Chassis Project-Update(7/20/13)

[SWMS]

Chassis plates!!!!!

Drum roll please.............


My chassis plates were delivered yesterday. They look great and I am anxious to start cutting my crossmembers to put these together. I didn't have a whole bunch of time to play yesterday but I did do some quick checks to make sure they came out good.

Fit under the body..............check!
Screws fit in the holes.........check!
battery fits in battery slot....check!

~KK~

 

[KingClod27]

Wow those look awesome! This thread keeps getting better. I love the design of the plates you did.

 

[JKRacing37]

So I receieved my 6 feet of aluminum rod yesterday for my links, and I got to thinkin'. How do you all cut aluminum rod to make your custom links. I've got an idea of how I'm gonna do it, but I thought I'd ask around to see how everyone else does it.

Not sure if you've already done this or not. How I cut mine is on a bandsaw, then I square the ends up on a bench top belt sander. Once the ends are square I chuck them up in a drill press and spin them about 1500rpm, lightly touch the exposed end with a automatic center punch, let the punch find center, click, then drill and tap.

Your plates looks great. Are you going to sell these or would you consider taking orders for custom plates?

 

[SWMS]

Thanks guys! I appriciate the compliments.

I've already recieved a couple of requests for selling these. I hadn't really put much thought into selling. I was mainly doing this for myself, but I could look into selling if there's enough people interested in a group buy or something like that. If enough people were to sign up, I bet the price would come down a bunch.

Before going down that path, I would really like to build one up and make sure I didn't goof anythign up. I'm sure I will learn a whole bunch from completeing the build. Maybe make improvements and such.

~KK~

 

[SWMS]

Not sure if you've already done this or not. How I cut mine is on a bandsaw, then I square the ends up on a bench top belt sander. Once the ends are square I chuck them up in a drill press and spin them about 1500rpm, lightly touch the exposed end with a automatic center punch, let the punch find center, click, then drill and tap.

Thanks for this information. I have not done this yet. I've been putting it off due to my reorganizing my garage. Bad timing I guess; too many events converging at the same time. I need to build another workbench this weekend and then wrap it up to that I can get to cutting these crossmembers. I like your suggention, and I will most likely do it this way.

I can't ever seem to wrap up the garage project because I have this darn wandering eye:emot152: that always seems to make it's way over to my Clod bench. Once my eye looks over their, something always grabs my interest and the garage thing gets bumped in priority. LOL!

~KK~

 

[SWMS]

Garage is done! Finally.......Sheesh!

So I finally wrapped up the garage this past weekend to a point where I can get back to the fun stuff......CLODS!

I now have a clean and organized work space to build this bad boy comfortably. I have so many little projects to start with on this build......axles, crossmembers, links, body........that I've been having a hard time deciding where to start.

Last night after battling my 3 year old daughter to sleep, I managed to make myself a cup of joe and sit down for an hour to do some building. I started off by performing a little eeny, meeny, miny, moe and picked the axles to start with. Phew, that part was easy!

My axle tubes are brand new pieces to I started with drilling the 4-link holes. I've done this in the past by measuring, eye-ballin', and a little bit of crossing my fingers to drill the holes "close enough". This time I used one of my outer axle braces and it worked like a charm. I highly recommend doing it this way.

Next I moved my work into the house and onto the kitchen table so I could chat with the misses while I work on my truck.
The misses normally talks my ear off while I hobby, so I made sure I laid down enough "uh huhs", "I see", "yeahs", and head noddin' to establish a parallel process that maintained building and responding. After establishing that part down, I laid out all my parts needed for one axle build. Ooooo, pretty! :emot127:

I quickly realized that in my infinite wisdom I miscalculated the need for fasteners that, well, fasten the darn axle tubes to the cases.. :emot0:
So, needless to say, I didn't make it too far in the build but my cup of coffee and table conversation was sure good for a Tuesday evening. I did manage to get the steel axles installed into the axle tubes, so I'm gonna call last night a win.

