"Zuk" Another De-Ranged Project

[De-Ranged]

As promised on the zuk forum a build thread so all you old regular's can give me some crap

And here is the poor little thing as I got it




The fun little toy came with a 4age fitted that accourding to some paper work has had performance cam's fitted no receipts tho lol, oh and some extended shackles that gave me almost enough room to run an old set of 31" RMT mud slicks that I've biffed on for river playing, it also has fiddles setup on the rear axle and the air intake is under the dash

Standard its geared way to tall for the 31"s I'm having to do everything at speed in 1st low becouse becouse its the only way I have any power, all good for showing off but if it gets techniqual I either stall or launch lol

Suspension is pretty good but I'm getting sick of bottoming out all the time and the drivers side lean has to go

The original plan was to biff a commy in it and an auto but.... after doing a few river runs it has proven its self as a very capable toy.... I'm going places that amaze me and its doing it all wrong lol it seems to claw its way forward with wheel spin when every other truck is just digging in... and when I do get stuck I can just back out, its that good that in the last trip we gave it the nickname the depth finder becouse I was using it to test where we crossed the river
Drive in.... opps to deep - back out, to soft - back out, to swift lol argh slight issue with that one, but it does drive out further down stream
Anyway I think its getting away with this becoase its so light got me rethinking the commy swop thinking I may keep the AGE hmmm

As it sits at the moment Ive mounted some new seats in it,passangers one was fun as it didn't have anything there to support a seat, I've rewired a heap of nasty wiring, moved the computer and all the wiring I did into click clack containers to water proof it (still got to do the main relays and fuses...) moved the battery to the back inside the cab, made up a new fuel tank thats a bit bigger to sit inside above the rear axle and I'm about to virtual lift it and do the suspension and axles not much really
Will post up some pics soon

Right time to go do some more work on it

Cheers Reece

[rokhound]

Bugga me! Reece has actually posted up a going vehicle

[De-Ranged]

a build thread so all you old regular's can give me some crap

Good on ya mate I'm working on something that Mike Holland told me yrs ago "keep it going and do it bit by bit" taken me a while to realise the wisdom of his words

Right here is the details for the seats figured I'd do something sheetmetal



The seats were a major improvement with the tall gearing meaning I'm attacking everything and the bottoming out suspension we were getting beat up bouncing round inside
The electrics got done becouse the battery needed moving so I could do the vertual lift, and fit a relay for the rad fan.... that was the beginning of alot of problems got under the dash to discover a birds nest of undersized wires for the amperage, non-fused power wires through sharp holes etc


I still have to seal the factory fuses and relays I got into a bit of water that was a bit deeper than I thought.... was all good till the water level got to them, then I lost me motor.... the 4age was running fully submerged till then and going hard

Cheers Reece

[Rotazuk]

Sure we don't have to tell you a 4:16 t/case would be a major improvement . But why stick the battery in the middle of the rear right by the door , going to be a pain in the arse putting stuff in there now . Looks like the earth is bolted to the body , did you add a big earth from the body to the chassis somewhere ( so someone does not look at that pick and get the wrong idea when moving a battery to the back )

Cheers
Chris

[De-Ranged]

Yea it would.... and I seriously considered it (got offered one locally with the crawler gears fitted) but I really want an early cruiser one if I can fit it and an auto box, got a bit of a plan for this

As for the battery I mounted it there so I could fit the shock tower in CAD is a wonderfull tool it lets me plan things like articulation and placements.... when I've got the fuel tank in (will sit infront of the battery) I'll look at remounting the battery box a bit lower so its the same height as the tank inclosure
As for the chassi earth yea you got me there I'm still working off the factory one, plan is to fit a battery isolator switch and that once I've got the battery propperly mounted in my defense I did check that all earths are body

Cheers Reece

[mfrsr]

i can vouch that this thing floats

[niblik]

always love your work reece..

you mentioned "future plans for this thing"..

a little more detail for a nosey nibz?

[Moriarty]

Good stuff, mate!! An actual Reece truck that is ON THE ROAD!!! WOW........

