lightweight rock crawler and Hydraulic drive options

[Engineer]

That is a sweet looking axle setup.  $30 huh.  Good grief! 

That kind of obsolete's plan A and B.  Speed is once again a question.  And the steering!  I bet they would work great for the articulated mower though.

[Islander]

You could go tandem rear setup with a steer axle up front like a truck,    Probably pretty useless off road, but would look sweet

[Baloo]

[Engineer]

That thing is pretty cool.  I thought it was massive until I saw the seat for scale. 


I feel articulation works well on relatively flat ground.  When you start turning sharp there is the possibility of falling over to the outside.  There was a patent on articulated 4wd tractors that really worked well.  Right behind the articulation point there was a 3-link that allowed the rear to twist.  But that meant that all the weight on the front twisted with the front end.

One benefit of springs on all four corners whether IFS of live axles is that the weight gets divided according to the spring rates, and twist is divided between the front and rear.

Active hydraulics that could react to a side hill would be pretty neat though.

[Islander]

DO THE SJ!!!!   Then I can have someone else to idea's off who is doing one too
Although, the heavy axles would have a bit of benefit for rockcrawling, as the weight would be nice and low and help maintain stability in off camber situations, to a point. 

[Baloo]

DO THE SJ!!!!   Then I can have someone else to idea's off who is doing one too
Although, the heavy axles would have a bit of benefit for rockcrawling, as the weight would be nice and low and help maintain stability in off camber situations, to a point.

dont know if heavy axles would help at all over here, l can see your reasoning if the terrain was like the real rockcrawlers do there stuff on when l look on youtube, there  perhaps a bit of low down wieght wouldent go amiss in helping to keep you the right way up, but over here l dont think l have ever seen rocks we could drive on, its all slippy mud and l think any excess wieght is either going to drag you to the bottom of the slope or prevent you from climbing it in the first place,
a couple of weeks ago Lee and l took our pilots to a very wet 4x4 day without exception all dozen or so of the 4x4's were stuck and unable to climb even small slopes of 30 degress or less, once there tyres were full of clay they just sat there with thier wheels turning but going no where
the 2 pilots were batting about the place and never go stuck once, with only 2 wheel drive the pilots should have been worse but the very light wieght  more than makes up for the lack of drive,


l could easily be persuaded to get on with one of my sj's 
heres some more pics of the blitz 4x4 body/kit that is available over here




as you can see its just a bunch of tubes welded together to form a cage and a few body panels, you just strip the rusty body of your sj bolt this onto the body mounts throw the original dash back in and away you go,
the big plus point over here is that as long as you dont modify the chassis or suspension the vehicle dosent require any inspection and you can carry on using it on the public road 
the only thing that l am not keen on is the high bonnet line, but you are stuck with it really unless you use an engine with a much lower hieght such as a subaru ?

so what are your plans, are you ditching the body completly ? staying with sj axles or going toyota ? decided on your engine yet ?

what are you going to do about a carb since the suzuki one is about as much use as tits on a nun 
a popular conversion over here is to use an su carb as found on an early range rover, very few moving parts, never gives any trouble and works at any angle

Andy

[Islander]

I'm still undecided on lots of things, the engine being one of them.  I want to keep the weight very low on mine also, I plan to run it all year round so that means lots of snow 

I was going to strip the entire body off, but I think I may keep it.  It's a tin top, and I want to keep it a 4 seater so I can take the family out with me sometimes.  I think I may go with an exo-cage.  In the winter, I can just put the doors back on and have a bit of warmth! 

As for the axles, I am going to run the stock ones until they break, then run Toyota axles.  I'm going to be running a set of 31 X 10.5's hopefully, but I will need to get a new set of wider rims.  I plan on doing a SOA swap after I get it running.  I don't have any worries about fender clearance, because I don't plan on running any. 

[fabr]

[artie on edge]

Thought this might be of interest to you hydraulic nuts out there....

[Islander]

Interesting, it looks like they are still using a transfer case.  I know I wouldn't be driving it off camber and up walls with my head sticking 4" out of the cage though!!  Could say something about a helmet, but I think it wouldn't help much.  Keep all the mess in one place I guess