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

Riccy wrote: Does your welder not have a gas switch in the trigger? You dont half seem to get through some gas compared to what mine uses and your on bigger bottles than me...

Buggy is looking very well in the latest pics

Thanks!

Hmmm, yes, but I have been doing a lot of welding, last bottle change was 3 weeks ago, and since then I've welded up the nearside diagonal elliptical tube, boxed in the rear of the cab, the front box section 'bent' wing top (slice and weld many times to create the bend), the a-pillar tube, the tree wire loop mount, the bonnet edge (seam weld all along) and the half-door capping (again seam weld all along inside and out). The bottle seems small to me! I'm used to full sized BOC bottles that last forever, the ones I have now are the middle size of the SGS 'farm gas', so £69 for the refill... I'n hopefully on the last bottle now to finish off the welding stage - 'just' the A-pillar to wing top area to do?.. oh, and the snorkel mounts, oh, and the battery, and windscreen washer brackets to make...
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Lambert wrote: and so the Big Tease begins! At least we have written updates.

Yes, and in fairness you've already seen the other side done, so it would be the same photos but mirrored to the other side...

Oops... didn’t get a lot done yesterday I set the alarm for eight, it woke me,but I thought I’d turn over and have another ten minutes... and then woke up at ten o’clock! A cooked breakfast and then the wife wanted a hand with something obviously more important than the buggy... so I eventually got into the garage at noon, and worked til four... and then started cleaning the brick set drive, my yearly chore ;( I’ve no idea where alll the mud and steel filings come from?!

Ah well, brownie points earned, and chores out of the way...

Strange purchase arrived today...



A single Ford Escort lengthened u-bolt for lowering said vehicle...?

Hmmm....

Ahhh...



Took me loads of searching!

It’s the same ID as the outside diameter of a Ford Escort axle tube... obviously!... and my chosen tube size OD for my snorkel!

That’s to clamp it under the 2” box section “bent” wing top

The

Like that... only shortened to length, and when the matching exhaust clamp bit arrives...

I can't do this!

I've been Dave the Blogger before blogging was even heard of! Twenty seven years ago I had the Superzuki and it's matching K9RDJ website, and I've always posted on forums and blogs since then... so it pains me not to do this build history while I go along... It would be great not to show any more updates, but then what would I do at the end? Show show a photo of the finished buggy? Or attempt to catch up with the build thread? Besides, I often refer back to it for photos of "what I did on the other side", etc...

So expect an update tonight when I get home from work and settle down at my desk...

Thanks Lambert!

Ok, so Sunday, I had a few hours in-between chores. and have been planning this for a while, so most of the bits are here, and...

Ever wondered whats under the skin of the bonnet at the front? Yup, I wondered too, and had been staring at the underside of it on a few occasions, around the bonnet catch area where it looks flat and boxy...



Let's be brave then? measured and marked, double checked, angle grinder armed with a slitting disk in hand... go for it! BZZZzzz....!

Oh blimey! Top skin cut, but it won't lift up... shoot! Get a torch and peer in... hmmm, get a wood chisel and try and split what I assumed was spot welds ... Hmmm ... turns out the inner and outer skins are stuck together (in this area anyway) with big rubber dots, about 30mm in diameter, a good few of them, but woody the chisel (told you before all my tools have daft names!) managed to split them all, and I managed to lift the flap with the big 4"x2" box section clamped down to the bonnet skin used to pivot a straight line fold...

(Yup! I make this up as I go along! )



Damn, slightly out of focus, but you get the idea... the big piece of box section and a cutoff of half a piece of the same box (that was used to cap the doors, etc...) was clamped together around the outer skin to bend it back the other way...



... to meet some 100mm x 60mm box section that's been cut to fit around an LED light bar...



Some steel bar to make a nice rounded edge to protect the LED light bar from those pesky trees, and the general public just in case...



And I'm waiting for a small strip of 100mm wide steel plate flat bar to cut diagonally to fill the sides, nice and wide 6mm to give me something to weld the thin outer skin of the bonnet to...

The reasoning was, looking at the front of the buggy with it's twin JCB lights to be fitted, they'd probably be worse than the standard Jimny headlights, so some more wattage was needed, and, I couldn't think where to put any spot lights, etc, without getting rid of valuable cooling grills, and sticking on the bonnet edge wasn't an option without some protection from them there pesky trees, and I figured it would "look right" too...

I was going to leave this addition til later, but there's no point me finishing and painting the bonnet to then have to do this later, so I bit the bullet and got the grinder out...

That's better... couldn't help but share that one

Cool

You should have asked me about the bonnet... ive been cutting so many holes in Ulysses to allow for the throttle body carry-on lately that I know how its held together

Its worth putting something in the gaps from cutting between the layers. This is to stop any vibration and hold the seams together a bit. I used some grey window silicone I had left over

Thanks Riccy! I should have thought of asking you Yes, some silicone is a good idea!

I thought I'd taken more "during" photos, but I must have had my "no-blogging" head on, so I've nipped out to take some more incase it helps anyone in the future

This is the area under the flap...



..see how it's ideally shaped to take the box section?... there was some internal ribbing that needed removing to get to this shape. Note the hole-saw'ed holes they were needed to get to the nuts under the light-bar, as the box section enclosure for it is such a close fit (as can be seen in the earlier photos) that it was awkward to get the captured bolts through the holes without some wiggling, so the holes underneath had to be big enough to not get in the way of the threads at all...



The view from underneath looking up at the bonnet catch area... it was this square and boxy area that convinced me to take the angle grinder to the outer skin, hoping the shape I imagined might be under it... result!

Started today by trimming the passenger (Alan's!) side mudguard to fit around the snorkel -





And then drilled all the holes and bolted it in place... Also drilled the holes for the snorkel U-bolt, but I'm still waiting for half an exhaust clamp to finish it off -



So I just want the anti-crush bit to go on my massive U-bolt....



And also trimmed the front leading edge to suit...



And then started working out where all the ancillaries will live...

(Away from the exhaust! And the over-hanging pie warmer!)



Knocked up a bracket for the radiator expansion tank...



Folded it around the angle grinder 'key'...



Next the windscreen washer bottle... called in the bigger Clarke sheet bender for that...



Clamped in place... Hmmm, (engine / starter / little!) battery next then? More weight in that to support...



That cutoff of 4"x2" box section half will do for this...



Cut into three lengths, then cut to suit, some 1" box sides cut to suit (mostly as the bolts I found where just a little to short!) and some bracing pieces cut to suit... I'll weld them all up on Sunday...

Thanks KirkyNut

I keep thinking no-one's readings this thread (and why do I therefore bother?) but then it's had 18.4K views to date

And I keep referring back to it for reference too!

Dave

Just been tinkering in the garage as we're waiting for our main delivery of the week which is due midday...



The exhaust clamp arrived yesterday, so I disassembled it, the small U-bolt will come in handy one day, but I re-drilled the crush bracket out to 12mm to fit the new big (Ford Escort) U-bolt and then loosely bolted it in place...



On the A-pillar I'm planning on rounding the corners of this steel plate and welding it along the right hand edge to the snorkel tube... on the left side I'll drill three holes through the plate, and then drill through these into the 'cage's A-pillar tube and then weld nuts into the A-pillar tube so that the snorkel can then be bolted to it... (I'll shape the plate a bit to make it look nicer too of course )

I'm then hoping to pass the snorkel assembly to my mate who runs FloFlex Polyurethane to throw in his plating pile, so it comes back zinc'ed and shiny... a contrast to all the yellow-ness everywhere else on the buggy?