Gotta look at coming back up your way again soon. Take my OWN fotos.... LOl


Keep it up, your work is always a joy.

[De-Ranged]

Future plans how does a rear mount pto winch sound and a few other custom bits.... I'm still working out things and sorting the compromises and priorities, just made the call last night after bouncing ideas with a trials mate to give up on leaf springs for the front and coil it. I want to keep the truck as low as possible but run 35" tyres, want to keep it light, set it up as a real capable legal club truck
Hey old fella if your coming up I've moved shop I'm over Onekawa, Napier now give me a bell I'll give you the address

Heres some more for ya
Got some more of the virtual lift done, heres the guard I'd done a wee while ago


Started into the passanger's front

I've plotted the required cut for a 36" tyre out back is all good the back one I cut it with a flat in the top so it would match the longer flatter cut for the front guards due to scrub steer to get the hole I needed in the front I've had to cut and move the side indicator forward and up, I also turned it round as there was a bit of taper... all this allowed me to cut the gard just that little bit further

While I was doing this I decided to get in and sort the sill

I'll weld the exo and gard bars to the outsides of this so they are body mounted but they will come later
I haven't finished the inner gard yet got a bit cought up in the friday drinks heres where I'm at

I'm trying to set it up so the front cut so it can easily come off in one piece for work on the motor
Hopefully get this lot done tomorrow allong with cam belt and a new rad fan after I killed the last one

Cheers Reece

[rokhound]

Go Reece.

Just make sure you put it all back together again each week and you should be all good

[De-Ranged]

Hasn't been much in the way of real progress on the toy... been doing the planing and paper work for cert approval, just becouse of the long travel air assist suspension, steering and axle housings I'm putting it before tech advisory so I"ve been drafting and measuring to try and plan everything as much as possible... front suspension was the worst, working to get good road handling with good travel and making certain it will all fit.... there will be some loss of steering lock on bigger tyres but I'm still going to have fiddles on the rear and its a short WB
here's a shot of the wheel scales so I could get unsprung weights for calculating spring rates

Had the day working on it today decided to strip the dash out and fix up the firewall to take the new motor and trans and tidy up a few little bits
Started off on the passangers side cleaned up a spot so I could mount the windscreen washer bottle
before

after

Then I got inside and started widening the trans tunnel and making the step up in the floor of the passangers side for the top link on the front suspension

Hopefully I'll get this finished saterday and back together so we can have a play sunday

Cheers Reece

[GotFlex]

you should show a pic of the drivers side! stock standard!!


is that so you can drive past cops and they wont look twice

[pruggerdore]

Dam go on holiday for a month and he cuts his truck in half.

[De-Ranged]

Had too many distractions today.... least of which was a hang over from last night firewall is all done and the trans tunnel up to the transfer case I'll worry about that later when I've worked out how to fit a cruiser case onto a surf trans

on a plus note I might have swopped the 4age for a S14 SR20 I've decided to keep the motor nice en light and not over the top as it'll make getting cert easyer (hopefully )
Looks like I'm not going to be playing tomorrow... might see if I can swop the brake booster's tomorrow and sort the peddles... I'm going to a surf booster as it can mount a prado master
Oh well till then

Cheers Reece

[De-Ranged]

Still pulling my hair out doing the design approval for LVVTA I'm up to 30 pages now here's a couple of taster's for ya
Just working on options for the gear train.... Asan 30-80 to

to

Sorted the design on the axles got all the developements worked out here's a view of the front
looks like your not allowed to see it, you'll have to click the link......
http://i1094.photobucket.com/albums/i445/De-Ranged/Porn.png
9.6mm wall tube, 6mm folded top for the pumpkin and 10mm for the base with the whole axle clearanced back is similar but with out the hilux swivil housings
Just sorting out steering....
The plans are getting pretty serious its now up to a custom chassi, on custom axles and suspension with hilux X over steering on custom arms (due to correcting the ackerman angle ) motor is a fwd SR20de mated to the above, brakes are vented upfront and I'm still undecided out back but will include fiddle calipers when all this is built I'll take the cab off the toy and fit it to this figured I'm F'n everything to the max so why not a full chassi to boot that way the toy is still there to play with while I build this lot....
be interesting to see what LVVTA say

