New member baja buildup

[Ol'fogasaurus]

With the broken parts, maybe you should spell it "Gobble-em"

Lee

[motorbreath53]

i don't know why you bother showing pics of your car in the dirt... All the cool kids around here just put together "garage decoration" cars to impress their neighbors...

I like the adaptation of the Van clutch pedal... and the spare tire mounts pretty damn cool too. I give you a solid B+. (Woulda been an A, but my wife didn't like the color.)

[Hedrock]

i don't know why you bother showing pics of your car in the dirt... All the cool kids around here just put together "garage decoration" cars to impress their neighbors...

I like the adaptation of the Van clutch pedal... and the spare tire mounts pretty damn cool too. I give you a solid B+. (Woulda been an A, but my wife didn't like the color.)

[flaircraft]

(Woulda been an A, but my wife didn't like the color.)

That's amazing - my wife doesn't like the color either! She's asked me a half dozen times to paint it something other than red, but I figure that I have better things to do with my time and money than paint a Baja that's just going to get scratched up, especially since it came with this paint when I bought it and it's in decent shape. Besides, it's my car and I like red...

[ajdenette]

the 710 cap on a vanagon type 4 is set up to stick out the licence plate door to add and check the oil level. (wil grap pic later to show)

[Leatherneck]

When I originally put the Goblin together, I was running out of time due to an upcoming move so I had to kind of throw the halfshafts together to get the car drivable by the deadline. Both the Vanagon halfshafts and the Bug halfshafts were the wrong length, so I decided to shorten the Vanagon halfshafts to the correct length for the car. Besides which, I didn't (still don't) have the money to get custom-length halfshafts...

I suspected back when I shortened the halfshafts that they weren't the strongest, and had been babying them somewhat ever since I put them together. After 2 years of combined street and offroad use, they did start to show some signs of failure so I decided not to do any offroading with them any more (this being about 2 months ago, June 2011). But, of course not long after I made that decision I had to prove to my friend that my Baja could go up a hill that his Jeep couldn't... so long story short I won the bet, but lost a halfshaft. I managed to limp it home and then ordered some new Vanagon halfshafts to shorten, this time vowing to do the job right. I know the motto of STF is "pics or it didn't happen" so I took some nice juicy shots of the new and improved halfshafts going together.

When I shortened the original halfshafts, I built them similarly to a driveshaft on a typical RWD vehicle (I.E. the majority of the length between the joints was a hollow tube) and worried mostly about the strength of the welds on the tube that connected the two joints. I even went through the trouble of calculating the necessary weld area to withstand the torque and power that would be put into the halfshaft. I am happy to say that at least my welds didn't fail! Unfortunately I just assumed that the tubing that I spliced into the halfshafts would be strong enough. As it turns out, it wasn't. Imagine taking a wet towel and wringing it out, what does the towel look like when you've twisted it?; that's what the outside of the halfshaft tubing looked like after 2 years of use. A few weeks after seeing that, I then made the (wise? unwise?) decision to show up my friend in his Jeep. Here's the result...



A closer up shot:


Note that the halfshaft is supposed to be straight! Not only is it twisted but it's also bent. I had been fearful of this exact thing happening after seeing the initial twisting a couple months ago, but what can I say, I just had to prove that my Baja was better than his Jeep!

After the replacement halfshafts showed up in the mail, the first thing was to shorten them to the correct length. My chopsaw had a hard time of this, as the halfshafts are roughly 1" diameter steel bars (and decent quality steel at that), here's a pic of the halfshaft being shortened:



After removing a roughly 6" section from the middle of the halfshaft, I then beveled the ends of the halfshaft and butted them up to each other in a jig (piece of angle iron) so that I would be assured that they would be aligned perfectly (I hadn't done either of these the previous time I shortened the halfshafts):


I tack welded them together in 4 places to assure they'd remain aligned, then took the jig off and welded them up. I put my 240v Miller welder on the hottest setting to ensure adequate penetration (the same setting that I'd used 2 years ago, note that the old halfshaft welds haven't broken!)

After welding the 2 halves back together, I took the grinder and smoothed them up as best I could, then did a fair amount of further smoothing with a fine file. I didn't want any stress risers on the halfshafts. Here's a pic after grinding, but before filing.


During the cutting and welding operations, I was very careful not to overheat the halfshafts, as I was afraid that I could either burn up the CV boots or at least mess up the grease in the CV joints. I had wetted towels wrapped around the far ends of the halfshafts, up against the CV boots, for pretty much all the work that I did.

After smoothing up the weld, I then welded a piece of the same steel tubing I had used last time around the outside of the halfshaft. I figure what happened on the original halfshafts I shortened is that while the welds didn't break, the hollow tubing didn't have enough strength and rigidity for the power I was putting through it. What I've done on rev 2 is to basically take the original design and beef it up by butt-welding the solid halfshaft bars to each other inside the "driveshaft" tube. Plus, I made sure to weld the tube to the halfshaft lengthwise to add extra torsional rigidity:


Sorry for the poor pic, but it should be apparent that I split the tubing into 2 halves and welded each half onto the halfshaft, both at the ends of the tubing (around the halfshaft) and also along the split line of each tubing half (lengthwise down the halfshaft).

The increase in strength from doing this should be significant. I took the Goblin on a hillclimb today and didn't cringe much (I do still have to re-do the other halfshaft though). I wouldn't trust this on the Baja 1000 but don't have any problem with running trails here locally

well that is a first for me. Cutting and welding up the axles. And it works, you can beat the snot out of them? You have given custom axles a whole new meaning.

[BajaJeremy4]

Just curious if you feel any vibration at high speed??

[Ol'fogasaurus]

I'd be more worried about the lack of torsional qualities and embrittlement from the heat but then it is working for him so who knows.

Lee

[BajaJeremy4]

I think thats what that ducting is for just above it. Kinda like brake ducts???