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The Bull |
The Growing Bull |
The Bull Tail |
The BullPen |
Bull-O-Knee |
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Mock Up -
part 1 |
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Hand building a "test" chassis
without CAD |
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AutoCad is nice, but
it's not the end-all of chassis design. Even in the high
speed world, some of the best builders still do things the old
fashioned way simply to ensure everything fits. Sure, they
can take an old design and alter it easily in AutoCad as they
already know how everything goes together, but when designing a
custom chassis from scratch, it's often faster to build what is
called a "mockup". After the mockup is built, you load the
parameters into the computer and build the real one.
That is exactly how
Blue Torch Fabworks did this chassis, even though they have
Matt, who is AMAZING on SolidWorks (a program similar to
AutoCad).
Bender and Dan
started out with an old RockIt 1 body I sent. The body was
far from perfect because it had been through some spectacular
attempts at making crazy lines...not all of them ending in
success! |
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We knew the body would be approximately what we wanted as the
new drivetrain would be far shorter yet we wanted the cab to be
forward of where the RockHer 1 cab is. The shorter front
fenders enabled this, but would actually put the engine back
inside the cab...we'll cover that later. Starting with the
doors as a guide, they built a very simple cab. This is
how it looked when Becca and I flew in to visit. |
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| You need to realize
right now that this chassis will be very simplified through the
mockup, but when it is complete, will be loaded into SolidWorks
and then an entire bend program written so the chassis will flow
a little cleaner. The production chassis will be made from
far greater lengths of tubing with almost zero splicing. Next,
the doors and rear fenders were hung on the frame so we could
get an idea of look and scale. We measured the wheelbase
on the table and decided that the RockIt 1 body would actually
work out fine. |
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At that point, Bender measured Becca's height while sitting in
the MasterCraft 3G seat that Robbie Pierce so graciously loaned
us. If Ivan Stewart knew we had his seat, he might have
been less than pleased...thank goodness we returned it in
perfect condition ;-) |
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Taking her head height, Bender was able to figure out just how
high to lift the cab part of the chassis to ensure she had
plenty of headroom. He chose to put the flat portion of
the roof 6" above her head. This meant he needed to raise
the cab 9" which he did by putting it up on jack-stands.
Once that was done, the floorboard would go where the bottom of
the seat now was. Next, with Becca in her seat, they worked
out where she wanted the windshield support bars and the wing
window bars. |
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Then they planned for the roof support bars. The roof
support bars ended up being a little different than most, we'll
give a better pic later but they ended up landing in the
windshield in a straight line with the small diagonals that go
in the windshield corners...that is about 6" in from the edge of
the "A" pillar and gave Becca more room overhead. If that
bar had gone all the way to the corner of the windshield and the
"A" pillar, it would have run awfully close to her head. |
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Next, the front fenders were held up for Becca to check her
sightlines. The hood on the new crawler will be 5" lower
at the cowl and 9" lower at the nose than her current RockHer.
This time around, we all agreed to make the nose and tail wider
to make it look more realistic. |
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Bender then put Becca in a BTF Fusion Chassis with her 3G seat
to mock up about where the engine would go. I was out at
the local auto salvage picking up a 4.3 Vortec v6 for them to
use. The white paper is cut to 20" x 19" to represent the
overall dimensions (looking down) of the 4.3. You can see
just how far back the engine will be compared to the engine
location in the Fusion...it actually ended up 3" further back
than what you see here. |
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As Bender and Dan realized we were going to climbing on the
chassis and moving it around a bunch, they took time to weld up
much of the structure that was currently tacked in place. |
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As they were finishing with that, I returned with an engine.
We bolted it to our Dedenbear SuperGlide tranny and slid it all
into the general area we thought it would go. Notice the
whole drivetrain is in crooked. That gives Becca the
legroom she needs yet counter-balances the weight of having the
driver sitting so far left in a two-seater. It actually
ends up being slightly more crooked than this, but you get the
idea looking at the downward view. The engine finally ends
up about 6" off center right with the t-case the same amount
off-center left. |
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Back to "the GROWING BULL" menu |
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Forward to the next story - "the MockUp - Part 2" |
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Back to "HOME" |
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All images and text Copy Right 2006
Blue Torch FabWorks, Inc
Red Bull
RockCrawling Team
Pirate4x4.com
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