I’m still incarcerated in hospital, so I’ve been doing a lot of research about suspension geometry and applying that – with looking at other buggies on the internet – and sketching on a drawing App Ive added to my trusty boredom- busting iPad…
So the blue lines are tube work, the bottom two black lines are the panhard rod (lower) and steering bar (upper): and the black rectangle is a small winch mounted at the back but fed through a tube to the front in the same way as my greenlaning buggy…
So the orange synthetic rope runs to the front of the buggy…
… see it just above and to the right of the front number plate? the tube has a ”donut” fairlead for winching forward, and to winch backwards…
… you pull a loop of rope through the big rear hawse fairlead and use the snatch block mounted above to winch backwards…
I figure a 4,500lb winch will be sufficient for “lil-bugga”, the ”Boogie” has a 9,000lb winch with a big Odyssey PC1200 battery next to it…
The ”Boogie” / X8GGY buggy has it’s own website – http://www.jimnybuggy.com
The front suspension’s panhard rod, steering bar and tube work will be very similar as I’m using two narrowed front axles for this build (photo below), the winch line will come through a seamless tube terminated with a similar donut fairlead to the Boogie.
This should also distribute weight evenly… winch, battery and fuel tank at the rear, and a motorbike engine (eventually) at the front…
If viewed from above then (excuse the simplistic drawings) the back would look something like –
Where the black outline rectangle is the small winch, the big orange thick line is the winch rope tube to the front and the orange squiggles are the winch rope used either end to winch forwards or backwards, the small solid black box is the rear steering box (standard Jimny one powered by one power steering pump at the front of the buggy), and the two black bars are the steering bar (left) and panhard rod (right), so really replicating a standard Jimny setup but keeping the two bars as parallel as possible… the front axle of the Boogie shown below for reference –
I don’t think “lil-buggy” will need a steering damper on either end though? LOL
So basically, the lil-bugga buggy has very similar design queues as the Boogie, but I was obviously constrained by the the fact it had to still resemble a blueJimny and have lights and wheel arches, etc to maintain road legality, and pass the annual MoT roadworthy inspection… hmmm, and to provide some protection from the British weather too!…
With this lil-bugga build I can start from scratch with a pile of Jimny components and have free reign to make a smaller one seater tube framed buggy for some offroad fun use only, and the challenge and fun of building it over the next few years.
Lil'Bugga 