FritzInTN

I guess sand is softer than asphalt, but why the lack of any triangulation in pretty much the whole frame?

Wheelies. duh.

cua0

yes i've seen those, and plenty of other mid-engines (13b's, v8's, rb25's, etc.) in bugs in the past. since the engine is going to determine where the wheels are, and he isn't using all that space between the bulkhead and the back of the frame, i was only curious why he made the wheelbase so long rather than keeping it as short as possible. i've only ever built a hand full of sandrails before and never from a template really, so i was wondering if it was deliberate or if he did it on purpose for some reason.

redboost10

we tend to focus on weight transfer beings all the grip you get in the sand, but sorry to post my opinion...

EH3Civic

Well fellas, the REAL reason we set the motor in the FAR back was so that we had an easy amount of clearance directly in front of the motor in case we decided to put a larger boosted motor in. The fear was that we would not have room. We had originally planned to place the battery right behind the firewall as well, but that changed. The actually was shipped to us as bent tubing, a chassis known as "the warrior" by Berrien Buggy. Every piece was modified to fit better, and smoother, as we liked. Good question though about the longitudinal positioning of the motor, because truly it has the worst turning radius ever. However, on the road, it drives like a dream and is really REALLY fast. An example of its speed is that it will completely smoke my civic. My civic is powered by a B18c with built head (junIII cams, and everything to go with it). It will ROAST my civic. It corners better as well.

DaveF

its a cool project for sure, but some of the stuff sketches me out.

such as the rear shock towers, they look like they would just bend/tear right off under the right conditions.

i see barely any triangulation in the chassis, adding a few extra tubes might be beneficial to your life, should you happen to roll the thing.

the rear engine mounts look like they should just tear off as well.

the front suspension, does it have a ton of bump steer ?

Dann6968

Any guesses as to how much it weighs?

FritzInTN

Thanks for the answer, but aside from packaging ... isn't a turbo car + sand kind of a bad idea? Filters are great and all, but i can't imagine romping through sand to be the healthiest thing for a turbo.... filter or not.

redboost10

its not a bad idea at all. they make a cover that actually goes over the air filter for added protection. we have never had a problem, we have three turboed buggys, hayabusa one, 2300 one, and now this s2000 one. not one problem.

heres a picture of the cover im talking about
http://www.motocrossgiant.com/PhotoD...n_knproflowkit

Blown90hatcH

Awesome man.

EH3Civic

Some good questions, so I'll address them one at a time.

I don't understand how a shock tower itself could ever bend/tear off in that the forward/backward motion of the lca is held by a trailing arm, and the out/in is held by the subframe. In case you were talking about the mounting location, we made it from quarter inch steel. Finite element analysis through Ansys confirms this should be more than sufficient.

We have triangulation throughout the sides, existing where the longest weakest portion of the body is. This translates into the windshield framing, though obviously not perfectly. In regards to safety, the only other place I can see triangulation to be worthwhile is directly behind the driver and passenger. In the end, I don't think there is any possibility of the chassis caving in. If safety was ever in question during the build, we did extensive analysis on the part or section and then if it failed, we doubled the thickness and checked again. The tube frame is 2.5" wide and 1/8" thick.

If it hasn't broke off in my car, I don't see it breaking off on this. It is essentially mounted in the same fashion, except this one is mounted directly through the entire frame with 3.25" bolts.

Thats a great question. We used to get a bit of bump steer after dropping the front end for road driving. In the pictures, the tie roads are still on the top of the steering knuckles, but they have since been moved to the bottom of the knuckles to slightly change the geometry and change the tie rod so that it doesn't pull or push the toe nearly as much with compression/decompression of the suspension. The way this was possible was that we got some bearing type tie rods (though I don't prefer them), but they will undoubtably hold up to more rigerous off road use. They essentially just have a ball bearing in the tie rod ends and that ball bearing has a hole for a bolt through it.

EH3Civic

Haha, well thats a great point, but luckily one that we don't have to design a shroud for. This thing will probably never ever see sand in that it is stored in Kentucky. It was built for on road use mostly (to be a super light road car), but to have ever ability to go offroad as well (hence the adjustable front and read ride height and the superswampers in every pic but the last one). So yeah, it'll never have to worry about sand.

As far as how light the thing is, we won't know until the spring when we weight it, sorry. It it means anything, 2 people can lift the front end off the ground, and it shouldn't take more than 3 to lift the entire back end (if you could get a good hold). I'll bet on 1200lbs.

d16sandrail

Thats probably a pretty good guess, mine weighs 1200lbs. I want to ask you a million questions, hopefully I'll have some time this weekend to send you a PM. Still thinking this is awesome! you got me motivated to get working on mine again.

