snwbrdr435
Member
Whats your fuel tank solution?
Volkswagen Vanagon 4x4 Conversion.
- Thread starter vwhammer
- Start date
snwbrdr435
Member
Also since your going subaru motor why not subaru trans to custom front end run the subaru rear diff in the front?
vwhammer
Adventurer
I am running the subaru trans.
It will run to a transfer case that will then feed power to a custom solid axle front and rear.
As for the fuel tank, it will pretty much occupy any of the space between the frame rails that is not filled with transfer case or driveshafts.
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snwbrdr435
Member
Do you need the transfer case? Doesnt the subaru trans have an central diff? Wouldnt it be easier to just toss the subaru rear diff in the front?
snwbrdr435
Member
Any updates? Have you decided to keep the 2wd fuel tank?
vwhammer
Adventurer
Haven't been in the garage lately. I just got back from an 8 day trip to Colorado and with all the holiday junk and a couple other things I have not had to much time in the garage.
I do have 10 days off work coming up so I will be at it then.
I mentioned earlier that the gas tank will be a custom unit that more or less fills most of the space around the transfer case.
Hoping to stretch it out to at least 25 gallons.
I do have 10 days off work coming up so I will be at it then.
I mentioned earlier that the gas tank will be a custom unit that more or less fills most of the space around the transfer case.
Hoping to stretch it out to at least 25 gallons.
vwhammer
Adventurer
Tiny update.
Finally had a spare day to do some fiddlin' in the garage.
I have the sub-frame to the point that I could do some test fitting under the van.
It went almost as planned but a few oversights on my part led to a couple of modifications.
First I had to make a quick cut to clear some threaded inserts in the floor.
I followed this with a quick radius of my spacer plates to match the radius at the top of the frame rail.
After that however, I found another clearance issue with the cross members that needed dealt with.
My notches to clear the cross members were not deep enough and would not allow the subframe to slide all the way up and into place.
I was hoping to spread the clamping load of the sub-frame along as much of the frame rail as possible but, after taking note of how little material was left in my notch after the mod I made an executive decision.
I felt that what remained in the bottom of the notch was not doing enough to make it worth keeping so I just decided to cut it off at the notch.
Now it looks like this.
When it is all said and done there will be about 12-3/4 inches of clearance under the lowest point on the sub-frame.
Not amazing but totally acceptable for what this rig will be used for.
I will also have the air assist for a few more inches should the going get rough.
Pay no attention to the hastily executed "mods" to the sub-frame.
There will be updated drawings and parts cut once I get all this functioning as it should.
I just need to get this thing rolling so I will modify these parts as needed and work on the finished product afterwards.
I still need to locate the sub-frame accurately front to rear then drill all the holes to bolt it in place.
I am also going to work on a mod to make it easier to install the entire sub-frame with the transfer case in place.
Anyway, while I had the sub-frame under the van I slapped one of the control arms in there and ran into another issue.
Naturally I assumed that I would need to make a little clearance at the frame for upward suspension travel.
However I did not really take into account how high my "Y" link mount on the axle would be.
If this were a traditional radius arm mount, a little trim at the corner of the frame above the rear bushing and it would have been good.
If you take a look at my design you will see that I am going to have to do much more than that.
I am attempting to use the factory coil spring mount so that will be staying but I will likely be fabbing up a notch that will bolt in after the necessary material has been removed for clearance.
I will sort all that out once my axle gets here and I can get it in place with the mounts on it.
Anyway I will be in the garage for the next 2 or 3 days so hopefully I will have a few more updates over the weekend.
Until then.
Finally had a spare day to do some fiddlin' in the garage.
I have the sub-frame to the point that I could do some test fitting under the van.
It went almost as planned but a few oversights on my part led to a couple of modifications.
First I had to make a quick cut to clear some threaded inserts in the floor.
I followed this with a quick radius of my spacer plates to match the radius at the top of the frame rail.
After that however, I found another clearance issue with the cross members that needed dealt with.
My notches to clear the cross members were not deep enough and would not allow the subframe to slide all the way up and into place.
I was hoping to spread the clamping load of the sub-frame along as much of the frame rail as possible but, after taking note of how little material was left in my notch after the mod I made an executive decision.
I felt that what remained in the bottom of the notch was not doing enough to make it worth keeping so I just decided to cut it off at the notch.
