Ol'fogasaurus black buggy

[Ol'fogasaurus]

When it comes to figuring out the cage mounts to the pan, you have the drawings I sent you. You have this obsession that the roll cage MUST mount to the floor, for some reason. It REALLY does NOT need to. Just mount it to "sockets" of 1.75 x .120 tube 3" long that you weld or bolt to the body lift. If the tubes are all parallel in that bottom 3", the cage will slip in and out, and can be pinned with 2 3/8" through bolts for each cage leg. Or weld tabs to the sides of the vertical tubes and bolt them to the body lift. It's SO simple. No need to argue with yourself or anyone else.

Dusty, I have told you several times I have seen cages mounted in shear only fail in roll-overs and especially at least one ending a broken neck and at least one in death.

In a buggy, the VW pan was not designed for what a lot of us are using them for so, it being my business when I was working in design to design to the limit. I also have seen rails have their hoops fail but not always sure just what happened. My 35 years at work, was in most of the 30 groups in the Passenger Accommodations dept on commercial airplanes where we designed to the dictated max (3G, 6G or 9G) on safety designs, and sorry, I still think that way.

The driver's seat (in my black buggy) location was designed to accommodate the tallest in our group as well as the shortest in the group. The pass seat was located so I could see to the side without the passenger head or body blocking my vision of merging toys.

In the rear most position of the seat a vertical location of the rear hoop just barely misses the seat back and doesn't give the 4" of head room needed in case of a collision, rollover or endo. The cage will need to be tipped back to somewhere around 15° or 20° to give the driver's head with helmet safety.

I did make a test mount like you advised but, because the upper structure of the body curving inwards not outward the cage is too close to that structure so even a fairly light roll over could destroy it (the fenders would also probably be destroyed even with a side hoop).

What you see in your form of playing people have (or were supposed to have) this stuff taken care of for their own safety. Buggies don't have tops for their use like Bajas usually, but not always, have.

Thanks for the hoop's wall thickness as that was one of the things I was trying to find out.

If I am frustrating people that much maybe it is time for me to end this build and leave.

Lee

[dustymojave]

Dammit Lee, not only NO! But HELL NO. Don't you dare give up and leave!!! This is amiable here and about hobby and fun. Don't go getting pissy and turn your back and sulk. You''re a big boy now.

YES, you frustrate me. For over a decade you have rejected virtually every suggestion I've made on this build in this forum and via PMs and emails. But I'm not ready to give up. And you shouldn't be either!

So knock that stuff off!

The vertical cage tubes can have a slight bend inward just at the top of the body lift to clear the body shell. That's not as big of an issue as you seem to think. If you're so worried about shearing the bolts, Use 4 3/8" high shear bolts with sleeves through the body lift tube at each mount. It's a buggy. Not a 747 landing gear.

As for strength of mounting in shear vs mounting flat on the pan...
If you think that a flange mount to the pan sheet metal is not going to be in shear in a crash, then you're thinking as a draftsman working on paper, not as an engineer working in the 3D world. I've rolled a car. And I've done wreck Impounds for race cars inspecting them after crashes and evaluating damage. Things get bent in ALL SORTS of directions. And don't give me that "What you see in your form of playing" stuff. Or "Buggies don't have tops for their use like Bajas usually, but not always, have." either. Desert race buggies are REQUIRED to have metal roofs and I strongly recommend them for play buggies, whether for hard rock desert or for sand dunes. For racers it's partly to keep arms and hands and such inside the car during a crash. For dunes, it can also help keep the bars from sinking into the sand. I've seen a rail buggy flipped in the dunes (endo off a razorback) wind up with the cage buried 1/2 way in the sand. Why those 2 people didn't die, I don't know. Unconscious with very sore necks was bad enough. But I'd want a roof panel for shade out in the dunes or desert if nothing else. Here in the western US except for the Seattle area, we get this harsh thing called sunshine. For a woods buggy I'd want a roof to keep the branches out as well as for rollover safety.

I hear from dune guys that they don't want their view up the dune obstructed by a roof panel. Do you pull up to the bottom of a cliff and stop to look at it before you start climbing it? No. I've been in a buggy in the dunes with a soft top and it wasn't a problem for view. In a Jeep too. But a soft top is nearly worthless in a roll over. You can always check the hill from an angle to see from the side of the cage if the roof trips you out.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Email!

[Ol'fogasaurus]

This is more or less what Dusty wanted me to do. First remember that I picked up the body in Walla Walla Wa (The town so nice they named it twice") and put it on an open trailer backwards because of the front fenders (wings) could have wanted to lift the body that was strapped in place. The builder told me it was fresh out of the mold which didn't mean anything to me... at the time as I had never delt with fiberglass at the time, hence that warping was just some of it you can see in the pix, and it isn't the worse part of it either.

