Manky's Pop.

[Manky Monkey]

Piccie coming up Kev.
Here's the culprit.
I can't even blame Loony for this cos I made these on the bench, then he welded them in place. Box section chassis outriggers to take the top shock mounts. As you can see, I plated in the underside. Over engineering. A lot of people leave the underside open, but I didn't know how strong they had to be.
As I spun the truck round hard on the gravel, with my foot to the floor, 2 blokes in the cab & a third in the pick-up bed, all the weight was transferred to this side & the shock compressed as far as it'd go. It tried to move upwards in an arc towards the wheel & the top of the eyelet's hit the boxed in underside of the mount -snap.

[Mendalot]

The addition of a panhard rod would be the simplest way to go, would it not?

[Manky Monkey]

As we said yesterday, I'm not sure it'd make a difference with the triangulated 4 bar linkage we've got.
There's signs of contact on the underside of the outrigger & the base of the eyelet. If I trim the underside back to half it's current length, it'll give an extra half an inch of clearance. I could take out 3/4" & still keep a return edge at the end to keep the strength in it. It's been fine under normal road conditions. It took me hooning about like an idiot with a full load of Monkeys on board to break it. At least we know the chassis' solid.
Is it me or does the outrigger look like a gargoyle?

[Mendalot]

Excuse my ignorance on this Andy, what does the triangulating? I have never come across this before.

[Manky Monkey]

Haven't got a photo to hand, but here's a diagram from Google.
The lower tie rods stop axle rotation & the diagonal top ones stop sideways movememt.
What's your verdict Kev?
Only other damage is a small dent in the wheel arch & a squished brake line on the axle. The brakes needed re-bleeding anyway. I hear you & Chris had a few brake problems of your own the same day Kev.
Loony's got a mate with a contact at the Gaz shock company, so with luck we may be able to get a discount on having this one rebuilt.
If this is purely down to a mistake on my part, then I'm quite happy to accept it. As I said, I've never built a car from the ground up before & if this is the only fault, then it ain't too bad, (yeah, I know it could've been nasty if it happened elsewhere, but I wouldn't have been driving like that on the open road).
Trim the mount, rebuild or replace the shock, replace the brake pipe & we're good to go again?

[WAYNE999]

Could have been worse mate but as them little niggly running in bugs go it's a biggy

[Manky Monkey]

Fairly easily fixed if that's all it is though.
Mr Kapri's been our design guru, (or Gnu, as my spellcheck calls him), & he's gone worryingly quiet. What d'ya think Kev?

[terry t]

It should look like this.

Andy is there enough up and down movment for the shock looking at this photo you can see a rust mark looks like its bottoming out at the top on the shock mount.

[Manky Monkey]

The rust mark on the top coil of the spring Terry? They're second hand springs. That's just where the paint's missing. They'll be re-coated eventually.

[terry t]

OK , I can see a lot of red stuff on the chassis    wire brush time

[Manky Monkey]

Yeah, the joys of running a bare metal car mate. It's only supposed to be temporary for the Summer while we shake it down -or shake it to bits.

[terry t]

Yeah, the joys of running a bare metal car mate. It's only supposed to be temporary for the Summer while we shake it down -or shake it to bits.

Its better to shake it to bits and fix then when its all seems ok then paint, how many trike have you had powder coated then wanted to weld or change some thing

[Manky Monkey]

 

[Manky Monkey]

Worth fitting rubber bump stops on the chassis above the axle?
These are Landrover ones. 3 quid each on Ebay.

[Olds]

The land Rover bump stops might be a bit big for your application but I believe that they can be cut down.

Pretty sure that you can't fit a Panhard rod to a triangulated 4 bar system. A panhard rod actually causes the axle to move sideways but in a controlled way.

Like I said before this isn't unheard of and I'd be surprised if you had enough axle arc of travel to provide the leverage required to shear through that . Would take at least 20 ton at 1/2" thick shaft.

Kev, I had a look at the break in the shaft. The break happened at the bottom of the eyelet thread (an obvious stress raiser) and shows the sort of surface I would expect from Izod testing (breaking) a fully hardened steel. No sign of repeated stress fracture, no bending and no sign of shear.
I think the rod was just too brittle.