Now it looks like this.
When it is all said and done there will be about 12-3/4 inches of clearance under the lowest point on the sub-frame.
Not amazing but totally acceptable for what this rig will be used for.
I will also have the air assist for a few more inches should the going get rough.
Pay no attention to the hastily executed "mods" to the sub-frame.
There will be updated drawings and parts cut once I get all this functioning as it should.
I just need to get this thing rolling so I will modify these parts as needed and work on the finished product afterwards.
I still need to locate the sub-frame accurately front to rear then drill all the holes to bolt it in place.
I am also going to work on a mod to make it easier to install the entire sub-frame with the transfer case in place.
Anyway, while I had the sub-frame under the van I slapped one of the control arms in there and ran into another issue.
Naturally I assumed that I would need to make a little clearance at the frame for upward suspension travel.
However I did not really take into account how high my "Y" link mount on the axle would be.
If this were a traditional radius arm mount, a little trim at the corner of the frame above the rear bushing and it would have been good.
If you take a look at my design you will see that I am going to have to do much more than that.
I am attempting to use the factory coil spring mount so that will be staying but I will likely be fabbing up a notch that will bolt in after the necessary material has been removed for clearance.
I will sort all that out once my axle gets here and I can get it in place with the mounts on it.
Anyway I will be in the garage for the next 2 or 3 days so hopefully I will have a few more updates over the weekend.
Until then.
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Nice update. Thanks for taking us on the journey of the whole process, including sharing all the little things that don't work out so perfectly. It's nice to see the real world issues you're running into and how you're problem solving to get past them. Keep up the good work! Looking forward to more!
Corneilius
Adventurer
Keep Chugging! looking good
vwhammer
Adventurer
Yeah this could be viewed as a prototype if you will and since I don't have any 3D drawing software anymore it's much more difficult to really lay it all out on paper.
My time out measuring parts and sitting at my computer drawing got me in the ball park but sometimes you just overlook things.
What this means is that I will have to wait to get some things in place to really see what fits where and, more importantly, what does not.
I am not doing anything terribly innovative.
It's all just control arms and coil springs.
It's just a transfer case and steering like on any other truck.
It's just some bigger tires and some solid axles.
Just plain ol' run-of-the-mill off road paraphernalia.
I have no doubts that it will work as intended.
I have been making updates to all of my 2D drawings as I go along so the next one should go much more smoothly and hopefully cost a lot less money.
Just for a fun story and to fill people in on how this process goes sometimes, I had an epiphany yesterday while playing with my transfer case and sub-frame.
Originally I was trying to run Toyota land cruiser axles front and rear.
As some of you may know these have a passenger side drop differential.
So I needed to turn the transfer case 180 degrees and run the input in the back (which you can do with the land rover LT230) so I can get the driveshafts on the proper side.
However, I have since decided that I am not going to run land cruiser axles and am having custom axles housings made.
These custom housings can be built anyway I would like, including drivers side drop differentials.
So technically what I could do is flip the transfer case back around and run the input in the normal side thus eliminating one more set of custom built parts that I would have needed to run the input in the back.
The van does not care which side the diffs are on.
Of course one of my axle housings is already too far along in the build process to do that so this version will be built as is.
As you can guess, however, the next iteration of this design will likely have drivers side drop axles and the transfer case running in the traditional manner.
As a bonus this also leaves more clearance for the coolant tubes on the Vanagon that run down the passenger side.
As it is right now I have to clearance a cross member a bit so I can scoot the tubes over a couple inches to clear the transfer case.
Not a real big deal but just one more thing that I will not have to do once everything it flipped.
Ok that ends story time for now.
I have work to do.
vwhammer
Adventurer
Well It's been a slow few weeks.
Winter and various other things have me down in the dumps.
Its been a little warmer around here lately so I have been making a conscious effort to get outside more rather than all cooped up in the garage.
Have to take a break every now and then.
Anyway spring time will be here before you know it and a special delivery got me pumped to get back at it.
UPS left me a few packages recently.
Got some steering arms.
These are keyed and will require a little machining to the knuckle but I got a pretty good deal on them so I figured why not.
Also got some brake brackets that will allow me to run some beefy late model Toyota stuff on my shiny new front axle housing
The new housing.