Cheers Reece

[De-Ranged]

Here is an update, for those on here interested
Got sick of just drawing plans and doing calculations (spring rates, suspension etc...) so decided to start building some cool bits
Got to admit its nice to have detailed plans to work off instead of my usuall measure and machine methods
decided to start with the front coil overs
Had a set of 12" Rancho 9000 large body shocks so I'm using them, the springs are from a mitzi Mirrage and a Rover car give me a combined spring rate of 15kg/cm and a secondary rate that will come in on the last 8cm of travel of 39kg/cm

Started bottom spring mount, latheing out the fit for the end of the shock, then in the mill drilled the clamp bolt holes and slit the mount

Been thinking about this a bit and decided I wanted an bit of over kill so left enough meat on the clamp to machine a bit of a locking block here's it all done and mounted

surprised me how much the res tube compressed, see the join tapers closer on the top of the clamp
Next bit to sort was part of the spring slidder/joiner. These shocks have a taper near the end that ment the slider wouldn't be resting against the shock body at full extension so I decided to machine some UHMWPE sleeves for the shocks

I don't know if this will work I machined a large interferance fit and glued them with a contact glue, but.... I've noticed this stuff expands with heat and I couldn't find anyone with enough data on this stuff to say if the heat from the shock will expand it too much to work, wait n see.... if its a problem I'll build the slider a bit differently

Right time I was home

Cheers Reece

[rokhound]

Awesome Reece, They look bloody good

(now we wait for kermit and friends )

[De-Ranged]

you scared everyone away there Rok, too afraid of looking like muppets for asking a question.... I wonder how many are curious about what the different spring rates mean

Right got the end caps done and one of the slider/joiner's so I couldn't resist throwing one together


Still got a bit more to do.... the secondary compression tube and blast the springs and paint all the steel bits.... then its onto the axles remember the porn pic I posted

Cheers Reece

[GotFlex]

me likey, keen to do a set for me

[flyingbrick]

bloody cool! I love machine shop projects.

if you machined the base of the collet off so that the shock can slide right through you can change your preload/where the second rate comes into effect, yes?

[Big]

I wish I could do what you can.. having the skills makes it soo much better and you can say well I did make it.. love ya work..
Seein as you know the calcs to work out spring rates.. how is the best way to work it out..? as I think i'm going to have a too stiff a coils and seeing as the weight I don't have I think i'm goi ng to need to get some made to get the nice suppleness I'm wanting..any advice would be great..
Cheers

[chevrolux]

yea those are real cool but its a shame its a zook and not a troll then it would be so so so cool

joking aside,
how do you come up with those spring rates? And how do you go about measuring the rate of a spring? Is it as simple as compress it and see what it takes?

edit: just read Big's post. Sorry for asking the question twice.

[De-Ranged]

if its any consolation Chev its going to only be a cab and transfercase out of the zuk

FB there's a bit more to come.... the long spring is my tender spring so I'm using a bit of tube cut to the length that stops the tender spring moving as it bottoms out on the slider

Since you guys asked
I'll start with a wee bit of basic spring 101, the coil spring is a patheticly simple design compaired to a leaf spring, the leaf is far superier performace wise... you can tune its rate at any piont in its compresion problem for us with leaf springs is space, long travel means a long spring
So we go coil, this means we put up with shit performance just for long travel, the reason its shit is becouse its linear.... it has the same rate from the start of its compression to when it bottoms out eg 15kg per cm of travel
Yes there are progressive coils out there but its not something the average workshop can tune.. change the wire thickness, coil diameter, spacing/number of coils (this one you can use to increase the rate by cutting coils)
You've all seen those coils that get closer at one end.... progressive? my experiance is most of these on cars are a gimic.... for these to work the closer spaced coils need to compact up till they are touching reducing the number of coils that are left to compress, easy way to see if its ever worked like this is the piant inbetween the coils will be gone

Calculating spring rate is easy
11250000 x (wire dia)4
Spring rate= --------------------------------
8 x # Active coils x (mean coil dia)3

