Build Just Another Buggy Build

This will be many firsts for me on this one so hope everyone will take it easy on me. Ive been hesitant to post considering how rough some of you old timers can be . But I’m willing to take it if it means learning some stuff along the way. Here is a little background story, if you don’t care, that’s fine just skip to the next post with the buggy stuff. If you’ve been in it for a while you know how it goes, but maybe it can help some people that are getting started.

I’ve been around this forum and the old one for many years now but never done any of my own threads for my previous stuff. I remember, back in high school, drooling all over the cool stuff people were building and thinking “How did these people learn to do all of this?”. Fast forward 15 years and I guess it’s time to give back a little to those who are here to learn. Just like I have learned on these forums through the years, and continue to learn more myself, since I am in unknown territory like I was 15 years ago.

This is my current rig that that was my DD in high school and it has slowly evolved throughout the years to what it is now. I learned a lot from working on this and helping my buddies build their jeeps first, while I was a broke college student wheeling this xj on a d30/44. Then toward the end of college I started collecting parts, and used everything I had learned so far to build my jeep. 1 tons, 4 link, coilovers all the basic ****.

Then:

Now:


During college I was introduced to this thing called King of the Hammers, around 2014 or so, and you can pretty much guess what I wanted to do after that point. My plan after college and finishing my jeep was to build a buggy. It was all I wanted to do, and me being the young and dumb kid that I was, figured I would have all the time and money in the world to do it once I finished school. Reality quickly set in and I realized that wasn’t going to be the case. Anyways, not long after I finished my jeep, I started messing around in CAD playing with chassis ideas, mainly just for fun during lunch and to get some CAD practice since that was also what I did at my day job. Originally, I didn’t think it was going to turn into anything real. At least not anytime soon once I started adding up prices for the parts it was going to take to build. I continued working on it in CAD when I had time, hoping eventually I would get to point where I could start building something.

It didn’t take long for me to realize this thing was never going to get built if I did it all myself by hand. I had done a decent amount of fabrication and tube work on mine and my buddies jeeps at this point but I was not good or fast at it by any means. And having worked at a place that has a full fab shop with laser and press brake, I was spoiled very quickly by being able to cut brackets in minutes that would have taken hours by hand. I eventually got to something that I liked.

I hadn’t spent a ton of time on it in CAD up to this point, but it was enough that I decided it made the most sense to get all the major details ironed out that needed to be done for me to feel comfortable sending the chassis out to be CNC cut and bent. The original idea was based on a 4400 race car. But as I mentioned, I learned it was not going to be reasonable for me to build that level of buggy right out of the gate if I wanted a finished buggy this century. So, I changed some things around and started moving more toward a trail buggy built to U4 chassis specs if I do decided to race it one day. For about a year the chassis and design didn’t change much, but I just didn’t have enough confidence to pull the trigger. I wasn’t in a hurry so I just took my time, learned, observed, measured, moved this by a couple inches, that by half inch, raised this a half an inch and so on until I was confident enough.

At this point, I had been staring at it on the screen for 2-3 years, but I wasn’t constantly working on it. I would go through phases of working on it for an hour over lunch for a couple weeks at a time then wouldn’t touch it for months. But I was tired of looking at it so it was time to hit print. And this is what I arrived at.






Note: While I have spent a lot of time on it in CAD. I have not finished or finalized everything by any means(obviously). There have also been a lot of things changed and moved around through the process. I will be finishing the details as I go. I was tired of staring at this thing on the computer.

If you made it through the first post, congrats and I appreciate it. If you skipped it, I don’t blame you, I probably would have too.

Just want to warn everyone, if you are looking for a fast-paced build thread with frequent updates, this won’t be the thread for you. This is part of the reason I havnt started this until now because it’s been so slow. But I am in need of some motivation and thought maybe it would help to have some ass holes telling me what all Ive done wrong and hold me accountable for working on it .

I am coming up on 3 years since my toobs were delivered and pretty much all I have is a chassis 90% done. The main factor that has caused this is the same as most builds…. money. Im mad at myself for not having started saving and collecting parts years ago before I started, but it is what it is. Yeah, I could be doing all the stuff that doesn’t cost a ton of money, but sometimes it’s tough to find the motivation to do those things when you still need 20k or more in parts just to have a roller. I’ve been able to save and accumulate a good bit of parts over the last year, so should be able to get working towards a roller. But for now here is all the content that has led up to this point that I will share first to get up to date.