EH3Civic

Thats awesome man and I'd love to help out whenever you need it. I would have given anything for assistance in building this one.

DaveF

thanks for answering my questions. im glad you didnt get all offended, tellin me im drinkin haterade but instead had a logical answer for the questions. i can appriciate that

one more question. on the sides of the car, where the double frame rail is, was there a particular reason for the diagonals going from bottom to top on every tube as opposed to being like these sick MS paint drawings i just made ? less heat in an area from welding ?

The Original Whitey

Very nice. How much did it cost and how does it stop without front brakes?

Scheizty

That is great! I am curious how much time you guys spent designing the chassis and suspension before you started fabricating. This makes me want to start a thread on the formula car we are building. It doesn't have a honda motor though... it's a Yamaha R6S.

EH3Civic

No, I enjoy the questions, and this one is especially well founded and I honestly don't have a great answer. Like I was saying, we ordered the pre-bent tubes from a company known as berrien buggy, and here is the "finish product" image of their design.



I have no idea why they designed it that way, but we went with it for fear of otherwise being one of those people who think we're smarter than the designers of the original frame. You know, kinda like when some people will take a civic, rag it out because they're "tuners" and smarter than Honda engineers, and in the end it is slower, gets less gas mileage, and looks like garbage. I would say that a true truss structure would have been stronger, especially at the windshield joining, but from the analysis we did, it seems what we have should hold up just fine.



The frame came from berrien buggy as bent tubing and we modified it as we saw fit to take oout the vw transaxle linking, and move the d16z6 back. The suspension was designed only after mounting the motor such that once the hubs were in, we would be able to use stock axles. The shock tower mounting points were made with 1/4" steel as it saved space when trying to make a solid structure to attach them to.

Scheizty

That is a good idea. If you start in the middle, then you have room to play if your axles are not straight enough. Finding upright points is hard to do when you need to consider riding height and ground clearance when the driver/passenger in the car. Did it require some hit and miss on the mounting brackets, or did you just use the measurements from a civic?

d16sandrail

right now I am trying to fab my shift linkage, the first mock up my shift pattern was reversed, now I have it correct, but I would like it to feel more solid and smooth (want that new car feel). So some fine tuning is in order. I think I may redo my axle set up. I used the VW IRS rear suspension so I have the VW trailing arms (I extended them almost 4") I plan to add FOX 2.0 shocks once I get everything dialed in. As is now my passanger side axle is way short, so my suspension travel is extremely limited, I am going to redo that as well.

My engine is a D16A from a '91 SI, I wired it OBD1. I fabbed a wicked set of ITB's for it, and plan to turbo the motor with the ITB's since I am not fighting clearance issues :-) and of course a laundrey list of bolt on goodies. I will be in the market for a Hondata s300 for EMS. It should get it on like donkey kong.

0project dc2

iTrader: (1)

the flux core welding is very scary =T

DaveF

what size are the rear tires/ wheels ?

LobeSex

no vids?? just curious why a D-series? why not a H or K-series?

EH3Civic

Unless you're using solid engine mounts, you can change out the shift linkage stabilizer bushing (the one that mounts solid to the back to the back, not the pinion with spring pin), and tighten that up. Of course, it will still feel weak naturally if you extend the shifter as we did, but the better and firmer the bushing, the tighter you can get it.



You do the best you can with what you have to work with. It leaves a mess, but it is more than satisfactory.



The offroad setup for the rear are 15x10 inch wheels with 33x13.5 inch superswampers. They're monsters on that thing. The road setup is a 16x7 rota slipstream on the rear, with some meaty falken ziex 912s.



Easy, easy there...I'm gonna try to get some videos posted today or tomorrow...keep leaving my charger at home. The reason we went with a dseries is because it would be the perfect template motor for the future turbo Bseries that would be going in. The thing is a budget car in the end, with only a third spent into it than my civic. With the d16z6, it is wired for all things us-obd1, and suitable for replacing almost anything feasible into it. In the future, it will have a turbo b18b. But yeah, that d16z6 was bought for almost nothing, and came tons of other parts we'd need (came from a wrecked 1993 civic si).

DLB1994

you can allways save your self some money and turbo the d16z6 and still have it sick fast!, and them lil motors soound good with a nice big cam!

EH3Civic

We'd tool with the d16z6 if it didn't have 300,000+ miles on it. Runs great right now, but I don't know how strong it "really" is. Everything looked great when we had it apart though.