Fuso FG not made for off-road

[whatcharterboat]

Yeah, I'd like to see how they did that. As I said "to my knowledge, there are none". The back of a dual cab is a bit shorter. As you know the worst area for the flex is up near the gearbox and in a dual cab this is under the rear cab whereas on a single cab it is where the body mounts.

 

[alan]

I'm pretty sure Ron Lucero posts on here and is very familiar with the Hackney's problems in addition to Michel's problems, so I wouldn't dismiss his opinion lightly. I'm pretty sure no construction body on a Fuso will have a pivot frame, so the issue could be the mounting systems and not the frame itself. I'd be willing to bet that most construction bodies spread the load over the full length of the Fuso frame which could make a big difference. I think some Aussie designs do a similar thing.

My Canter had a steel tray mounted the complete length of the chassis, u bolted with wood between them, it had cracks in the chassis and a bad twist.

 

[whatcharterboat]

Hi Alan, Was the tray twisted too??

 

[whatcharterboat]

There are several 3 point mounted fire tenders on the rear of dual cab fg637s.
These were made by Giblins motor bodies out of Aircraft grade Aluminium, hence the need for the 3 point mounts. Brass trunions were used and it was a great success. Mind you, Giblin was building 4wd bus bodies before i was born.
He built a body on the back of a ford F250 4wd back in the 70's, i'll try and dig a photo out.
Today 09:23 PM

Engineer, They don't do this any more do they?? Looks like this NPS is solidly mounted. Did they make your SWB FG? Is that it in their gallery?

 

[Michel Szulc Krzyzanowski]

There is now more explanation about the situation with the Fuso Szulc and 18 pictures of the solution being worked on.
Check the posting called "Rebuilding the Fuso Szulc part 1" on
http://www.michelszulckrzyzanowski.blogspot.com

 

[dzzz]

Dump trucks are only mounted at two points (disregarding the hydralics), but when loaded the dump bed rests against the length of the frame. What I'm getting out of these discussions is that a better design for some/most trucks may be to have the body in full contact at rest, but not rigidly bound to the frame?
Is this a fair simplification of those who don't believe three or four point pivots are beneficial on the Cantor frame?
As an observation, the Aussie tour vehicle look to have a shorter wheelbase than the expo's. There's both more leverage and more opportunities to place the wheels in bad positions with a long wheel base.
Also, an expo build is more thing to break in the camper. Are the OZ commercial vehicles fiberglass boxes with seats? Preventing the body from twisting may be less important for the tour people. They are also professionally building the shells.
I'm not arguing with anyone, just trying to look at all the angles. What works works.

 

[kerry]

Thanks for posting the pictures Michel. Can you answer some questions?
What is is the total weight of your camper? Where were the frame twists that were causing the problems? Were there any cracks or breaks, or just twisting? Under what conditions were you typically driving the truck? Did you routinely go off road under conditions which induced large amounts of frame twist or were you driving mostly on dirt roads?
Do you have any idea of what was happening to cause the twist and keep the twist in place?
It seems like mounting firmly at the front and pivoting at the rear is the reverse of what people who attach service bodies to truck frames typically do. The service body is attached firmly at the rear and if it moves, it moves at the front. Do you know why your camper builder decided to do it the other way?

Seems like the new design is going to increase the stresses at the point where WhatCharterBoat says the frame flexes the most, behind the cab in the vicinity of the transmission. Since the frame under the camper is being reinforced, it won't be able to twist as much as it formerly did, making the remaining part of the frame twist more. Do other people see it that way?

 

[engineer]

From my understanding, the goose neck is what increases stress, what is needed is to take the travel from point of rotation an reduce it by moving the point of rotation to somewhere where less stress will be incurred.
I've seen this done, and taking advantage of the goose neck, by running a straight line from the top of the goose neck through to the rear end of the chassis. This will give alot of room to place a rear trunion mounted above the rear axle (most obvious stress point) with the pivot axis running parallel with the chassis rails. The other obvious place to mount the other 2 trunions would be to the side of the goose neck where the gearbox is.
This would allow lots of room, but I would pre-stress the roll trunion with a pair of torsion bars and a pair of shock absorbers to be safe. The 2 pitch trunions wouldn't need this as they already have lots of gravity on thier side.
BTW, yes WCBoat, that is ours. Everyone tells me that it's ugly, but we don't care. They are built for a purpose, no for good looks (typical engineers point of view.).

 

[mhiscox]

I'd just like to thank all the Australian participants--men with lots of other things to do--for sharing the knowledge and information they have, both here and everywhere on the Forum. It takes time to write up informative responses, post pictures, share stories, etc., and, since we Yanks don't get to have much of their stuff anyway, there's no motivation except for just being (damn) helpful.

Much appreciated. :bowdown:

 

[alan]

Hi Alan, Was the tray twisted too??

Not sure if the tray was twisted, it was scrapped.

 

[UK4X4]

Michel,

are they going to overplate these cut sections ?

as that looks like a rather large hole to fill with weld and hope it holds its strength ?

 

[Michel Szulc Krzyzanowski]

Now more images to see.
Posting is called: "Rebuilding the Fuso Szulc part 2"
On: http://www.michelszulckrzyzanowski.blogspot.com

 

[mog]

Mitsubishi did not make any radical changes from the FE to the FG in regards to specification. They put a step in the frame to accommodate the 4 wheel drive system, and that was it as far as I can tell. As far as Ron's quote of "They were designed more for extreme construction sites", that seems to follow any of the advertising I've seen from Mitsubishi. The ads are of service or work trucks at construction sites, landscaping trucks at job sites, never an expedition camper in the outback of Mongolia. We must remember that 99.5% of the Fuso customers used them for other then expeditions. I've seem enough FGs that are still alive after being used as snow plow / dump trucks ( that has to be a hard life) that there is no 'flaw' with the FG. Enough people have used them as expedition / tour platforms, and will in the future judging from all our board member with FGs. Hopefully all will have sucess.

 

[Terrainist]

Curious to see how the subframe rails will be attached to the truck frame rails.

Thank you for posting those photos on your blog Michel.

 

[kerry]

We must remember that 99.5% of the Fuso customers used them for other then expeditions. I've seem enough FGs that are still alive after being used as snow plow / dump trucks ( that has to be a hard life) that there is no 'flaw' with the FG. Enough people have used them as expedition / tour platforms, and will in the future judging from all our board member with FGs. Hopefully all will have sucess.

One of the advertising brochures that always shows up on Ebay searches shows the FG as a powerline maintenance truck (I think). I imagine that consistent use for that purpose would put the FG on roughly the same kinds of roads that expedition campers would use. I'm curious as to what the fleet managers of such trucks have found as to the frame's durability and what kind of weights the truck typically carries in that usage.
It seems that Doug Hackney is really pushing the weight limits of the chassis as I think he himself would admit. I'm curious as to Michel's weight. If Michel's weight is well within the truck's limits, then it would nice to know the exact mounting system that his builder used. I think the front rigid mount could have contributed to his problems. As I recall, Michel posted a number of months ago about bolt failure on his mounts. I wonder if these were the front mounts and whether the bolt failures were related to frame flex.