Build List

Chassis – My custom design DOM 2” mains .188 wall belly filled with aluminum 1.75 x .120/.095 supports 54” wide outside B pillar 119" WB
Engine – Gen 3 LQ9 LS
Trans – TH400
Tcase – Atlas 2 speed 3.0
Front axle – Custom fab 4” housing, 05+ SD60 outers, Gearworks HP10 40 spline third 1550 branik ujoint/shafts
Rear axle – Spidertrax 3.5” mild steel housing, 05+ unit bearings, Strange LP third with 10” gear 35 spline gearworks locker (Bought this third member used, prepped as a spare for an old 4400 car. not sure if I will use the 35 spline locker or not)
Front suspension – 4 link with 16” 2.5 King IBP C/O 16” travel
Rear Suspension– Trailing arm/4link with 16” 2.5 King IBP C/O 24” travel
17" belly height at 50/50 travel
Cooling - Griffin 33x19 dual 16" fans with plate style water/oil HE's for engine and trans.
Steering – Undecided on ram size but it will get all radial dynamics steering pump components
Fuel- 22 gallon JAZ aluminum bladder cell, fuel system TBD
Wiring/electrical - planning for some sort of PDM and digital dash but still TBD
Wheels – 17x9 Battle born beadlocks
Tires – Something in the 43” flavor



Toobs arrived from goatbuilt April of 2023.
Was really happy with everything from goat built and Wisconsinite. Quality was great and I think there was only 1 tube that didnt come out right out of the 120+ tubes. Was awesome being able to send a model to Drew and a pallet of tubes show up a couple weeks later. Hate it has taken me this long to get going.



I figured the best and easiest thing to do would be to build some sort of chassis table to build it on. I just spent all this money getting a CNC cut chassis so probably not the best Idea to weld it up on the concrete floor. So I built 2 28x56 tables that I bolted together. I chose to do 2 separate tables because I will not always be building a chassis, so when I’m not I can take one down and store it to save space. And the reason for that size is because the parts fit perfect on a full 5x10 sheet and I built it no bigger than it needed to be for my chassis. Also just the way it laid out with the 4x4 hole spacing.



Belt grinder that I designed and built. Built the first one for the shop at my work then cut a second one for me and it is still currently a pile of parts sitting in a box in my shop…

It works great though.




Spent the time getting all of my tubes prepped and aluminum slugs turned and fitted for all of the belly tubes.

I am not a welder by any means so dont get on me too bad. I dont plan on tig welding this whole chassis, but I have very little practice tig welding tubing. So I will get as much practice as I can on different parts of the buggy. It is all double passed and miters capped with bulkheads/partitions whatever you choose to call it. Some pictures might be showing with only the root pass. All of these belly tubes are 2" x .188 slugged with aluminum. And this is all just mild steel DOM.

well ok then. This is just what I needed on a Friday.

Moar pics!

The Freeak said:

well ok then. This is just what I needed on a Friday.

Moar pics!

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Thank you. I’ll keep it coming as long as I can until it gets caught up but then no promises

Looks great, love the CAD work!

Ghetto Fab. said:

Looks great, love the CAD work!

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Thanks man. Not as detailed as yours but it will get there eventually lol.

I tacked and fully welded the belly section then the rocker/floor section then the door bar section. Then later you’ll see I made some simple fixtures to help locate all of these together relative to each other. After doing it this way I wish I would have just spent the time and money putting together real fixtures to assemble the chassis all at once. It wouldn’t have cost that much and would have saved a lot of time getting it all located and tacked up. Since it was all pre cut it was pretty critical to keep everything fairly close to how it should be. If not it causes further issues with things later on



Cut some brackets to bolt to the side of the table to locate the rocker/floor section to the belly



Then the door bar section the same way.

I was also in college and my first KOH was 2014 and that convinced me to try and work towards a buggy and took many years to finish it

snivilous said:

I was also in college and my first KOH was 2014 and that convinced me to try and work towards a buggy and took many years to finish it

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Yessir first time I got to go was 2018 to watch then was able to take my jeep out in 2024. Just a little behind schedule but the buggy will be finished one of these days.

Definitely dont recommend the Swag tube roller beef up kit for the harbor freight setup to do 2" tubing . I was able to make it work, but it took 2 people to run the roller and keep it straight. The frame just had too much flex with how much force it took. I will end up just making my own beefier frame to transfer all of the parts in to. I should have just spent the extra money on the whole Swag Hulk roller.

