It looked like being a wet day today, so I got a few little jobs out of the way, and then went to put my scruffs on…
This is it semi-tidied, as the “before” photo would have been to embarrassing to show! LOL
Hmm. need some more storage…?
Out to the old Bits4Vits first premises, an 8′ x 6′ shed in the back garden, and nicked one of the 7 shelving racks in there… So all the bits are tidied onto the shelves until they are needed. The bonnet will eventually be chopped narrower and shorter to suit the size of this lil’Bugga buggy…
I then spent an hour cleaning the fourth replacement alloy wheel, as one of the four I originally got had a big ding in it…
And then loaded up the tyres, and then the rims in the second load, and popped them round the block to the tyre bay near my home. I said I’ll pick them up Friday when I get some time off again…
I’d previously marked the floor where the back of the Boogie reaches when it’s parked in the garage, this gives me some room to store lil’Bugga when the Boogie is in storage, and gives me the whole garage space when it’s out on the drive for the day…
… as today, sat in it’s buggy condom in the rain 😦
Then some measuring, you may remember the idea was to run two of the short shafts in each axle (both fronts)
At a rough initial measure then, the short shaft is ~13″ shorter than the long one (thanks to Riccy for the permanent loan of the long one! 😉 )
Looking at the axle casing then… hmmm 13″ is a lot to lose?!, it actually reaches the bevelled bit where the tube meets the pumpkin, i.e. beyond the weld (at 10″ on the tape)…
So the left side would need to be cut to match the right side, so that both the radius arms would be right next to the diff… (read on)
Laying the two axles out on the floor with radius arms loosely bolted in to get the idea of the sizes and relationships between all the component parts, and referencing measurements from the Boogie outside on the drive…
You can see from this crudely edited version of the above photo –
… how the narrowed axles will look LOL
Whilst waiting for the wheels and tyres to come back, I cut some planks of wood 29″ long to see how the wheelbase would look, and where the transfer box would be, and prop lengths, etc, etc…
Measuring off the Boogie and Google searches for standard Jimny dimensions…
- The Boogie has a track width of 65″ to the outside of the tyre edges, that’s with 30mm wheel spacers on and similar size tyres (albeit on 16″ rims but the diameter and width are very similar. So if I did cut 13″out of the axles and won’t be fitting wheel spacers – and assuming the offset of the wheels are similar, I’d therefore end up with a track width of 49.5″
- A standard Jimny (as does the Boogie) has a wheelbase of 88.5″ (to the centre of the tyres / axle lines). Measuring the available space behind the Boogie, from my black line to the back wall (therefore assuming the tyres on the front/back are touching the wall under the bench, I’d have a maximum of 96″ to play with… take off the radius of the tyres (29″ diameter, so 29″ for the two radiuses) I’d end up with a wheelbase of 67″… Now then take the track width measurements and factor the wheelbase down down by the same reduction factor (1.3131 recurring), we’d also end up with… 67″ ! Weird!
- So I then started looking at prop lengths with the radius arms / axle centre lines set to that 67″ wheelbase measurement / calculation, and my head started to hurt! LOL. So I decided the first step is, as I’d thought in the first place, to build up the two axles after reducing the width of them, and then start mocking up where they will sit in relation to the chassis and the transfer box (mountings) and then work the prop lengths out from that… but I think I’m heading for about 60cm which is coincidentally the length of some nice big Hilux 4WD front shafts, that I’ve used in the past on the “Superzuki” Vitara.
End of the day then, and tidy up so all the bits are behind the line, and then reverse the Boogie in…
Perfect! More soon… but this isn’t a quick project, it’s going to take me a few winters when I’ve got spare time and I’m not out in the main Boogie exploring greenlanes 😉
Lil'Bugga 