- Feb 18, 2001
- 30,990
- 5
- 81
Overview: (Cliff Notes at bottom)<BR>Last year, I decided I was going to build a gocart. A fast gocart. The planning stages were mapped out in this thread. Because of extenuationg circumstances, I was delayed in starting the project until this spring. So, here is the current timeline. Expect this to be updated as the project progesses.
Current Timeline:
Basic Design: Sep 03 - Dec 03.
Infrastructure: Jan 04 - March 04 Workbench and Electrical Power
Week 1: Base frame tacked
Week 2: Going Vertical
Week 3: Rear Subframe Support
Week 4: Roll Cage and Rear Mounts
Current Update
This week I did the front suspension subframe, Roll Hoop reinforcement, and harness mounts.
Sorry it has been so long for this latest update, I had tons of work to do at (where else) work
. I haven't touched the cart for almost a month while I took care of some long outstanding stuff at work (6 day 70 hr weeks. uggh.)
Anyway, I did have time to plan out some of the brake stuff. My original plan was to use one rotor from a Suzuki Sidekick on the rear axle as a driveline brake to stop the cart based on a few factors, the two most prevalent being simplicity and the weight of the cart (hopefully less than 800lbs)
Well, I decided that one was not enough. If I am going to be doing 140+ in this cart, I want to stop, and stop now. (So I can outmanuver the cops of course ) And since the front of the vehicle does 70-80% of the work on braking, then I need brakes at all 4 corners, not just the rear. So I drew up plans for a new braking system.
The braking system will be based off of a Baha truck. (that's not overkill right?) dual master brake cyl's with on-the-fly biasing front to rear, mounted reverse swing style to save space. The calipers are Wilwood Dynalite II's with quad pistons, and will act on 10" diamter drilled rotors using a racing polymatrix compound (require a 14" wheel or larger) Fronts at .81 (vented), and rear at .38" thick. (solid). Bolt pattern on the wheel and hubs are 5 on 4.75, which 90% of GM uses, so parts will be inexpensive. Using the KISS method, all hubs will be identical, so I only need one spare.
In addition, I ordered tons of booty, some of which has yet to arrive. I have recieved Rod ends and clevis for the steering, DZUS faseners for the body panels, adjustable Coilover shocks for dampning the 50' jumps, and more tabs than you could believe! More than 140 tabs all together (I ordered extra). If you are counting, that is 1140 dollars worth of booty. MMmmm, booty. I also got 100' of 1.25" tubing for bracing and suspension components.
In additon, I have ordered a steering rack, steering shafts & ujoints, a bunch of steel plate for fabrication of suspension components, and other stuff which has not arrived yet.
In the chasiss world, I completed the front suspension subframe. Just a large box, but I mounted it out of plane so that it will sheer off if I hit something hard enough. As you can see it mounts about 1/2" after the front subsection comes in. This should assist in disapating energy by warping the front crossmemeber with the force of a serious impact. The force would then be transfered into the bracing behind the seat, which is the stongest part of the cart. The nose cone mounts were also added. The nose cone will be replaceable and made out of light weight thinwall tubing for street, and thickwall tubing for off road with a different rake, and additional skidplating. This will make it easy to replace/repair it when I smash it, and I will smash it sometime, along with being reconfigurable.
The roll hoop was strengthened by welding in the mid cross bar support right behind the seet which will assist in keeping the cart square under enormous side loads. You can see how it ties in a little better wheen seenupside down An additional brace was put in the top roll bar section to transfer the energy of a roll over into the frame instead of my head.
There are now only a few more designed supports to be added. A pair is going under the engine "bay" to tranfer energy from the front to the rear. They will be a mirror of the front intermediates. In additron, the front intermediates will have an additional support bar from side to side which I have yet to add because I am waiting on some mounting pieces. After that, all that is left is to build the suspension, and some traingulation bracing in the front and rear suspension subframes to keep everything square.