# Active coils, this is the number of coils that arn't touching the spring seats
Mean coil dia , Dia of the coil measured from the centerline of the wire
Now I'm guessing your keen on a dual spring to try and get a longer spring for our long travel, or stiffer rate near full compression
spring rate 1 x spring rate 2
Combined spring rate = -------------------------------
spring rate 1 + spring rate 2

Calculating for a truck we need the sprung weight, this is the weight that sits on your suspension
In the case of my little truck, the front was 415kg, now add some pipe for exo, half the weight of two people and gear (half becouse we are in the middle of wheelbase so half our weight goes on the rear axle) and a few other bits I plan to do, gives me a front end sprung weight of 570kgs
Half that becouse we have a spring each corner = 285kgs

Now the fun begin's.... I wanted 60% of my travel to be down
60% x 300(shock length) = 18cm
285kg's (plus a bit for preload so springs don't fall out) / 18cm travel = 15kg's per cm traveled
Now you've got that your about to see why coil springs suck... times that rate by the full strock of the shock 450kg's... so all it takes is 165kgs to bottom out..... for road going you want it to be able to take (1gravity of impact) or twice its sprung weight 570kgs, this is why I need the dual rate
So I decide when the rate needs to ramp, say 80% of travel means I get 45mm of plush travel and 75mm of stiffer travel (catch is if you leave the change till later the secondary rate has to increase alot to bottom out at 1G, making for a harsh change)
75% x 450kgs = 337kg's so in the last 75mm of travel I need to stop 233kg's so I devide this by 7.5cm of travel and get 33kg per cm needed.... I decided to go with a slightly stiffer spring @39 as it gives me a bit of room to move ( and you need a bit of extra preload force on the springs to keep them captive at full extension)
Now to force this change of rate 15kg/cm to 39kg/cm you mount a bit of tube inside your tender spring to stop it compressing at the change piont

This is about as simple as you can make it

I've gotten so sick of doing these calc's I setup a spreadsheet as you compare springs... one effects the other so you have to recalculate
Now please understand I've simplified this ALOT there is nothing about wheel rates, angle of your coilover or spring, with a beam axle to keep these effects to a minimim mount your springs/coilover as close to the wheel as possible and as close to vertical as you can and you'll be close enough

[rokhound]

Awesome info Reece. Thanks for posting that up. It should be placed in the tech library.

[Big]

Holy cow.. I agree with what rok said but frk me.. can you tell us in plain english..
I'll take a year or 2 to get that.. maybe when I need advice I'll ask you.. seeing as thats what spins ya wheels..

[Moriarty]

An interesting read, Reece.

A coil spring is merely a torsion rod rolled into a tubular form!! It behaves the same way.

I get the impression that a 15kg per cm spring takes 15 KG to compress it 1 CM and does this mean that to compress it a FURTHER 1CM, it will now take 30KG? 3CM= 45kg?

B

[De-Ranged]

Don't think its that well written to go in tech.... I might see about writting up a better version
Yes Bob you got it.... but wrote it about as well as me for each 15kg it will compress 1cm... so if you had a 15kg/cm spring with 150kg resting on it (compressed 10cm from rest) and you put another 15kg on it it would compress a further 1cm

Cheers Reece

[De-Ranged]

Just got most of the steel for the truck.... for the chassi, lower links, upper links, axle tubes, bar work, sheet metal, stainless for tank etc
Going to be enough to make a few extra bits.... I'll put that in the rack for now
Also went and pay'd for the laser cutting for the axle housings


Now I'm having a bourbon to help get over the shock...... Over $1900!!!!

Got to build a tool deck for a mates tyre truck and some work on a mates lux.... Then I clear space and do the chassi and axles

Till then

Cheers Reece

[De-Ranged]

Just got the profiles for the axle pumkins......

they are just so cool I think I might just take the rest of the day off to play with them.....

Cheers Reece

[rokhound]

What size press are you using to push those babies into shape??
How much clearnace are you planning on having around the crown wheel?

Oh and looking oober cool asa well Reece