poor man's TT build

[the frog]

two months ago i started building my desert racer.
it's a TT style truck although not as fancy, sophisticated, powerful or expensive as those TTs roaming your deserts and the Baja.

the specs are as follows:

-two seater
-ST-37 carbon steel seamless tube chassis made of 48.3x3.65 mm tubes
(a bit overkill but the chassis not too heavy as it holds only apprx. 80 m of tubes)
-WB 130"
front track 85"
-rear track 83"
-estimated total dry weight - 3800lb.
-solid rear end based on a FF D-70 with CTM 300M shafts
-rear suspension - 4 link 34" travel and stabilizer with 4 11/4" uniballs and upper 11/4" rodends
-front suspensiom- double A arm IFS 30" travel(to be limited according to car's behaviour) with camber change of up to 9 degs., using 4 uniballs vertically placed.
-rear & front 18"x2.5" Bilstein coilovers + 18"x2.5" Bilstein 4 bypass shocks
-engine 400hp carburated SBC 350
-tranmission - TH-400 manualy operated only(shift kit)
wheels - 37"x12.5"x17" BF mud terrain KM2 on 17"x9" rims
-steering - 2.5" Howe rack & pinion
-fuel cel - 70 gallon self built aluminum fuel tank

by now i got the frame almost done and i'm now starting to work on the steering.

fuel cell is being fabed also, slowwwwwly.

for pics posted till now, here's a link to a thread in the leading Israeli forum for offroad activities called Jeepolog -

http://www.jeepolog.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23151

i'll post more pics here as i go on - hope you like what you see.
some of the pics stink but i already got to terms with the fact that i'll never be a good photographer....

any comments, ideas, suggestions etc. will be wellcomed, since it's my first desert racer after fabing a few rockcrawlers in the past.

will keep you posted.

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[Lance]

looks pretty good even though i cant read anything on that website haha.. you still got a lot of work to do keep us posted

[OneUpFabrication]

lol ya that site is crazy every other letter is the same letter haha

but ya dude looks good! id like to know how your getting 30" of travel! that's a hell of a lot! looks like you could make your wheel track wider....? the body of the truck is wide as hell plenty of room!

[fordnut]

Cool build! Did you have that crazy homebuilt rig that was in the Four Wheeler magazine top truck challenge a few years ago?

[hangten33]

Good Luck on your build bro!!

[Bantle]

Looks good, reminds me of the sandrail I built back in high school, good luck. Keep us posted.

[partybarge_pilot]

-estimated total dry weight - 3800lb.

Your going to be way over that.

[the frog]

Cool build! Did you have that crazy homebuilt rig that was in the Four Wheeler magazine top truck challenge a few years ago?

yes that was me.

2002 TTC.

[rebel33]

Your going to be way over that.

I have a friendly wager with Barry the frog on that point... hope he does beat me and makes his target design weight.

Anyways it is a pleasure to watch a self-tought fabricator in work. In israel we are years behind you guys in our fabrication culture, parts and tools are much harder and expensive to source, but we are catching up, and old Barry is leading the way...



BTW his last creation was an 8x8 turned 6x6 crawler (just to put the man's sanity in perspective)
http://www.jeepolog.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19611

[RoosterBooster]

Rebel 33
on the weight i bet my money on you

wow...that is an interesting concept!
is the (inline) passenger just in for the ride or is he actually doing anything? (maybe steering the rear?)

interesting pics in your website link.... wish i could read Hebrew lol....