Week 11: Getting the frame done

One of the most exciting days working on the car yet! this week I removed the car from the table after completing the last few pieces. On this picture if you look on the side of the frame there are two diagonal tubes and those were the last four pieces to complete the main frame. Although the car is not complete the frame is and this was very reliving, I was afraid i wouldn't even have it done for the presentation. Now what I have to do to the frame is go around to all the tube connections and weld them all together. right now they are all tacked together, meaning that its just a little weld so its easy to fix any mistakes that I might have made. The one thing that has really amazed me is the amount of time it actually takes to built this. Before I begun the project back when I was planning everything out I thought for sure I would be able to have the car completely done and running by now. The thing is I'm no where near that. I have the most important part done and now its all up to fitting everything together but its not close to done. So far its been lots of fun and I'm very excited to see the finished product.

Week 10: The Rest of the Support

The only thing left on the chassis of the car is a couple support beams that connect everything together. Then its on the the a arms and putting everything together. so what I did this week was make all the connections that weren't already made and the last support tube going across the back where the radiator is going to sit. I don't have any pictures of this because i forgot the camera. but ill put some up as soon as I can. I'm getting closer to finishing the body and its really cool being able to see how everything is coming together and imagining driving the car. One other important part of the car that i wanted to talk about is the drive line in the back. There was an option to have a independent rear end or a solid. Solid means that the rear end has one solid shaft going across and both wheels move together when you go over a bump or off a jump. Independent means that there are two half shafts on ether side of a Central hub and they both move freely when going over bumps, witch creates a smother ride. So we went with the independent, that's why I as i explained in week 8's blog that we had bought two Porsche half shafts for the rear end.

Week 9: The Engine

The one thing that makes this car go is the engine of course. So I'm going to explain about how were going to install it and the basic specifications on the motor its self. Well lets start out with the basics, the motor I purchsed for the car is a Honda street bike motor. The bike that it came out of is a 2008 CBR600RR, witch witch has a 599cc liquid cooled in line four-cylinder motor in it. the motor has over 100 horse power, 118hp at 13,000rpm. Witch is pretty radical for a 500 pound car, so its basically going to haul ass. It will be chain driven with a sprocket on the center of the back axle putting the power to the two half shafts and turning the wheel. The one problem with using a motorcycle engine is that the cars not going to have reverse. So I'm going to have to be careful and not get in any situations where ill need to back up. The ignition system on the engine is a duel stage fuel injection with 40mm throttle bodies, denso 12-hole injectors. this means there's no carburetor so the fuel is just sprayed directly into the cylinder, witch means there will be no bog, and power immediately. Sense the motor is liquid cooled we have to have a radiator witch is going to me mounted behind the drivers head so it car be in the flow of air and not get bend up if i were to crash. The motor is also 6-speed manual so there will be a clutch pedal and shifter in the cab. also the motor will have an alternator connected to it so that it will be able to power all the lights on the car and the electronics.

Week 8: Finding out the cost

This week I wasn't able to work on my car because the shop wasn't open. So instead of working I created a spreadsheet of all the parts I have purchased for the sand rail. Ill have a copy of this at my presentation at the end of the project. so i first started out with the chassis parts, first and foremost the tubing for the frame. I had used the tube service through my fathers work, and the amount of tubing needed was (10pcs@18') of 1 1/4" OD tubing x .095 wall, (3pcs@18') of 1"OD tubing x .095 wall. this was a little bit bigger tubing then the design called for because we wanted to beef up the frame. The next most important part is probably the suspension. For the actual shocks we went with FOX shocks, i purchased these off eBay. I bought 8.5" travel 2.0 Fox shocks for the front and 10" travel 2.0 Fox shocks for the back. This converts to over 15" of travel in the front and over 20" in the back. Now for what makes this go, The engine. The original plans for the the Sand Rail called for a 300 cubic centimeter snowmobile 2-stroke engine, but if you can tell by the trend we could settle for that. So we went with a 2008 Honda CBRR600 race street bike motor, with over 100 horsepower. this also made it so we had to go with bigger better half shafts in the rear due to the increase in power. So we got Porsche 944 turbo half shafts witch should work out perfectly. also we had to get all the parts to go with the engine like gas tank, radiator, exhaust, wirring, switches, and all the guages. all of these parts were not cheap and for this project to be properly funded i had to sell my dirtbike and use the money to buy all these parts witch is already totaled over $3,500.

Week 7, the Front of the Car

This weekends goal was to get all of the front support bars in place. For this I had to guess and check because we had already lengthened the car so the plans were no longer completely right. Luckily I didn't have any problems and cut the bars at the right length, and put the right cope on the end. this was kind of hard tho cause one of the bars making the x as you can see in the pictures isn't solid. so I had to make to bars and line them up

To Be Continued.......

