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The Bull |
The Growing Bull |
The Bull Tail |
The BullPen |
Bull-O-Knee |
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Mock Up -
part 2 |
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Continuing our BTF "test"
chassis build |
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See the two bars just below the engine? Those bars took
Bender and I about 5 hours to decide on. If we were just
building this chassis to work four our setup, it would have been
very simple. But remember, this chassis will become a full
production chassis that needs to work with just about any
engine/tranny/t-case combo, plus a variety of suspension
designs, PLUS work with conventional or portal axles.
Those two forward mainframe bars are critical and we laid out
numerous suspensions as well as axle combinations, with a couple
different engines as well, to be sure we accommodated the most
possible. |
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Here is a Vortec V8 being fit in place. That big engine
will ultimately go in when the mockup chassis is passed on to
its new owner. The V8 will be hooked to a 700R4 and an
Atlas, along with a set of Mog axles with the full length
pinions...YES, it all will fit...BARELY! Randy Morris or
the Morris Mountain ORV Park, not too far from BTF is the new
owner for those wanting to know. |
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Bec and Dan got tired of me complaining about
not having enough Red Bull so they drove to Florida to meet with
a Red Bull rep and brought me back a present. |
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Using chalk lines and a straight edge, Bender
figured the tire swing to be sure we could get 45 degrees of
turn out of a 40" tire. It will be very close with 40's
but in Becca's class, they use 37's so we've got room to spare. |
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Next, Becca went back in the mockup to check
engine placement and seat placement and it now appeared to all
fit very well. With this chassis having a 51" outside to
outside measurement, we ended up ordering her MasterCraft 3G
seats 1" narrower than normal to be sure we have enough room.
It turns out to be more than wide enough now and we could have
used the regular width had we ordered them. Oh well, a
tighter fit in this style seat is safer anyway. |
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At this point, it was time to work on the
sub-frame that includes the main frame rails. Bender
started figuring approximate link placement with his trusty link
calculator (a piece of paper, a pencil, a tape measure, a
cigarette, and a cheapo calculator) and figured where the rear
section of the sub chassis should begin its rise, as well as
figuring the total width of the belly. After his
calculations were worked out, he went to work tying the cab to
the frame and sub-frame. |
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All along, Becca and Danielle (Bender's gal)
were staying out of the way and helping by handling logistics
(getting food, making doublewide club plans, keeping the work
area clean and easy to work in). Eventually, they got bored and
Bender convinced them to learn to MIG weld. For
complete beginners, they did pretty good...see that Billa? |
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Next, the rear fenders were held up to the
proper width and Dan bent the rear upper tube that will define
the shape of the back 1/3. Bender did the welding while
Dan went to make plans for the rear diagonals. |
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Though Bender gets much of the credit for
this fab job, it turns out that Dan is a great fabricator as
well...the two of them together is a touchdown. Back on
the diagonals, this was a tough area as we wanted to maintain
the look of a pickup. Too big of a radius coming off the
roof, and it would take away from the abrupt look of most
top-back edges of truck cabs. After the mockup was done,
we still changed it a tiny bit more in SolidWorks, but we're
talking less than 2" in how the radius or the rear diagonal
lands on the roofline. |
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So that was it...the trick was keeping the
chassis placed properly on the table in relation to the drawn
markings representing the axles / tires and "crosshair"
centerlines drawn the length and width of the table. Each
time something was added, it was measured a couple of times to
be sure everything was square. This mockup chassis is
almost perfect as we wanted to ensure we had a good working base
for when Matt came out to take his measurements. His
measurements are critical to ensuring the SolidWorks computer
rendering of the chassis outputs the proper numbers for all
future "production" chassis BTF builds.
It took Matt about a day to load it all in,
clean it up, and then be able to send me a complete computer
model of the chassis that I could spin freely in space.
Once I had that, I asked for a couple of small changes and after
discussing the requests with Bender and Dan, the final modeling
was complete. |
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Here are the final mockup chassis pics I took
before Becca and I had to return home. Something I held
until the end...all of this was done in 2.5 days. Bender
may be twisted, but he sure is FASSSST! |
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Back to "the GROWING BULL" menu |
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Forward to the next story - "the Build, Part 1 - Chassis" |
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Back to "HOME" |
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Blue Torch FabWorks, Inc
Red Bull
RockCrawling Team
Pirate4x4.com
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