The chassis was coming together nicely when I brought up another idea. Here is a pointer for anyone working on a custom buildup; if you keep making changes or "bringing up ideas," your project will take that much longer to get done, and at some point you will need to make a "design freeze," and just get the project moving ahead. Luckily, since we were still at the drawing stage these changes could easily be tried out. My other idea was more a question; could a buggy be built completely out of sheetmetal? Basically build a unibody or monocoque vehicle, but design it to work off road, and be made of thin sheetmetal to keep the weight down. Where some designers would chase me out of the shop at this question, Burroughs rolled it over in his head and offered that we could do certain parts out of thin chromoly sheetmetal with dimpled holes for added rigidity. I liked the idea and soon we had a new substructure drawn where the link suspension will tie in.
To finalize the drawings,...
To finalize the drawings, Burroughs went through and added many gussets and supports. This is the version we will actually start the build off of, but as with anything, once we start bending tubes there may still be some tweaking to make everything perfect. Plus, we may add more dimpled sheetmetal parts where the Fox coilover shock mounts
Rather than make the rock...
Rather than make the rock sliders straight as on most 4x4s and buggies, I wanted to give them a high center. Having wheeled with Tim Hardy and his battered Suzuki Samurai (see our Ultimate Adventure coverage) I recognized that his rock sliders have been battered up into an arc after years of abuse and rarely got caught on things. Perhaps raising the breakover angle out at the edges of the chassis to follow the floorboards may work as well.
We began discussing other...
We began discussing other chassis options, such as putting the engine in the rear for added visibility. This is a possibility with the chassis, but it would require either the axles to be run upside down or a custom reverser gearbox made to get the driveshaft rotation correct. However, plans are already in the works for a possible future build.
And finally, Burroughs went...
And finally, Burroughs went ahead and drew a four-seater buggy. This would be great for family wheeling, or being the off-road party bus. In order to do this, the chassis is drawn with a longer 121-inch wheelbase.
Next month I'll show you how we took these drawings and moved into the fabrication stage of the buildup. Some of you will be able to use these drawings to build a chassis at home, but if fabrication isn't your cup of tea, Poly Performance will be offering a similar chassis for sale that you can install your preferred drivetrain into, or have built as a complete turnkey tube car.