Week Six, Adding to the Frame

For this week it was all bout getting the support in for the frame. Once I had the basic shell of the chassis I had to then add in all the support bars that it called for and a couple extra for some additional strength. one o the things that I realized during this process is that everything takes way longer that you think it does. I Have been going in and working on my project every weekend and I'm no where near my schedule that I had written up before i started my project. One of the thing that makes it take a lot longer is perfection. If the bars cut a little wrong or just barely off its not worth trying to fix it and having it not right, so

you have to just start over, and that's happened many times! As I have pictured above the two bars going across the top are not originally in the plan but we added them for extra support if I were to roll the car over. Adding extra things can be good and bad, good for extra support but bad cause its just extra weight making the car heavier and in turn slower. Also this day I had installed the two bars on each side coming down from the top of the car to the middle for the side windows. so far in the project I'm having a great time and I'm still trying to get the project finished by May but its going to be tough.

Week Five (the Info)

This week I was unable to work on my car due to being on a hunting trip, but I'm going to explain what I did to get to the point I'm at and the literature I read so far. When I thought of taking English 4 I instantly thought that I was going to build something and something that would go. When I came up with the idea of building a sand rail the first thing i thought was, was i going to design it myself or get plans on how to build one. So I looked on the Internet to see if i could find plans for the sand rail that I wanted. It took a few different of places to find the one I wanted, but I found plans from Desertkarts.com that I really liked. So i ordered them. then the next step was to get all the parts for the car, engine, shocks, gas tank, steering, etc. So I called the man from Desertkarts and talked to him for about an hour about what kind of stuff I should get. He recommended to get a 300cc 2stroke motor for it, but that wasn't enough for me, so I went out looking for a street bike motor. I ended up purchasing a 2008 600cc cbrr motor, witch is a Honda race bike motor with 110 hp. the next step was to figure out all the wheels and shocks. So I went on Craig's list and found a nice pair of sand rail tires. Then I went on eBay and went looking for shocks, i ended up getting 2 8in travel fox shock for the front and two 10in travel for the back. The other things that Ive ordered so far is the wiring harness for the lights and ignition, also i have the gas tank, radiator and seat. the rest I still have to order

Week Four, the top of th car

Week three, the second layer of the car

This week I stared work on the second layer of the chassis of the car. from the start i knew it was going to be much harder then the bottom layer, just because I would have to somehow hold the second layer up before welding it, to make sure everything was right. So before putting the pipe in place my dad, Armando, and my self measured out where the pipe need to be. Then we welded up supports to hold the pipe in place to we would be sure it was perfect. After getting all the supports in place I went to the milling machine and put the right coping for the pipe to connect to the already in place, bottom chassis. then it was time to put the two long side rails on the car. I had my dad and Armando hold it up while i welded it in place. After that we put the supports in place and the second layer was done. the one thing that was a hurdle we had to get over, was that the design book didn't say what to do about the front of the car, so I had to think of something that would work and be cool to connect the middle chassis to the bottom in the front. so i took some extra pipe we had and bent it unto a u shape that would fit and connect the two pipes together, and it worked great and made it look cool. As I said last week, this makes the car look way more cool and more like a Dune buggy insted off a bunch of pipes. I'm very excited to continue on my car and cant wait to be able to take it home and start putting it all together.

Week Two: Starting the Build

Starting out the second week was a lot more exciting. I had already cut and bent all the pipe for the buggy, and now i had to put the coping on the pipe so that the pipes will fit together flush. To put the coping on the pipe I had used a milling machine. The picture on the right is me using the machine to put the exact angle on the pipes. previous to this I had never even seen a milling machine in my life so this was a whole new experience. My dad helped me out and taught me how to operate the machine. and after a couple practice cuts i got the hang of it. after putting all the correct copings on all the pipe the bottom level of the chassis was our next goal for the day. with the help from Armando and my dad they taught me how you need to have a table and be able to draw out the plans in full scale just to make sure everything is right and there's no mistakes. so that was the next step, I took a tape measure and a long straight edge and drew out the bottom of the chassis. After it was all drawn out the next step was to weld tacks to the edges of the lines i just had drawn so that the metal could rest against it.

Now it was time to start welding the bottom tubes together. This was fun because i love to weld and watching the metal go from tubes to actually looking like something! after all this we called it a day and now I'm just looking forward to next week!

First Week of Work

Starting this Project was a lot harder then I thought! I just had to put that out there. To get my project rolling I had to start before the semester had begun. One of the first thing I had to do was to figure out a place to build my project. This was pretty easy to figure out due to the fact that my fathers work has all the perfect materials I needed to complete the building of the chassis. So I went in one day and asked my Fathers boss, who is the owner of the company, Ted Toland, if I could work and build my Sand Rail for my senior project, and use the tools in the shop. After I had gotten the OK, I had my father give me the number of there metal supplier and I ordered 100' of 1 1/4" tubing for the chassis. Once the metal had been delivered, witch was a few days, i began to bend the tubing to the correct shapes for the car. Previous to this experience I had never knew how to bend tubing. so I had one of my Fathers friend and fellow employee Armando, teach me how to use the pipe bender. This was a very interesting experience and I had a great time learning how to do everything! After I was taught how to use the bender my Father and I cut and bent the pipe to the correct dimensions for the car. This process was long but fun because after the pipe was cut and bent into shape I could kind of picture pieces going together into the car and it made me want to just keep working! Well after this week, I cant wait to see and write about next week.