PUSHING THE
LIMITS |
Hagen
Does It Again, New IFS Design For Sidekick. |
Editor: Eric Bewley
Story/Photo: Mike Hagen |
COTTAGE GROVE, MN
- The
Orange rig is due for a makeover. Doing the project:RockStar project has
kept me out of my orange rig all summer. From experience, I know the project:RockStar
will spank the orange car all day long on the trail. The way I look at
this is I need to make the orange rig good at some thing the project:RockStar
is not good at. One thing the project:RockStar cannot do well is rally or
jump. My thought is to build the orange rig into a rally/jumper that can
still trail ride.
Our
goals are that It will remain street able, will retain trackick steering
knuckles, have a center mount diff with long travel, and CV-shafts capable
of 18 inches of travel.
| To
start a build like this it made the most sense to just start with
a straight frame. We cut the front off of a 4 door tracker frame
and trimmed all the extras away. The strut towers and motor
mounts. We reused the Calmini 3 inch lower arms in the stock
location for my new upper control arms. We mocked up an upper ball
joint mount so we could see how much drop was needed for the lower
frame. To keep the thing from being a monster truck we were trying
to keep it as low as possible. The lower control arms were treated
to some “dump truck” metal to help it hold up to the trail
rash. Next we cut the original, slightly bent, frame out at the
front horn. Then the new section was slid up and tacked it into
place on top of the original remaining frame. A new upper ball
joint bracket was made to replace the mock up one. To get more
adjustability we opted for some dirt track coils and weight jacks.
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Weight
jacks are basically a screw that you can turn to add or remove weight to a
tire, essentially raising or lowering the vehicle. To be sure that we had
the clearance, we wanted we were testing the parameters as we went. We
were able to get 15 inches of travel per wheel while getting very minimal
camber change.
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Next
up was steering, we came up with an idea for a stronger high angle
steering setup. The idea is that it rotates around a cantilever
type idler. The steering was mocked up and we checked the
parameters. The frame was welded and capped and shocks were
installed. A set of rancho 5000s for a 90s Chevy K1500 were used
because we had them on hand but it will get 9000s after some extra
cash comes our way. After we saw the steering system was going to
work, we built some durable sleeves it extend the gap made by
moving the tie rods to the center. The stock sleeve was cut in
half and machined down to slide inside of a piece of DOM. |
The
same diff I’ve been using for over 2 years will be used in this setup
also. It is a one off center mount Calmini Anvil. The Axles are the same
as you would get with the over the shelf anvil but this diff has 2 of
them. I welded the brackets on to the anvil case to get it to fit into my
application. Our apologies about the poor pic but most of the pictures I
took of it out of the rig were blurry.
This
is a close up of the finished product. By adjusting the weight jacks, I
can change ride height by 12 inches. Here is a look at the adjustability.
This is the ride height I like it to be at. I can lift one tire 37 inches
while keeping the others on the ground.
| Whew!
it was worth all the work! It drives very well down the road and
sacrifices nothing off road either. Very well actually. So
Mike, The big question... How did it work? "I
burned a whole tank of gas today pounding the wee out of it. It
was so slippery I had a hard time telling how it will react on a
solid surface. I didn't break it and I tried pretty hard. I
jumped it at least a couple a dozen times... Freaking sweet! Its
so soft that I cant tell if I actually came off the ground! I had
to ask whoever was watching. Without a doubt, it rallies, and
jumps better than anything I've ever driven." |
|
 ZW
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