 

[charliechristmas58]

KK can you make the axels with out that ball for the ladder bars on the axel tubes. there was a guy Bigjeeps was his handle who milled them down on his build and i wanted him to do a couple for me so i could use leafsprings on my firetruck build. because those thing are just in the way.

 

[JKRacing37]

The misses normally talks my ear off while I hobby, so I made sure I laid down enough "uh huhs", "I see", "yeahs", and head noddin' to establish a parallel process that maintained building and responding.

Not *that* is funny!!!

Well played, sir!

 

[SWMS]

Cuttin', Drillin', and Tappin'

I started making me some crossmembers and 4-links this past weekend. My 6' rod is now cut up into a bunch of tiny rods! I used the hacksaw method with a little bit of cutting oil. It was surprisingly easy and I got good cuts. I first cut all of my rods with an extra 1-2mm. Then I squared up the ends on my sander and removed the extra material. Worked like a charm! Thanks JKRacing37! :emot179:

I also started drilling my ends for tapping. One thing I have surely learned from this is that I bite the big one when it comes to drilling on center. Dang! I've already chunked several pieces because I got no skills when it comes to that. Off to the LHS to buy some more.

 

[SWMS]

Mock-ups!

I got a little tired of drilling and tapping so I decided to play around a little bit last night. I had three good crossmembers so I bolted them to the chassis plates to check it out. Here are a couple of shots to display my work as it stands. The drilling and tapping is wearing on me because it feels like I am moving at super, slow-mo, snail speed! Patience Daniel-San.

 

[j-bob95]

The chassis looks good. Drilling and tapping rods are, to me, the worst part of builing these things. I got lucky the last time I had some rods to do. One of the guys I work with has a lathe, so he chucked up and drilled them for me. All i had to do was tap them.

Jason

 

[SWMS]

Blur,

I agree.....hands down my least favorite part!

 

[SWMS]

Just got in from making a couple more crossmembers. BLAH! It feels like I'm always 1:1. For every good one I make, I make a bad one!

 

[JKRacing37]

It's an aquired taste for sure - once you make a few it will come easier. The key is to be patient and let the center punch find center. Play with the drill press speeds to see if different speeds work better for you. Also, if you're a hair off center - no one will know. LOL

If the center punch method doesn't end up working out for you - you can always use these:

http://www.rccrawler.com/forum/tools-supplies/150200-link-drill-bushing.html

I'm going to make some Delrin links for my next project and ordered a set of these. SUPER high quality pieces!

 

[SWMS]

It's an aquired taste for sure - once you make a few it will come easier. The key is to be patient and let the center punch find center. Play with the drill press speeds to see if different speeds work better for you. Also, if you're a hair off center - no one will know. LOL

If the center punch method doesn't end up working out for you - you can always use these:

http://www.rccrawler.com/forum/tools-supplies/150200-link-drill-bushing.html

I'm going to make some Delrin links for my next project and ordered a set of these. SUPER high quality pieces!

Thanks for your help man! I really appreciate it when people chime in to give me pointers.

 

[SWMS]

Havin' some fun with CAD.

Took a little break today to have some fun with CAD. Here's a couple of glamour shots.

 

[TXT-2.0]

going to be a pretty sweet ride when you get it all together :cool

 

[SWMS]

going to be a pretty sweet ride when you get it all together :cool

Yeah, I hope it comes out good. I just knocked out a few more crossmembers. I've got 5 more to go. I've ended up screwing up enough links that I'm probably going to order my 4-links from CPE.

~KK~

 

[SWMS]

Got a good night's sleep last night. I feel better and more positive about things today. So, I'm gonna give these links a go one more time tonight. Hopefully I'll be on my "A" game.

So I've started tossing around some ideas in my head. Should I powdercoat the frame or polish it. I truthfully like both finishes, but I thought I'd open it up for discussion. What does everyone think; PC or Polish?

 

[TXT-2.0]

im partial to a black frame but thats me , feels a bit more real :cool