Buggy/Truggy Guys...X-Braces...

[mikey_d05]

Alright, here's my predicament. I have a Caddy motor that got moved 5"+ back in the chassis. Because of this and the bend in the frame and a whole bunch of other junk, my firewall is gonna have to sit farther back than I'd like. Period, no room for adjustment.

My main hoop is already bent and in place as is the rest of my cab. To move it now mean I'd have 100' of scrap tubing and I'd have to start from scratch.

I don't have enough leg room to trail ride comfortably for a day while keeping a traditional x-brace that's in the same plane as the main hoop.

I've seen a lot of buggies without any x-braces at all and nobody has said anything about it. How important is it to have a traditional x-brace in the same plane as the main hoop?

There would be some other type of system put in place to keep the cage from folding sideways in a hard roll, but I just can't cram myself comfortably into the current space allocated. How bad would it be to make a node about 1' rearward of the main hoop and make a brace to keep the cage from folding there?

Also, my passengers are undoubtedly going to be shorter than me and not have controls to worry about. So...if I put one brace across the hoop (|\|) instead of (|X|) would that be enough?

 

[jekbrown]

if well designed/fabbed a node that was out of plane would prolly work. Just make dang sure that the b-hoop trying to deform isn't able to push the node further out... and all should be good.

Many buggies just have one diagonal in their B hoop... but then again their rig is super light weight and the b-hoop is only a few feet wide...

this conundrum is exactly why my engine is staying right where GM put it!

j

 

[gmc4cw]

any bracing is better then none.

 

[cybrfire]

chop him off at the knees!

 

[mikey_d05]

chop him off at the knees!

 

[cegusman]

How about some pics, might give us some ideas.

 

[jekbrown]

How about some pics, might give us some ideas.

x2

j

 

[mikey_d05]

I don't have a digital camera here that works at the moment so I drew up some SW stuff.

The problem:

The firewall isn't pictured because it's position is irrelevant. It's gotta go where it's gotta go.

This is a quick proposed solution I came up with:

Obviously the seats are a little rough but you get the idea.

Another possible solution:

Thoughts, opinions?

It's gonna be a bitch to make because of the design of the underlying frame and the place where I'm gonna have to cut it off. Otherwise I could have just slid the main hoop back in the first place.

It would have been easier to build one completely out of tube in the first place.

 

[mikey_d05]

Obviously there's a chance of a hard roll trying to shove the node backwards, but there will be two bars coming from the rear of the chassis to brace them, so I think it should be solid.

I'm really regretting not being about 5'10" right now.

 

[jekbrown]

option 2 definitely looks better to me. traditional x-braces stop the b-hoop from becoming a parallelagram... and from the corners being smashed inward. Option 1 doesn't have anything going to the upper corners.. so I'm not diggin it nearly as much as the second one.

Gonna be kind weird driving around and having the b-pillar right next to your head and in your peripheral vision...

If you have the rest of the back of the cage modeled out, lets see it. Interested to see how the node is supported from the rear.

j

 

[mikey_d05]

Gonna be kind weird driving around and having the b-pillar right next to your head and in your peripheral vision...

If you have the rest of the back of the cage modeled out, lets see it. Interested to see how the node is supported from the rear.

j

In the position shown, my head and eyes are well forward of the b-pillar. Frankly, highback buckets don't do jack for me because of my height. It's hard to picture but because of the way I sit and how tall I am my shoulders are slightly forward of the seat and my head is WAY forward of it. If I could find a set of plastic lowback buckets it'd help me out quite a bit. No I'm not willing to shell out big bucks for a lowback suspension seat.

The cage I drew was independent of the other SW model, so it'll take a bit of work to draw up the proposed rear end.

My friend is over working on his 'Yota now and I think I'm gonna hold off with the whole thing until I get the basics of the rear tubework in place and build from there. See where the nodes for that portion end up, etc.

 

[ryan22re]

I think the last one would be fine.

How about drawing up a pic with a second "main hoop" in it? Several inches behind the original main hoop? Dunno about how it would look, maybe like an extended cab pickup.

Why not recline the seat and raise it up some? Would that give you some leg room?

 

[jekbrown]

In the position shown, my head and eyes are well forward of the b-pillar. Frankly, highback buckets don't do jack for me because of my height. It's hard to picture but because of the way I sit and how tall I am my shoulders are slightly forward of the seat and my head is WAY forward of it. If I could find a set of plastic lowback buckets it'd help me out quite a bit. No I'm not willing to shell out big bucks for a lowback suspension seat.

Weird, you must lean pretty far forward when you sit. I do hunch forward a little bit when sitting in my Corbeau's, but not that much! On my seats, the front tabs are mounted about 2-2.5" higher than the rear ones... so the seat is canted backwards quite a bit. I always liked that position when driving. At any rate, I guess its a good thing that you do sit the way that you do, because it would really annoy me to have the pillar right next to the side of my face. lol!

anyway... diggin' the SW model. I tend to do everything in autoCAD, which isn't really as good.

j