Lee's ride

[Ol'fogasaurus]

I have another dune buggy that I was going to get rid of... for several different reasons. I still have it. I showed the pan for it on the rotisserie. It looks like a Berry Mini-T +4 but was made by Redhead Roadsters which it out of business now. It uses a full length pan. I have a modified 2.8 Ford V-6 in it that is tied to an 091. If you are interested it seeing it, I will send a pix to Leatherneck to post. I am having, intermittent, problems with paths still and have not been sucessful in doing things, or making contacts to some sites.

Part of the reason I am doing this buggy lift is because of the other buggy. The forward firewall contour of the body does not match the coutour of the stock buggy pan. A lift of some sort is necessary just to get the body to fit on the pan. Building this lift has been a learning thing for me.

There are other reasons for my going to sell the other body and I still might do it. I am having heated arguements with myself but luckly they have not come to blows yet!

Lee

[scott the viking]

Long story...that involves bounced checks, a long drive and violence. The short version is...I got it back.

[The Wild Kids]

Hate when that happens Scott, have had to do the same thing before. The only good part was the drive I got to see some pretty country side at least.
Found some places that I would like to go back to and visit.
Like the work your doing Lee it looks great.

The Wild kids

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Thanks. I thought he was talking about my other buggy as I was going to get rid of it. It wasn't until I posted that I figured out that it wasn't me he was talking to.

The rail pix. Is that at SIR or Goldendale?

[Leatherneck]

I am feeling a little proud of myself, maybe even a little smug. I fought the center piece for four, almost five hours to come up with this. It was a grand fight and neither side took prisoners. I have dreaded making the hole in the curved piece almost the whole time I contemplated doing the body lift. With the 091 transaxle now coming over the top of the rear of the pan, the nose cone and shifter had to be accommodated. Since the 092 is not symmetrical and the mount has slots in it to accommodate this, I had to have it in place to make the marks. I marked the curved piece many times in the past and always got different answers, so yesterday, the transaxle went back in place.

I marked the hockey stick where it came out of the nose cone and then sighted in the sides of the nose cone. I pulled the curved piece out and measured up from the pan to the bottom of the nose cone ( a little under 1/2 inch) and then marked the top of the nose cone. Using a tri-square I drew a box where the nose cone dimensions were, drew a line from corner to corner and where they crossed was my center. I copied the dimensions over to the other side and then punched each cross. I then drilled a pilot hole.





then went down and got a 1/2 hole saw and proceeded to launch into the curved piece. Did it work.... of course not! It was too high and off-set too much to the drivers side. I then took my electric die grinder and an aggressive rotary file to the hole and made it look like it would fit. It took a couple of times but I got it to fit but it was still off to the one side (remember, that man cannot win when dealing with inanimate objects). I gave up on that and since the hole was now larger than 1 1/2 inches (I had some 1 1/2 exhaust tube that I was going to use for a liner), I decided to make my own liner. I grabbed a piece of scrap flat stock (18 ga I think) and started to form the liner around a large piece of solid round stock I had laying around. About a half and hour later, I had it and tacked it up. I slid it over the nose cone and (now) the stiffening pieces of the nose cone and it fit.



After finish welding the liner, I then laid the liner on the curved piece off-setting it to the passenger side, marked the liner outline and proceeded to grind the hole to match the liner. After a couple of try's, I got everything to fit so I welded it up. After some grinding, this is what I ended up with. The hole is not straight though the curved piece either, mainly because of the offset. I noticed that it didn't and panicked. Once in place, I figured that the angle had to be there.

Now I can start welding up the body lift, adding gussets, and making it so it is one solid and strong parameter piece. I will put the cage back on first to make sure that if fits OK first but with the one exception, I don't expect too much problem. With the cage on I can make the last two cage mounts that attach to the rear seat support.

[RyanB]

I love the body lift. That's alot of nice work there. How did he bend that part though? Looks like it may have been hammered into submission.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

One of these days I will get signed up for photbucket. Right now, Leatherneck has been good enough to post them for me (that is how you tell if you have a good friend).

I kerfed the piece of metal then welded it back together after it was bent. You see kerfing in wood working a lot, Kerfing is similar when doing metal but you have to do a little more. When you cut the kerf (in this case), you cut one face then both the other legs (the top and bottom inthis case). You have to continue cutting around to the un-cut face just past the radius, top and bottom (I think we put picture of kerfing in the first set of pictures, probably the out of focus one, shown on page one). I tried to be cute on this one and bend toward the un-cut side. I figured that the bend was so gradual with all the kerf cuts that the opens that were made would not be that big after bending. Boy, was I wrong! I had to make fill pieces to weld in, some of which were over a quarter of an inch wide.

Next time, I will bend it like the side rails and notch the kerfs to the inside.