IMG_2713 - Copy.JPG

This is more or less what I think Dusty wanted. Since I didn't want to weld it as a mockup to the body lift, I set it with the up-rite flange of the angle bracket against the body lift and shimmed the ASSY up from the lower floor so that the tube was vertical.

IMG_2714 - Copy.JPG

This is the shimming and the location of the upright tube. Notice the gap between the body lift and the body. The flange sitting so far inside of the body is some of the warping done during the several hundred-mile tow and up through the Cascade Mountains (I think in late February) on the way home. The gap you seee is my fault as when I put the "Doubler" in the mounting flange on the pan I did not run bolts through the body, the body lift and the pan when I was locating the seats which caused the 1" square tube to bend. Clamping it together with the bolts does eliminate the gap so that is not a problem (I hope: wink:).

The body's mounting flange will be cut back anyway but that is another problem to be delt with.

IMG_2712 - Copy.JPG

As the vertical 1 1/2" tube sits at 90° bracket and this is how close to the body the tube is. Something between 1/2" and 1/4th inch and it isn't touching the mounting flange.

Dusty recommended two horizontal mounting flanges to hold the tube in place on the 3" high mounting angle which I think is correct, but I think it would also need some additional vertical support for the flange (the final bracket will be thicker material as this is just the mockup).

I could bring the foot of the flange down to the upper part of the pan but then loading would be on the bend radius especially (which is not something you put loads onto so if I had to move the cage tube inboard some which brings up bending the flange not only down but horizontally on the lower pan allowing it to be doing some of the lifting/support.

This is my logic which I don't think Dusty likes.

Anyway, hopefully this discussion between Dusty and I will give others some design things to think about assuming something like this ever comes up again. Glass bodied home built buggies are getting pretty scarce now days anyway. I know of one "old style" of dune buggy build that is being looked into right now.

Lee

[bajaherbie]

Meanwhile, I have a big job to do!



Sent from my SM-A326U using Tapatalk

[dustymojave]

Oklahoma Construction company...

It looks like I'm gonna have to share some of my sketches with the rest of you. Just done quick in Paint because I don't have CAD anymore.

RollCageBase_02B1.jpg

[note that the dark gray areas represent vertical surfaces, the light gray horizontal surfaces, blue is body lift tube, red is fiberglass body shell]

The bracket would be the same forward of the tube as seen, and behind the tube which is hidden in this view. It would use a total of 4 horizontal 3/8" bolts through the body lift. He could use high shear bolts such as NAS. He could also install sleeves through the body lift tube for the bolts to spread shear loads. The brackets would be made to fit the space between the inside face of the body lift tube and the outboard side of the roll cage vertical tube.The bracket could be made of 3 pieces welded at the upper and lower joints. The lower plate could include area for the cage tube to land on so as to close off the bottom of the tube. Sand gets EVERYWHERE! So for a sand car, it's good to close off every opening you can. That bottom plate could even be large enough to have 2 bolts through the edge shelf of the floor pan with a doubler underneath for handling loads in 2 planes.

Lee is concerned that the horizontal bolts would shear off in a rollover.

I say the horizontal bolts through the .120 wall body lift tube and the 3/16" bracket plate would be capable of taking far more force than the roll cage upright on a base plate on the sheet metal floor panel. In addition to that, in a rollover, the cage will be subjected to forces in numerous directions, NOT JUST STRAIGHT VERTICAL.

One could also use pieces of strap stock set vertically alongside the vertical cage tube to connect from the plate bolted against the inboard face of the body lift tube.

RollCageBase_01.jpg

Lee has also indicated he wants the cage to easily be lifted out. So I suggested a possibility to make the mounting much as shown, but using a 3" or 4" long piece of 1.75 x .120 wall tube welded to the bracket to serve as a socket, with 2 3/8" cross pin bolts to hold the cage in. If the body gets in the way, then the roll cage vertical tube can have a slight bend just above the socket. If this socket or the tube itself is attached to the face plate with pieces of strap stock, then the top of the gap would need a horizontal piece to cap it off to keep sand out.

[dustymojave]

BTW...These sketches roughly represent the way I intend to mount the roll cage in my own Glitterbug fiberglass buggy. Although it will have a tubular structure much like a tube frame rail buggy, not just a 4 or 6 point cage.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

I just sent you an email to start another round of ...

I was planning on starting a cage string so this and other related things would be easy to find rather than searching then finding a lot of locations. The ideas are good, and I will use some but not all of it (stubborn me). After seeing a fair amount of cage mounts fail over the years especially during the early 90s when a lot of this got started where I ride, I am still looking at adding the floor as kind of a doubler for the endos and hard hits during rollover. It is the endos and the sinking into the soft, wet, salt laden sand during the flopping and twisting action that can happen. Again, I almost did it in my blue buggy many years ago which got me into the mods needed to a glass buggy on a VW pan.