Also got some upgraded 30 spline chromoly shafts to go with it.
So with the front housing in house I figured I better get crackin' on getting the rear housing together.
So I did a little work to one of the ends and machined a couple of sleeves to add a little extra support in the weld area once its all together.
If fits all together with my alignment jig like so.
There will be some plug welds along the sleeves as well as the welds around the circumference.
Still have to insure the brake mounts and all that are in the right place and that everything is square then I will burn it all in for good.
I will likely do that tomorrow.
I drew up the control arm mounts for the axle some time ago but wanted to wait until I have the new front in house and the rear put together to make sure that there was not something that I was overlooking.
It's easy to get excited and overlook a simple thing that ends up being a big pain in the butt a little later.
Anyway I will probably send the drawings of to the laser cutters on Monday.
So with the time rapidly approaching when I will be sliding the axles under the van I figured I better get to work on finishing up my control arms and my "Y" link parts.
The space for my double adjuster in my "Y" link is limited so I chucked them up in the lathe to make everything a little shorter and ended with a part that was about an inch shy of the originals that I posts before.
In case you didn't notice I also removed about 22mm from the other end as well.
That should do the trick.
I also cut the threaded rod that will make up the other part of the double adjuster.
That's all the further that I have progressed but I am poised to make some serious progress in the coming weeks.
It will kill me if this thing is not together and at least usable by the time winter really breaks and the warmer days of spring start so I am ready to get crackin'.
If I can find, purchase and receive the remainder of my front axle parts in the next week or two and sort out exactly what springs and shocks that I need I should have a rolling chassis within the next month.
Then the real fun begins.
I will have to work on things like steering box mounting and all the steering linkage, power steering and brake lines, transfer case mods, some driveshafts and finally a gas tank.
Then it will finally be time to retire my daily driver Subaru so I can yank its heart in the hopes that it will beat on a little longer in the van.
Until next time....
Winter and various other things have me down in the dumps.
Its been a little warmer around here lately so I have been making a conscious effort to get outside more rather than all cooped up in the garage.
Have to take a break every now and then.
Anyway spring time will be here before you know it and a special delivery got me pumped to get back at it.
UPS left me a few packages recently.
Got some steering arms.
These are keyed and will require a little machining to the knuckle but I got a pretty good deal on them so I figured why not.
Also got some brake brackets that will allow me to run some beefy late model Toyota stuff on my shiny new front axle housing
The new housing.
Also got some upgraded 30 spline chromoly shafts to go with it.
So with the front housing in house I figured I better get crackin' on getting the rear housing together.
So I did a little work to one of the ends and machined a couple of sleeves to add a little extra support in the weld area once its all together.
If fits all together with my alignment jig like so.
There will be some plug welds along the sleeves as well as the welds around the circumference.
Still have to insure the brake mounts and all that are in the right place and that everything is square then I will burn it all in for good.
I will likely do that tomorrow.
I drew up the control arm mounts for the axle some time ago but wanted to wait until I have the new front in house and the rear put together to make sure that there was not something that I was overlooking.
It's easy to get excited and overlook a simple thing that ends up being a big pain in the butt a little later.
Anyway I will probably send the drawings of to the laser cutters on Monday.
So with the time rapidly approaching when I will be sliding the axles under the van I figured I better get to work on finishing up my control arms and my "Y" link parts.
The space for my double adjuster in my "Y" link is limited so I chucked them up in the lathe to make everything a little shorter and ended with a part that was about an inch shy of the originals that I posts before.
In case you didn't notice I also removed about 22mm from the other end as well.
That should do the trick.
I also cut the threaded rod that will make up the other part of the double adjuster.
That's all the further that I have progressed but I am poised to make some serious progress in the coming weeks.
It will kill me if this thing is not together and at least usable by the time winter really breaks and the warmer days of spring start so I am ready to get crackin'.
If I can find, purchase and receive the remainder of my front axle parts in the next week or two and sort out exactly what springs and shocks that I need I should have a rolling chassis within the next month.
Then the real fun begins.
I will have to work on things like steering box mounting and all the steering linkage, power steering and brake lines, transfer case mods, some driveshafts and finally a gas tank.
Then it will finally be time to retire my daily driver Subaru so I can yank its heart in the hopes that it will beat on a little longer in the van.
Until next time....
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