[RyanB]

Oh I see. Kinda like doing a pie cut, but only single cuts. Gotcha. Boy that musta taken quite a while. Nice work!

[Ol'fogasaurus]

I have started to put the gussets in the body lift. The front ones are in and I was starting to cut and fit the rear ones. I have done all but the bottom welds with the body lift bolted to the pan. Friday, I had the lift off and did the welding on the bottom joins and ground them smooth. I put the body back on and welded in the front gussets and ground the welds smooth. I laid the loft on the pan and welded in the first gusset and cleaned up my mess for the day. Sunday, I went out to do the other gusset so I could finish everything up as off-road riding season is fast approaching. I started to cut the last gusset and when I got down on ty prayer bones to start fitting it I noticed the whole rear cross piece had moved forward. It had moved over a quarter of an inch. I had not bolted the lift to the pan and I guess that was my down fall on this.

I bolted the lift back down and then noticed that the front piece had moved (shrunk) as the four holes in it were off center too. It looks like the whole lift had been picked up and dropped. The good news is it is still flat. After getting the whole thing bolted back down, I put some big clamps on the rear cross piece and slowly moved it back ito posistion and then appiled some heat. It has moved back now but now as good as it was. I am still trying to decide if it is good enough (this is not a show piece) or do I want to do more.

The moral of this story is (I guess) don't remove anything until all the welds on your car do are finished and (If you plan on doing them) are ground down. You are still applying a lot of heat during grinding. The guy on the Muscle Car show on SPIKE TV had a similar problem with metal moving.

Lee

[Hot Wheels]

I like it, very simular to my own project, time line included... I went the other way around though, tube chassis and I cut the body in half and did the lift in the glass body tub. Same differance though, 2 1/2" more fender clearance. Keep it rolling.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

I am at the border line of 'should have built a tubular frame.' Since this was a street legal buggy, I decided to keep the pan as it wouldn't take much to put it back on the street. The tube frame would have caused problems with the pan/registration number on the tunnel and could have been hard to get it through inspection (if I had to). I have too much into it right now to start over.

If I go much farther than the next change (frame head and king pin beam plus cage and beam supports), it will be a new frame as it would be off-road only with no turn back.

The body change was thought of. It was a coin flip but the body I have is somewhat rare and I am trying not to make too many irreversable changes to it.

[Hot Wheels]

Mine is to be street legal as well, but since I already have an assembled title I was not restricted to the original vin. If I had been I probably would have grafted the upper shell of the beam over the tube chassis. My body was easier to split beacaus the side covers were ten able to be relocated to the top of the frame and adhered to the florr pan making the tub one solid set on top of the frame piece. The floor pan is glass as well...

[ntsqd]

One of the projects I always wanted to do with my 'glas buggy was to basically bring the "body lift" up to *just* under the 'gunnel' of the body. The idea was a flat perimeter tube weldment at the gunnel that had a truss structure extending down to the pan, and then enclose the whole thing in light gage sheetmetal. Then trim the body to fit at the usual height. The idea was to turn the pan into a welded steel monocoque that the cage & suspension was then attached to.

[Hot Wheels]

http://www.shoptalkforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=107303

I left the whole body, just sandwiched it between the tubular lower and the cage. Should be strong enough.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Update: I got the lift done and bolted it into place while the bond between the lower pan and gasket dried. When I tried to set the body in place, it won't set all the way down. It has a gap that raises to about a half an inch in the center of the long rails.

I then went inside, rather than getting upset, and I later made several trips out to the garage to see what was wrong. Each trip I , and I did make several, I returned inside with discoveries of different problems each time.

Basically I found that the front two spherical radiuses, at each of the front corners, have some rot of some kind in them. Also, the corner on the left side is built up (thicker glass) and the other side is not. Both are not straight and drop down from the straigh line of the side mounting rails.

If you remember, I was able to salvage a front cross piece from a Baja that had rusted out, and used it. It's contour while OK with the Baja, does not match the contour of my glass body. On the front cross-piece, about three of four inches up from the radius to the flat area where the bolts go the body makes contact so the front of the body won't drop all the way down. Even it the contour had been right, the body mounting flange is the side rails and front cross piece anyway. So, what I will have to do in front is grind down the lift to meet the buidld-up and recoutour the lower part of the front cross-piece.

In back it is a similar problem I have to re- taper the rear cross piece just a little, about three or four inches up the lift to lower it some. Some of the problem is that the falnge on the body is not horizontal but drops down some. When the rear of the body moved during the welding of the gussets the problem that was a lready there tehn became a problem.

Asking around, this kingd of thing is not that uncommon when building body lifts. No two bodies come out of the molds the same and when un-bolted they can move to a different shape. Especially the older ones.

There are other issues I have now discovered, but they will have to wait until riding season is over.

I hope this helps someone. Lee.