Dave's la(te)st buggy build...

Early bath Our eldest daughter is working from home, in my study which is above my garage, and she's complained to her mum - SWMBO - that I'm making too much noise and she can;t concentrate on her work.. So to keep the peace I've packed up and going to walk the dogs... Next Wednesday she'll have to move to another room in the house... it's big enough



That odd looking thing above in the last post is to sit between the drum of the winch and the donut fairlead so that I can influence the rope to go where I want it to when spooling the rope back in



I did have time to finish the rer light boxes though... capping the ends...



So that they - with the guards - will also protect the light lenses...



The other ends..



I also notched the insides arund the box section hoop supports and shortened the outer sides so that they don't stick out so far...

I then 'made' some big washers -



By welding some slices of seamless tube and welding them into some BIG M24 form G washers...



... shortened some old srock polyurethane body lift spacers...



Which made the bottom bushes to go under the body mounts on the rear...



.. like that!

And...



.. that was the back nearly ready for final assembly... until I had to stop working Ah well, a few hours off then...

The only other thing I was going to do was cut some perforayed steel and some flat bar edges to make the infill for where the number plate sits, so that will have to wait until Sunday now...

Getting there1...

Is not a perforated metal guard going to obscure the number plate significantly?

Lambert wrote: Is not a perforated metal guard going to obscure the number plate significantly?

Ah, no, it's just to infill this bit -



Where I've drawn that yellow box, that will be small flat bar with the perforated sheet behind it, and the number plate will then sit on the outside of that, the same sheet as I've used on the front -



Then a downlighter lamp can be mounted above the number plate too...

Ah ok that makes more sense, I half thought it was to combat the cameras every 20 feet on the expressway!

This bit Lambert -



I'd just made that bit, and started to weld the rest of the back together... when I ran out of gas! Damn! I've done loads of welding, but all the same it seems to have gone quite quickly...? Half bottles I suppose...

So I sulked inside for a cup of tea, and then thought, what the hell, there's other bits I can be getting on with?...

So I grabbed a lorry wheel arch, marked it up, and then cut it in half...



One of the rears jacked up off the top of the tyre to see how it looks...





Fits nicely, apart from...



It fouls on the end of the sill bars... so I'll have to cut a little square out to get round that...



The inner edge of the rear just fouls on the end of the bottom box section too, you can see it kicking out slightly...

It needs cutting off straight across at about the level of the bottom of that box section though, and a little bracket on the end of it will hold it nicely there...



Kind of like that, as marked in yellow lines...

Might as well cut another one then?



One for the front!





Again, the front needs trimming off, somewhere level with the bottom of the headlight...



Again, a little tab needs welding to the side of the headlight mount too (There's a box section end cap going in the top of it)



Looking down the buggy, it looks okay? They are a little bit square'r than I'd have liked, but you have to work with what you can get?



The beauty of cutting the lorry wheel arches exactly in half is that I get a complete set of spares... albeit with white edging, urrghh!, although I'm sure that white will sand off?

I then decided I'd have the rest of the day off with the family, so I tidied up and had a play with the back end...



And mocked up the diagonal bar and re-added the fuel filler, to see how everything would look together...



Yup, quite happy with all that!

That elliptical diagonal brace needs fishmouthing so it sits on top of the rear hoop, and the top / angle is meant to replicate the shape and angle of the original part of the soft-top... I want it to look like a buggy, but also be recognisable as being Jimny based, for registration and MOT purposes...

One "issue" that's playing on my mind when I'm day-dreaming about the buggy in the shop (it keeps me going and sane!) is what's going to be yellow and what's going to be black? The original idea was to have the body tub yellow, and the additional bits black... but with it all flowing together, it might end up more yellow than black?...

On the passenger side...



The snorkel tube (2.5") will be coming out like this, just between the box section and the wheel arch...

This week the hose, jubilee clips and K&N air filter have arrived, but I'm still waiting for the snorkel tube, although Tom "Pipe-bender" has marked it as depatched on eBay...