After all that, I had the tabs, so I built the harness mounts. They are made out of .250 chromoly plate, punched by prowerks. The lap belt tabs are the only ones that are not braced as they will be under sheer stresses, not bending stresses like the anti submarine tab and sholder harness tabs. Those 2 tabs are boxed using additonal 1/8" plate to withstand the directional stress. I found that the instructions and measurements that came with the harness must have been for someone 5'6" tall or something, because the recomended placement of the tabs comes out to about 4" below my sholder. This is real bad, because in a crash, the harness will actually compress the rider's back with forces exceeding 6000 lbs for a 20 mph crash. This would cause a spinal compression injury easily. I need to add 2 additonal mouting tabs that are about 6" higher than they are currently, which would put the sholder harness back in an acceptable degree range for someone 6' tall. (degree range is 30 deg higher to 5 deg below the sholder) Jane, Get me offa this crazy thing!
So thats what I did this week. Just so you know
New Tools Used This Week: (first time I used these tools on this project, but I already had them)
None
Additional Tools I broke, or Needed
Broke 2 more 1/2" hammer drills. That brings the total to 3. Exchanged all 3 broken ones for 3 new ones.
started a 3/8" drill on fire when I caught a bit and snapped the comutator off the motor (didn't think it CAME off.)
Materials and/or "Expendable" Tools Used this week:
40' of 1.5" .095 tubing (140' used so far)
20' of 1.25" tubing (20' used so far)
1 10" cutting blade for chop saw ($3 each)
Rough Weight of Cart at this Point
~185 lbs
Total Cost of materials and Tools Used (even though I already owned the tools)
Tools: $449 (including $300 for welder)
Materials: ~$170 for tubing, $10 for wire for welder
Total so far: $609 (I will count the brake stuff as I mount it)
Hours spent on build time
Counts from the time I start to time I finish, including lunch, trips to the store, breaks, phone calls, etc.
Week 1: 6 hours
Week 2: 16 hours
Week 3: 10 hours
Week 4: 38 hours
Week 5: 31 hours
Total build time so far: 101 hours
Cliff Notes for entire project
Pre Gocart Workbench
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Current Timeline:
Basic Design: Sep 03 - Dec 03.
Infrastructure: Jan 04 - March 04 Workbench and Electrical Power
Week 1: Base frame tacked
Week 2: Going Vertical
Week 3: Rear Subframe Support
Week 4: Roll Cage and Rear Mounts
Current Update
This week I did the front suspension subframe, Roll Hoop reinforcement, and harness mounts.
Sorry it has been so long for this latest update, I had tons of work to do at (where else) work
. I haven't touched the cart for almost a month while I took care of some long outstanding stuff at work (6 day 70 hr weeks. uggh.) Anyway, I did have time to plan out some of the brake stuff. My original plan was to use one rotor from a Suzuki Sidekick on the rear axle as a driveline brake to stop the cart based on a few factors, the two most prevalent being simplicity and the weight of the cart (hopefully less than 800lbs)
Well, I decided that one was not enough. If I am going to be doing 140+ in this cart, I want to stop, and stop now. (So I can outmanuver the cops of course
) And since the front of the vehicle does 70-80% of the work on braking, then I need brakes at all 4 corners, not just the rear. So I drew up plans for a new braking system.The braking system will be based off of a Baha truck. (that's not overkill right?) dual master brake cyl's with on-the-fly biasing front to rear, mounted reverse swing style to save space. The calipers are Wilwood Dynalite II's with quad pistons, and will act on 10" diamter drilled rotors using a racing polymatrix compound (require a 14" wheel or larger) Fronts at .81 (vented), and rear at .38" thick. (solid). Bolt pattern on the wheel and hubs are 5 on 4.75, which 90% of GM uses, so parts will be inexpensive. Using the KISS method, all hubs will be identical, so I only need one spare.