When I had the tubes cut, goat built didnt have a roller, but I still had them cut and bend the A Pillar/roof tubes, then I rolled them. I put 5" between the end of the bends and start of the roll. I was able to make it work but probably should have done 6-7" with this roller. I laser cut a template for the tube profile and matched it as best as I could. You can see the etch marks on the template for where the bend ended and roll needed to start. I was able to get it within an inch or so.






As I was putting it together, I tried to tig root anything that was getting covered up by other tubes so that the joints are fully welded. Allowed me to get some tig practice without worrying about how it looked since it was getting covered up.

Is the engine/ drivetrain going in from the top or from below?

I ask because the two ... "stringers" running forward of the cowl/ inboard of the "fenders" appear to leave a pretty narrow opening.

I then pulled the chassis off the table to set up the back half. This is where a little longer table and some better fixtures would have helped a lot. I had a hard time getting the back half together and on the chassis correctly. I got it all tacked on and realized something wasnt right, so had to take it back off and make some adjustments. Its not perfect but I was able to get it close enough to be happy with.





I made a simple template to try and get the lower tubes aligned with the upper tubes as best as I could. Very tough to get it all in place when its all floating in the air. You can see one of the tubes I had trimmed a bunch off of before I realized something wasnt right. Once I got it closer to where it was suppose to be it was way too short. I just cut and sleeved it for now, I will either remake it, or weld it up and clean it up in the lathe.



At this point, all of the main tubes were in. Obviously there is still a lot missing, but I am not confident enough to build the chassis out 100% and fully weld it all in. Since I dont have every component placed in my CAD model, I would rather wait to make sure nothing needs to change or move once I get further along. I also think it will be much easier to work on throughout the build without door bars and other support tubes in the way. But I did go through and fully weld some of the main junctions, that I knew couldnt be changed at this point, and so the main structure was locked in place.

The Freeak said:

Is the engine/ drivetrain going in from the top or from below?

I ask because the two ... "stringers" running forward of the cowl/ inboard of the "fenders" appear to leave a pretty narrow opening.

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It goes in from the top, there is room. I will post getting the motor in and mounted in my next post. I did have to get creative with only 10ft ceilings in my shop though lol.

Edit: And there are 2 more support tubes going from the firewall/dash tube up to the shock mount area but those will be removable with tube connectors to remove the engine.

I then moved on to some plate work, getting my motor mounts and some link tabs put together. Motor mounts are all 1/4" and chassis side lower link mounts are 3/8". All laser cut A36 mild steel. Holes were cut a few thou under and reamed 3 thou over.

After getting the 3/8 lower link tabs cut, I realized the spacing didnt match up perfect with standard grade 8 bolts to be shanked properly. So I added 11ga layover pieces to the tabs to add some thickness. They could have just been regular weld washers but figured it would be some good tig practice and thought it looked cool . Upper mounts are 1/4" and I just did 3/16" weld washer on those. All the links will have 1-1/4" joints with 3/4 bolt.



Then it was time to get the drive train in and mounted. As I said above, I had to get a little creative to get the motor lifted in with only 10ft ceilings in my shop. I planned on rolliing it outside and lifting in with a forklift, but then realized I was about an inch short of the chassis clearing my door with it on my table. I made my table with adjustment in the legs but I was able to get the chassis wedged through the door just far enough to get the motor in without lowering the table.

Check out the faith I had in that cheapo amazon fork extension



I made a fixture that bolted to the table and held the motor in its correct spot for fitting up the motor mounts. It will also get a tube off the bottom of the bushing tube that will tie into the skid plate. This is just a junk 5.3 with a blown head gasket I am using for mock up. I have a running stock 6.0 LQ9 I plan on using. I may put a cam and few things in it but nothing major. I also had to remove the truck pan because the motor in my model is a car motor, and the truck pan was 1/4" too deep to clear the table. I plan to use an F body pan or some sort of aftermarket pan with baffles anyways.







Got the PRP podium seats sat in there to see how they looked in the buggy. My wife had bought these seats for me for my birthday like 2 years prior to this so it was nice seeing them sitting in the buggy after they had sat in the shop for so long.

Chassis looks fantastic. Keep updating

More pics of getting the motor mounts and link tabs in. I machined aluminum spacers 15 thou wider to set the link tab spacing, as well as aluminum bushings to replace the poly motor mount bushings for welding. And yes, I welded the portion of the back motor mount tube that got covered up before I welded in the front tube. And they arent 100% welded yet. I will finish once I pull the motor out of the way.

cdemart2 said:

Chassis looks fantastic. Keep updating

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Thanks man, I appreciate it!

I showed this to my guy who cut and bent it. He got insta-salty that one of the tubes was messed up. Can you share with the class what the issue was? He is curious.

