The Beginning!!!!!

[KWiKSand]

For the die you might look around here *http://dezertrangers.com/cgi-bin/ib/ikonboard.cgi?;act=SF;f=17 *Mostly what I have seen is 1.5 and bigger but ??

Curous how heavy are do the arms end up being? *If I have to rebuild my trailing arms I am really considering making boxed ones like your arms.

That thing looks like it is going to be stout

[tenaja]

If you guys fly, you might have bumped accross my site...I haven't updated it in about six years though...
www.rcfaq.com
When I quit , I was flying the 50-80cc engine powered IMAC aerobatic planes.

[Bugpac]

my buddy started flying about 2 yrs ago, and since has aquired about 30 planes, i just cant seem to get it myself, i have only tried a few times but i guess i am plane stupid, i run a remote control concrete pump with about 12 channels, dont understand why i cant get the plane bit down, will try some more tho...

[flyerrider]

The arms really aren't that heavy. *I am guessing around 5-6 pounds. *I'll put them on a scale today. *The heaviest part about them is the bungs. *They started off as 1.5" square stock, all 16 of them. *When you put three bungs in an upper arm, they start to get pretty heavy for their size. *The very front bulkhead, the one with the shock mount, is the heaviest. *We weighed it and it came in at 19 pounds. *The funny thing is..... I actually want the weight up front. *I am running 15" rims and 30" tires so that is going to be a pretty significant amount of unsprung weight. *I am actually going to go work on the buggy right now. *I'm going to try to get the other 2 arms bent up and weld up the tabs. *The nicest thing about interlocking plate arms is that if they are done right, no jig is necessary. *That and there is practically zero fabricating involved. *Just put it together like LEGOs and weld it. *It takes around two and a half hours to weld up each bulkhead and around an hour and a half to weld up an A-arm. *We take our time and make sure the piece doesn't get to hot and that we are constantly staggering the welds. *That makes sure that everything stays nice and straight. *Another thing that is making the project go so fast is that I am not doing the welding. While I am assembling, bending, clamping and cleaning the parts, my friend is sitting there tigging the part I just assembled. *It is really cutting down on the construction time.

[cullen]

would you sell the laser cutting templates? that front end would be perfect for my buggy.
what is the thickness of the plate you use?

[flyerrider]

Today I didn't get as much done as I wanted. *I started off the day with a crushing headache so I got a late start. *The news has also spread around town about the project so we had a few visitors today that also slowed things up a little. *I also discovered there was a cutting error on one of the top plates for the front upper A-Arm so I was only able to get one of them done. *I can fix the problem with a plasma and welder but I ran out of time today. *We got the remaining A-arms bent up and welded the tabs. *Here's some pics

[flyerrider]

I forgot to take pictures of the assembly and pieces of the front upper A-Arm. *I will post pics of the other one when I do it. *Also pictured is one of the 16 bungs we are machining. *We are using a mill and by tack welding 8 together at a time they actually are going pretty fast. *They are machined for 3/4 heims (pictured) for the chassis mounts on the upper a-arms and 7/8 heims for the mount at the spindle. *The heims at the spindle will be vertically mounted.

[flyerrider]

My new favorite tool. *It's a brake for a 20 ton H press. *I am amazed at how well this little thing works. *I scored it off ebay for $125.

[flyerrider]

Also it might seem that I am doing things a little out of order by building all of the suspension components first and the chassis later. *I am doing this for a couple reasons. *The biggest reason is that this entire buggy has been engineered to be self jigging. *Basically the interlocking tabs will keep the arms and bulkheads straight while welding, *and the arms will keep the bulkheads straight while the bulkheads keep the chassis straight and so on. *Also we have a space issue. *We are building this in my friends two car garage which is Basically a one and a quarter car garage because of his toys (a couple quads, a couple bikes, a baja bug, plus his fab tools). *My one car garage is pretty much taken up by my bike, the engine donor bike, the buggy parts, and a lot of other crap. *So, the other reason for doing it in this order is that we want to have all of the small stuff out of the way before we start building a big chassis that will take up a lot of space. *We have roughly figured that it will take 4-7 days to have a rolling chassis from when we start laying out tube. *This thing pretty much has to be rolling in a very short amount of time.

[Gene]

That is a very interesting build and the self jigging idea is familiar.

Fly, you are teasing us without mercy by not showing a 3d of the completed car. *
Gene