In addition, I ordered tons of booty, some of which has yet to arrive. I have recieved Rod ends and clevis for the steering, DZUS faseners for the body panels, adjustable Coilover shocks for dampning the 50' jumps, and more tabs than you could believe! More than 140 tabs all together (I ordered extra
). If you are counting, that is 1140 dollars worth of booty. MMmmm, booty. I also got 100' of 1.25" tubing for bracing and suspension components.In additon, I have ordered a steering rack, steering shafts & ujoints, a bunch of steel plate for fabrication of suspension components, and other stuff which has not arrived yet.
In the chasiss world, I completed the front suspension subframe. Just a large box, but I mounted it out of plane so that it will sheer off if I hit something hard enough. As you can see it mounts about 1/2" after the front subsection comes in. This should assist in disapating energy by warping the front crossmemeber with the force of a serious impact. The force would then be transfered into the bracing behind the seat, which is the stongest part of the cart. The nose cone mounts were also added. The nose cone will be replaceable and made out of light weight thinwall tubing for street, and thickwall tubing for off road with a different rake, and additional skidplating. This will make it easy to replace/repair it when I smash it, and I will smash it sometime, along with being reconfigurable.
The roll hoop was strengthened by welding in the mid cross bar support right behind the seet which will assist in keeping the cart square under enormous side loads. You can see how it ties in a little better wheen seenupside down An additional brace was put in the top roll bar section to transfer the energy of a roll over into the frame instead of my head.
There are now only a few more designed supports to be added. A pair is going under the engine "bay" to tranfer energy from the front to the rear. They will be a mirror of the front intermediates. In additron, the front intermediates will have an additional support bar from side to side which I have yet to add because I am waiting on some mounting pieces. After that, all that is left is to build the suspension, and some traingulation bracing in the front and rear suspension subframes to keep everything square.
After all that, I had the tabs, so I built the harness mounts. They are made out of .250 chromoly plate, punched by prowerks. The lap belt tabs are the only ones that are not braced as they will be under sheer stresses, not bending stresses like the anti submarine tab and sholder harness tabs. Those 2 tabs are boxed using additonal 1/8" plate to withstand the directional stress. I found that the instructions and measurements that came with the harness must have been for someone 5'6" tall or something, because the recomended placement of the tabs comes out to about 4" below my sholder. This is real bad, because in a crash, the harness will actually compress the rider's back with forces exceeding 6000 lbs for a 20 mph crash. This would cause a spinal compression injury easily. I need to add 2 additonal mouting tabs that are about 6" higher than they are currently, which would put the sholder harness back in an acceptable degree range for someone 6' tall. (degree range is 30 deg higher to 5 deg below the sholder) Jane, Get me offa this crazy thing!
So thats what I did this week. Just so you know
New Tools Used This Week: (first time I used these tools on this project, but I already had them)
None
Additional Tools I broke, or Needed
Broke 2 more 1/2" hammer drills. That brings the total to 3. Exchanged all 3 broken ones for 3 new ones.
started a 3/8" drill on fire when I caught a bit and snapped the comutator off the motor (didn't think it CAME off.)
Materials and/or "Expendable" Tools Used this week:
40' of 1.5" .095 tubing (140' used so far)
20' of 1.25" tubing (20' used so far)
1 10" cutting blade for chop saw ($3 each)
Rough Weight of Cart at this Point
~185 lbs
Total Cost of materials and Tools Used (even though I already owned the tools)
Tools: $449 (including $300 for welder)
Materials: ~$170 for tubing, $10 for wire for welder
Total so far: $609 (I will count the brake stuff as I mount it)
Hours spent on build time
Counts from the time I start to time I finish, including lunch, trips to the store, breaks, phone calls, etc.
Week 1: 6 hours
Week 2: 16 hours
Week 3: 10 hours
Week 4: 38 hours
Week 5: 31 hours
Total build time so far: 101 hours
Cliff Notes for entire project
Pre Gocart Workbench
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
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