it, it didn't happen again, but clearly something that I have to look into.

Then there was a noise problem, when the engine screams up a hill, the noise from the airfilter was unbearable! It almost gave me a headache, so this needs to be toned down/moved.

But overall it was great, and the thing I'm most pleased about was having confirmed that the small 1,6TD engine actually can pull this beast up the long climbs, this was the thing I really needed to test. Sure there's not oozes of power, but it does the job, comparably I'd say its like a stock TDI in a Ninety. Which it should be, power to weight wise.

That's it for now, the next pictures will be of solutions to the above mentioned problems from the test run

[Soren Frimodt]

Time for some updates. Modded my existing tubing for the intake to fit a Ninety filterbox up under the cross bars at the "firewall"

And it has reduced the noise heaps at full throttle!

Then I inspected the discbrake for the front wheels (parking brake) because it had smeared oil all over the disc and pads. Well some numbnut had forgotten to put loctite on the bolt holding the flange on, and probably even forgotten to tighten it up properly the zillionth time he fitted it So with this taken care of I made an Ali floorboard to fit over it as I no longer have the need to be able to look down at it whilst driving now that I know everything works:

And finally today I found the problem that caused the PAS belt to spin, the pulley on the crank was considerably more narrow than the one at the pump, so the belt would crawl to the top of it. Threw it in the lathe and made it wider:

Easily done with only four M8 bolts holding it in place on the crank. Couldn't get it quite as wide as the pump pulley, but its good enough for now. If I decide to keep this engine after driving it this Summer, I'll have to rebuild it anyways, so making another pulley should be the least of it

[Soren Frimodt]

Today I made an extension for the Locker engagement lever. I knew it was hard to pull, they always have been in Mogs, but on my testdrive I could see that the effort simply was too much to be comfortable, plus the angle on your arm from the seat made it even worse. So I made an extension to get more leverage and also changed the angle of the grip which made it much more ergonomic.

And I did this little illustration for you to show how it looks from the business end in this thing:

[landroversforever]

Can't believe I've only just noticed.... Your steering wheel is on the wrong side Sören!

[Lewis]

It's probably too late to put it right at this stage, I reckon you'll just have to live with it being wrong-hand drive soren

[Soren Frimodt]

argh those Brits, can't you just mirror the image so that it looks right to you?

[CwazyWabbit]

I'd just assumed that Soren had accidentally flipped the photo when editing it, surely nobody would be silly enough to have put the steering wheel there?

[deep]

Even worse, he somehow has to operate the gearstick with the right hand! How on earth are you supposed to do that??

[Lewis]

You just reach over and use your left hand surely?

[landroversforever]

You just reach over and use your left hand surely?

Playing twister on your own whilst driving!

[deep]

You just reach over and use your left hand surely?

Of course! Perfick.

[Soren Frimodt]

And that is exactly the part that is the worst when driving a car from the other side (than what your used to) That bl**dy gearstick is just weird to operate with the wrong hand, and having the gearpattern essentially flipped is more than my two braincells can comprehend! When I had "the free 88" which was RHD I kept starting in 3rd gear because I'm used to having 1st closest to me

[deep]

Just ride the clutch a bit longer...

[Soren Frimodt]

Not much has happened on this thing, seeing as it's almost complete in version 1.0 Have got a hold of another gearbox and welded up the diff in that as well, so that I have a spare this Summer. I have a suspicion that I might get some trouble with the R&P in these boxes Have probably already chipped a tooth on the Ring gear as it has developed a *rumble* dependent of speed, very much like a Landy with the same problem. And I have narrowed it down to the diff, so it can really only be that (no way to see the actual teeth on the R&P) But you can't feel it just hear it on decel. so my plan is to run it till it breaks and then swap it out.

Anyways today I fitted a piece of the same Mesh I have at the front, to the RHS. Basically to cover the winch up a bit and to close a big gaping hole for a tree to get stuck in

I'm not that sure on the color though, thought it would be nice with some more Red on there, but perhaps Black would've been better in this case? What do you guys think?

I could slap some stickers on there to tone the Red down a bit, that might do it?

[landroversforever]

I think the mesh in black would have made it all a bit dark, I like the red! Did you go for mesh over solid panel to keep some visibility?

[Soren Frimodt]

Yeah those were my initial thoughts as well. I think the problem is I should've put a bit more shape to it rather than a big Square But it was all I had left of the mesh. Which is a piece of 2mm mild steel sheet with Square holes in it, very sturdy and I like mesh because it's easy to fit stuff to with zip ties or bolts/screws.

[landroversforever]

I like the squareness.... but I'd have carried on to the front wheel arch (material quantity allowing)