Wisconsinite said:

I showed this to my guy who cut and bent it. He got insta-salty that one of the tubes was messed up. Can you share with the class what the issue was? He is curious.

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Dang hopefully my comment didnt come off sounding like I was pissed about it lol. I meant it more as, I was impressed everything fit up so well, especially with me putting it together the way that I did. It was just the front bumper hoop bar. I figured maybe it was because I had the bends too close together and that was just the closest you could get them. Wasn't a big deal, I just cut a section out between the bends and sleeved it. Everything else was on the money.

No, he isn't mad at all. He is just a young guy that holds himself to a high standard, and doesn't like to mess up! I am still going to tell him he messed up. He needs someone to give him a hard time.

Design looks kick ass. Keep it up!

Wisconsinite said:

No, he isn't mad at all. He is just a young guy that holds himself to a high standard, and doesn't like to mess up! I am still going to tell him he messed up. He needs someone to give him a hard time.

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Well thats always a good mentality to have! Tell him to keep it up, but I expect perfection next time . But forreal it all was super nice and worth every penny. I think I would have lost interest and given up if I tried to do all this by hand.

That also reminds me, how do yall index the bends with the notch? I didnt notice any etch marks or references for alignment in the bender.

GGRR 4555 said:

Design looks kick ass. Keep it up!

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Thanks man, I'll try my best!

93blackxj said:

Well thats always a good mentality to have! Tell him to keep it up, but I expect perfection next time . But forreal it all was super nice and worth every penny. I think I would have lost interest and given up if I tried to do all this by hand.

That also reminds me, how do yall index the bends with the notch? I didnt notice any etch marks or references for alignment in the bender.

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Yeah, he is 22-23 and a really solid dude. He has worked with us since his high school internship.

He says "I am just that good, I bend em with love"

If you look at the start of the bend, there should be an engraved T.

Enough of the thread hi-jack. Keep up the killer work!

I just want to say up front.....I hit the watch button before I finished reading the first post! BAD ASS BUILD! Says a lot that you've spent so much time on it and keep plugging away. I need to see this as motivation for my own build. Can't wait to see more updates

Blase said:

I just want to say up front.....I hit the watch button before I finished reading the first post! BAD ASS BUILD! Says a lot that you've spent so much time on it and keep plugging away. I need to see this as motivation for my own build. Can't wait to see more updates

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Thanks man I appreciate the support. It’s been a long time coming. Glad you enjoyed the back story in the first post. I’m sure most skipped it but figured some people might find some motivation from it. I sure have struggled with the motivation side of it throughout the process and seeing other people build cool stuff usually gets me fired up

I have a spidertrax 3.5" mild steel housing for the rear, but I plan on building my own front 4" fab housing. It is something I have always wanted to do. Its been a lot of work and preparation, and I would have been much better off just buying another housing, but I am close to having everything I need to start putting it together so no point in stopping now.

I made this stand to use as a fixture for getting everything setup and welded. I used some 6x4 1/4" wall rectangle tubing and tapped a hole pattern across the top of it. That way I can make different attachments for it so it can be used for other things than just a housing fixture. I needed an axle stand for doing gear and axle work so this will work well for that as well. I put a 1.5" shaft through it with a few braces welded inside to the shaft would help add to the stiffness. I then mounted it on some pillow block bearings with a cam lock plate so it can be rotated to different positions. If I find I need more stiffness for building the housings, I can always put a truss structure across the bottom.



This is my plan for putting the housing together. I've thought a lot about it, probably too much, and still not sure what the exact process is going to be. I think its something ill just have to figure out as I go. I cut fixtures that will bolt to my stand to hold the axle tubes and faceplate in the correct position relative to each other. I'll also use a true bar to to get it all shimmed and aligned properly. I have debated the idea of offsetting the faceplate further away from the axle tube center line before it gets tacked together. That way I have some extra material on the face plate at the end that I can mill down to account for any distortion and create a good flat sealing surface for the diff. I think Ive decided not to do that and just send it with the fixtures locating it exactly where it needs to be, unless I am convinced other wise.




Housing will be 4" x 3/8" wall tubes with 1/2" face plate and 1/4" one piece shell. I still need to cut my faceplate and finish my adapter sleeves for the inner seals and it will be ready to put together.

Do you know what the weight of you housing is going to be?

wow amazing

Blase said:

Do you know what the weight of you housing is going to be?

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According to solidworks the bare housing will be 85lbs. Probably more once it is all welded up.