Lee

[dustymojave]

Got your email. Answered it.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Dusty, what the end product of this is based on my almost doing an end over ("endo") in my blue buggy not too long after I got it. It scared the crap out of me then and I haven't really gotten over it especially when I have seen other rig's cages bent in roll-overs and endos over the 30 years I have been playing in the sand. I'm not sure but I think the reason I didn't go over was that I had stepped on the brakes just as I was reaching the balancing limit (it did have front brakes at the time) which may have stopped the forward rotation motion of the body and it did have a front mounted fuel tank at the time also, the tank also leaked too).

With the black buggy there is no real weight in the front of the buggy while in the rear mounted fuel tank (10 gallons), the (Ford) Cologne V-6 and 6 rib bus trans, the radiator and fan plus the other supporting steel like the engine cage come crashing down in an end over end based on the weight in the back of the buggy going straight over the front of the car at speed.

Even though the VW pan's floor is next to useless the hanging weight of the cage connected only on the body lift is what is driving me. Doublers are also a good thing to have in this case.

Lee

[bajaherbie]

Slow down out there old man!

Sent from my SM-A326U using Tapatalk

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Slow down out there old man!

Sent from my SM-A326U using Tapatalk

It wouldn't surprise me if others don't have lingering memories that hang in the background and get remembered occasionally. I did a write up on it but blew it a way as it was so long. That's how strong the memory is and why I am that way I am about it.

I'm pretty rusty now but not old until I reach at least over 100.

Lee

[dustymojave]

I've stood my HiJumper on it's front tires a time or 12. I even danced my '65 Baja on it's front tires 4x while WFO in high gear. Never actually endoed a car before myself. But I rolled my '58 Baja (the one shown in my avatar) at 45mph once. That cost me $55 to fix and I didn't even repaint it for 37 years. I've seen a 2007 GT500 endo when it slid off a road race track into a ditch head-on, and the 3" square roll cage base plates punched right through the sheet metal floor and the roof met the door tops. How that fool survived I really don't know. But I'm suggesting you attach the cage to something FAR MORE substantial structurally than the sheet metal of the floor. But it seems you don't wan to hear it. You act like I'm suggesting fastening 20ga sheet to 20ga sheet with a single small screw in shear. That IS NOT the case. LOOK AT IT!. Your body lift is .120 wall. FAR stronger than the 20ga floor panel.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

I've stood my HiJumper on it's front tires a time or 12. I even danced my '65 Baja on it's front tires 4x while WFO in high gear. Never actually endoed a car before myself. But I rolled my '58 Baja (the one shown in my avatar) at 45mph once. That cost me $55 to fix and I didn't even repaint it for 37 years. I've seen a 2007 GT500 endo when it slid off a road race track into a ditch head-on, and the 3" square roll cage base plates punched right through the sheet metal floor and the roof met the door tops. How that fool survived I really don't know. But I'm suggesting you attach the cage to something FAR MORE substantial structurally than the sheet metal of the floor. But it seems you don't wan to hear it. You act like I'm suggesting fastening 20ga sheet to 20ga sheet with a single small screw in shear. That IS NOT the case. LOOK AT IT!. Your body lift is .120 wall. FAR stronger than the 20ga floor panel.

I'm still attaching it to the body lift also similar to your drawings, that was never out of the discussion. It was the "compression loading" I was wanting and the problem with the bend (stretched floor metal) trying to handle that loading.

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Thanks Dusty and all the others who have helped with ideas on the cage. While watching a john Wayne movie about putting out well fires I think I have finally made a decision on the cage, but then I still have to mock it up to see if I can even do it. I plan on doing the mounts myself but will not bend the cage and the bridging itself. Dusty did give me material sizes which I didn't have before so that goes a long way too. I don't have a bender nor room for one plus the $$$ for one.

We still have residual snow on the ground in areas and we are supposed to get heavy rain for the next few days so the body will come off when I can get outside and get help taking the body off the pan and onto the then the work begins again

It will be a combination of some of Dusty's ideas and my stubbornness for using the pan's help. Checking the angle of the seat again it is looking like I might be able to do the bend at roughly10° but then that is still give or take too.

IMG_2491 copy.jpg

IMG_2492 copy.jpg

This will give an idea of the bridging that will need to be done.

IMG_2578 copy.jpg

The forward hoop will be roughly just forward of the body mount hole shown before the bend in the body lift. There is a Doubler there over the kerfing area which may have to be delt with but no big deal.

Lee